Several keynotes and presentations at least week’s SNCR NewComm Forum, including more than four case study presenters, highlighted the importance of listening as a fundamental pre-cursor to social media success. Of course, listening makes sense because it allows you to understand your business community’s preferences and needs (image by sel). In many ways, this represents market research.
Many businesses are not used to listening. In a mass communications world, they’ve done most of the talking.
Yet new media presents a different set of rules. In social worlds, two-way communication is inherent allowing stakeholders to have equal footing with businesses and organizations. Failure to listen creates situations where stakeholders either act with anger, or simply turn deaf ears on the company.
Listening is not hard. It simply requires a biological sense of proportions: We all have two ears and one mouth. Something to consider.
Shel Israel took time at SNCR to discuss this important aspect of social media, including Dell’s example. Here is what he had to say:
Photo in movie was taken by Chris Heuer at SxSW
April 28th, 2008 at 2:11 am
Talking about listening is one thing. Remembering to do it is quite another. Good post.
April 28th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
From your post, “Many businesses are not used to listening.”
Very true!
April 28th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
We are so used to shouting out - even some of our terms, like “evangelist”, give you the impression that we’re all about preaching from our pulpits. Good post to keep the fundamental two-way conversation going - listening. We need to listen and not forget to act though. If we listen and just keep on keeping on, the chatter will stop on us and move on to our competition.
April 28th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
Zena, absolutely. Mihaela had a great post on listening not being enough today:
http://ci.cs.clemson.edu/mihaela/?p=45