Quality over quantity. @jasonbreed and I both agreed that the quality of the comments for each of @davidalston’s questions for this past Tuesdays #socialmedia Unpanel was amazing. The 187 attendees of this Unpanel clearly were thinking about the business of social media and the business of listening, not as lemmings, but as thought leaders in their own right. Here are some of the more choice comments starting with David’s first question of what was the cultural shift that needed to happen today in business in order to accommodate social media? A great question in its own right but in the context of listening, it was an appropriate jumping off point.
-Companies need to be willing to trade control for conversation.
-Usually for people to be on board, they need to 1st understand what “social media” encompasses. Before blasting this at corp culture.
-In large organizations, it takes a change management approach before social media programs can get off the ground.
-Companies need to make sure the right person behind the brand is responding.
-Employees like hiding behind their Brands. Because it allows them to not be accountable. Companies need to make individuals more accountable.
-Adopt a social media policy throughout the org., monitoring to identify who best person to respond should be within the org.
-Use these individuals for brand advocacy & outreach, the idea is to bring them to the fore front of the org.
-Advocate for making more people accessible rather than fewer. Gives customers better glimpse into brand’s personality. Show that there is a personality!
Clearly, communication, empowerment and dare we say, transparency, coupled with people and organizations capable of and not beiing afraid of “doing” were on everyone’s minds and were the nature of the tweets for the first question. It was interesting to see that everyone seemed to be headed down the same path but all with their own original thought.
The next question David asked concerned what companies should be listening for once they develop a listening culture? A great question and thus right out of the blocks we get the following:
- Listen for opportunity, failure, and ambassadors…
-Listening for brand conversations and the keywords that relate to their brand–that provide the opportunity to communicate.
-You should listen for competitive movements
-Everyone wants to “listen” for detractors i.e. Crisis Communications. How about competitor listening? Or listening for new recruits/champions.
-Showing that your company’s competitors are already using SM can be a pretty effective argument for it too!
-Listen to brand/co. mentions, industry trends/news – listen for opportunities!
-Competition mapping, consumer usage trends, brand sentiments around media releases.
-Expand your listening: listening for your product, the needs your product fulfills, or the end objective that those support…
-Listen for the unexpected
-With listenting, dont forget “The most important thing in Communication is hearing what isn’t said”
-And lastly..Listen so they don’t vote with their feet!
And finally question three; How do we create a listening grid so all parts of an enterprise are involved in listening & engaging?
-The grid needs a leader or point person for starters
-Once the ‘grid’ is set up, It offers opportunities for co-creation. Solving problems, rolling out new products, etc
-Sales, service, mktg, Product Dev, HR, etc all need listening Grids to start. They then move and evolve accordingly to their needs.
-The grid needs a tip that opens to a funnel. not efficient for all to listen to everything.
-Just avoid the trap of creating a new type of contact center(grid) staffed w/ powerless employees in dead-end jobs, who don’t care.
-Knowing what to listen for in your grid is critical, but also listening on behalf of your org. with its best interests at hand is critical.
-Developing grids need to retain distributive nature. Centralized control could be poison.
-Listening grid could go from front line > department or individual for actions or response to front line
Map the flow of information through your org, streamline it, rinse and repeat. Use #socialmedia to build user generated maps.
In summary, there was tremendous thought and participation on this topic; which just goes to show how important the subject is on every one’s minds. It’s really a credit to David Alston for raising the level of thought from the mundane echo to an actionable knowledge transfer. Big props from us David, big props.
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If you have followed us at all you will know that we are trying to get beyond the traditional social media speak of “The keys to social media, listen and be transparent….blah, blah, blah”. So when talking to the fine folks at 
It’s time for companies to begin to think differently, very differently about how they market to and interact with consumers, prospects, partners, shareholders and employees. Zealots and detractors alike are taking matters into their own hands on things they like and dislike about your company and your Brand. You can’t hide from your audience. Consumers have a louder voice, a much larger organizing hand and more access to their friends than you can imagine. 
