Social Listening vs. Social Talking

The idea that Ben Kunz proposed on this past week's episode of The BeanCast was not new. We've been saying for years in our field that we need to listen to our customers. And certainly the people who espouse social media strategies push forward the idea that it's a fantastic two-way communication tool.

But the idea that Twitter's (and indeed, all social media's) most important function may be for listening is an idea that has resonated with me since I heard Ben say it.

Why does such an obvious suggestion move me? Probably because I, and most everyone else I run into online, seems to be obsessed with talking.

We talk about strategies and share interesting links and promote our blog posts and generally try to get noticed. But how much actual, intentional listening are we doing?

Certainly if you post the same thought to multiple services, you are not listening to any more than one of them. (I've already stated my distaste for this on my blog and on the marketing podcast.) Let me just say, if I offer someone the honor of following them, there is nothing worse than replying to a post only to realize that their same post is on another network. It makes me start doing calculations and realize that my odds of being recognized as a contributor to the conversation have just shrunk exponentially.

Next, consider the number of your followers and balance it against your time, resources and understanding of the technology. Chances are that there is a giant disparity somewhere. There's no way that a single person can keep up with a 1,000 people trying to carry on their own one-sided conversations. And if you are unfamiliar with the higher-level searches available in third-party software, you have no ability to hear what is not being directed toward you.

Let state clearly, there is nothing wrong with using mediums like Twitter as a promotional tool. That is the essential reason for blogging. We have ideas and we want to share these ideas. The point of this post is not to trash people. But it is a wake-up call that exposes some important, but largely overlooked, truths about social media.

The minute a company posts something in social circles, they open themselves up to the responsibility of carrying through on the conversation. This is not a web page, folks! This is not a banner advertisement. This is an opening for interaction. That's why people follow you. That's why they are interested in you. They see this as an opportunity to communicate with you. And if you don't hear and sometimes respond directly to what people are saying to you, you've taken away a bit of the value people found in following you in the first place.

This doesn't mean carrying on a full conversation with thousands of responses. No one can, nor should, do this. But it does mean acknowledging you are seeing trends in responses, occasionally recognizing individuals and actually doing something tangible with the feedback. It means being something a bit more than a one-way stream of information. It's about valuing your followers (your customers) as much as you value your own thoughts.

And even if your company has a policy against employee blogging and strict PR lines of communication, there is no reason you can't still sign up for these services just to listen. If we learned one valuable lesson from the Ketchum/FedEx story from last week, it's the fact that you, your brand and the things important to your brand are being discussed in some capacity, with or without you. All it takes is a quick search of the Twitter stream or lurking in a few FaceBook groups or special-interest forums to find this conversation. What you see there may be invaluable to the future of your product or your company as whole. You never know — or rather you will know, if you take the time to listen.