In his later years, British writer Evelyn Waugh carried a Victorian ear trumpet with him which he would raise to his ear while speaking so that he could better hear his own wit. But when others tried to speak to him, he would take it down.
Amazingly, this is the way most businesses today approach social media. In large part, this is because too many marketers treat social media as if it were just another outlet for their newsletter content. They pay close attention to their own communications, scheduling and monitoring posts and tracking click-through rates. But when it comes to listening to what others are saying about their business, they are tuned out.
The need to listen and respond goes well beyond replying to the occasional direct message. Most of what is said about a company—good and bad—is not sent in a direct message. Instead, questions, comments and complaints are usually made openly to the community. If your business maintains an active account within the community, responses are not only acceptable, they are often expected.
And it’s not just about putting out fires. Successful social media marketers contribute to conversations, recognize fans, and learn what matters most to their customers and prospects. While there are a number of good commercial applications for monitoring conversations across blogs and online communities, you don’t have to be a big company with a social media budget to get started. Monitoring the millions of daily posts across Twitter can be as simple as finding the key words that produce the most relevant results for your business on www.search.twitter.com, and then subscribing to the RSS feed for the search query. It’s about as simple as an old ear trumpet, really.
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