”Stop! Collaborate and LISTEN!” Let’s apply Vanilla Ice’s song lyric to social media. Your customers are talking, are you listening? Whether it be around your product specifically, your competitor, or the industry as a whole, people are engaging in conversations online through blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, forums, product reviews, etc. as an outlet to recommend, complain about and share their brand experiences.

You have probably heard the term “listening” before in relation to social media, but have wondered what it actually  means and how one can possibly manage all the online clutter. Listening is really an extension of research and assists in gaining a deeper understanding of your target market, their concerns, feedback and your true brand or product perception. Most importantly listening is really about zoning in to identify keywords, trends, influencers, sentiment, your competitor’s activity, and your brand presence.

Thanks to effective online tools like Radian6 that simplify the aggregation, metrics and organization of conversations, listening is becoming a realistic process to effectively manage. Although tools like Radian6 are great at making the listening process simpler, nothing can replace the importance of manual inspection by a team for analyzing the data, digesting the sentiment and recommending strategic opportunities for branding, campaigns, messaging, etc. in order to achieve the client’s business goals and objectives. If done successfully, a new global perspective can be gained around one’s brand and leveraged in the strategic marketing communication.

At Rhythm Interactive, we have made listening a key component to our social media process.  Our clients have seen the benefits of listening, even if they are not ready to engage with social media directly. Once the listening analysis and results from various social media channels have been presented, clients gain a new outlook on their marketplace and are impressed to see the intelligent insights gathered from online conversations. It is not uncommon for companies to discover that their target market is a completely different segment than they had originally focused on.  This research allows companies to reposition their brand and recalculate their efforts to execute a more refined strategy to reach their business goals and objectives. The ability to listen increases the potential for companies to focus on what messages and levels of engagement will be most effective for their audience.

Here are a few questions to keep in mind while listening on behalf of your company or brand:

• Which social media channels host the majority of conversations regarding your industry, products or services?

• When are the conversations occurring? It is after a product launch, an industry event, or after experiencing your brand first hand?

• What are people talking about and who are the influencers?  Are they bloggers, media, or consumers?

• How would you categorize the topics of conversation and what is the overall sentiment: good, potentially good, neutral, potentially negative, or negative?

Of course all conversations related to your product/service, competitors and industry are important but determining where to allocate the most attention is key. It is important to note that it is not only significant to lead with listening, but to continually monitor the chatter so that you can alter and enhance your approach along the way.