Listening: An Active Approach
Category: Blog - July 13, 2010
People are talking about your industry. People may be talking about your brand. Listening, whether for praise and complaints, competitor insight, brand opportunities or industry news, is powerful. It’s a critical starting point for companies ready to take ownership of their brand reputation online. Below is a step-by-step approach to listening and how it can propel your business forward.
1. Locate your target audience
When you want to find something, what do you do? Google it. Typing in a variety of keywords someone would search to find your business will show you who is talking and what they are talking about. It will reveal the competitors in your online industry and set you up to begin monitoring ongoing trends and changes.
2. Monitor
There are a variety of approaches to monitoring. More likely than not, there will be a few large industry communities that you want to follow, a group of influential people on Twitter, several blogs and a variety of other sources. Reading each of these every day provides a well-rounded perspective on what is happening in your industry space online. It can also provide you with an inside look about what is important to your customer-base.
3. Track Insights
Compile insight lists, valuable comments and trending topics people are consistently mentioning. Start thinking about your business and how it differs or matches what is being said. This is when strategy naturally begins to reveal itself.
4. Benchmark Your Business
A share-of-voice and an industry content analysis are critical to a listening strategy. Online communities, no matter what industry you are in, are about engagement. Knowing whom you are up against and what they are doing strategically will set you up to differentiate your strategy and get you poised to engage.
5. Match Ongoing Insights to Business Objectives
Listening requires a lot of work but the results are well worth it. More often than not, in our experience, our pre-listening expectations were far different than our ultimate insight. Building a strategy based on listening to your customers and competitors will give you an entirely new look on your industry and set you up to be an online industry leader.
Next up: Finding where your energy should be focused and what your focus should be based upon listening.
Social Media Coordinator
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