Listen Before You Speak
Monday, January 26, 2009
This morning I was reminded of this great quote from Helge Tennø, "Now marketers wouldn’t interrupt a phone call, but they try hard to interrupt social media – figure that one out?"
As companies have courageously stumbled into conversation platforms like Twitter and environments for networked relationships like Facebook, they have foolishly held on to their traditional mass-media methods of communication. Make noise. Get noticed. Distract. Interrupt. Even when companies attempt to engage in a more meaningful dialogue, they still end up initiating the conversation, and always forcing the conversation topic back to their product or service.
But, as any real live human being who's ever had a successful conversation with a group of strangers will tell you, it works much better when you listen before you speak.
Guess what? The internet has made it really really easy to listen to people!
Before you even set up a Twitter account, watch what people are saying about your company, product, or service on http://search.twitter.com. Also, watch what people are saying about your competitors. And most importantly, watch what people are saying about something that's personally important to them in their lives that is also important to your company (and the answer here has to be more important than your product!)
Before you reach out to bloggers, read their blogs. Search on http://blogsearch.google.com to see what people are already saying about you, your competition, and that big thing that's even more important to your consumers than your product.
Before you set up your Facebook page, search for other groups and pages that users have already set up for themselves. Be sure to search for groups and pages that are devoted to things that are bigger and more important to these users than your product, i.e. if your company sells hiking boots, don't just search for your brand name, search for groups devoted to hiking and camping.
Listen first. And when you start to have a good sense of what the people you want to talk to care about, then begin the conversation (and you better be ready to talk about something other than your product).
Every good conversation starts with good listening.
As companies have courageously stumbled into conversation platforms like Twitter and environments for networked relationships like Facebook, they have foolishly held on to their traditional mass-media methods of communication. Make noise. Get noticed. Distract. Interrupt. Even when companies attempt to engage in a more meaningful dialogue, they still end up initiating the conversation, and always forcing the conversation topic back to their product or service.
But, as any real live human being who's ever had a successful conversation with a group of strangers will tell you, it works much better when you listen before you speak.
Guess what? The internet has made it really really easy to listen to people!
Before you even set up a Twitter account, watch what people are saying about your company, product, or service on http://search.twitter.com. Also, watch what people are saying about your competitors. And most importantly, watch what people are saying about something that's personally important to them in their lives that is also important to your company (and the answer here has to be more important than your product!)
Before you reach out to bloggers, read their blogs. Search on http://blogsearch.google.com to see what people are already saying about you, your competition, and that big thing that's even more important to your consumers than your product.
Before you set up your Facebook page, search for other groups and pages that users have already set up for themselves. Be sure to search for groups and pages that are devoted to things that are bigger and more important to these users than your product, i.e. if your company sells hiking boots, don't just search for your brand name, search for groups devoted to hiking and camping.
Listen first. And when you start to have a good sense of what the people you want to talk to care about, then begin the conversation (and you better be ready to talk about something other than your product).
Every good conversation starts with good listening.
1 Comments:
Epictetus: We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.
Problem: marketing became talking, when it was always supposed to be listening.
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