I was thinking about what to write as my guest post for the THINKing blog. Since I write about social media specifically as it pertains to associations and non-profits, which seem to be (unnecessarily, but for obvious reasons), always trailing a bit behind the corporate world, I didn’t want to either be too specifically association-centered in this post or too “surface” or general for the audience of the THINking blog.

But I suddenly realized that that none of that really matters! Because it’s actually not about writing. The real lesson of social media is that it is teaching us – all of us – to LISTEN.

When I started my blog less than a year ago, I thought that it would be a way to get my thoughts about my industry (and its relationship to social media and innovation) on “paper”, that it would help me learn to write, that if I was lucky I’d get a few friends and colleagues commenting who would help me clarify my thoughts and deepen my understanding of whatever issues I was writing about. Which did happen, of course – but something far more interesting and far more meaningful happened at the same time. It opened a door to this whole new world where in order to participate fully, I had to listen and interact, not just talk! Listen by reading other’s blogs, by joining social networks where other bloggers were discussing similar things, by joining groups within groups, by reading what others shared or tagged, by subscribing to feeds on all sorts of relevant topics, by signing up to Twitter where the conversation is free flowing. Only once I started to really listen, did I see how to get real lasting value out of adding to the conversation.

All this listening can be intimidating, of course – I couldn’t do it all at once, I had to dip my toes in first, then the rest of me, little by little. Organizations need to find their own ways to do the same. We early adopters in the non-profit world like to argue about the how we get organizations to join the revolution. But really, it’s an internal, psychological shift that has to happen. Listening is something that historically and structurally organizations have never really known how to do!

But with the advent of everything 2.0 and the new power of the consumer to have a voice, companies began to be forced to listen, in a reactive fashion, because of customer complaints. New social technologies enabled people to complain about problems directly to the companies, and when they weren’t heard, between themselves about those companies, and then to anyone out there on the web. And for the first time, they began to really be heard. Because not only could they voice dissatisfaction, they could enable themselves to affect the future of a product, service or an entire company through joining forces with other customers who felt the same way. Companies started to take notice, to respond or change when pushed hard enough.

In the association/non-profit industry, (as elsewhere), organizations have structures in place that, as it turns out, are all about NOT listening. The Decision to Join was a massive study of over 16,000 individuals and why they choose to belong (or not) to associations. One of the study’s findings was that there is a huge disconnect between the perceptions of those at the top, about what matters to members about benefits and services, than those of the “rank-and-file” about what they think matters most to them. Which disproves the idea that the governance level people (the board and top level volunteer leadership) can represent the rest of the membership and act for them – maybe they don’t even know what the membership is really thinking. Sound familiar? We’re learning that we can’t truly know what our members / customers / audiences want – unless we ask, and unless we listen to what they tell us even when we don’t ask.

So, with the advent of the newly empowered “user” (apologies to Drew Olanoff), companies and associations have begun to realize that the world is shifting. We still market; we still advertise; we still brand; we still push our promotional messages; we still send communications out to existing audiences, target audiences and the world at large. But all of sudden, those audiences have the power to talk back – or to ACTIVELY IGNORE our messages by creating their own products (eg through open source technology), starting their own groups, finding the information they need elsewhere on the internet…

So organizations are realizing – some faster than others! – that they need to learn to listen, in order to participate, in order to reach those new and old audiences that may no longer feel the need to pay attention to their traditional push communications. They need to set up online alerts to get notified about what people are saying about them. They need to let go of the “myth of control“, and not be afraid of hearing negative things – which, on the whole, are much less frequent than they think. They need to start by listening.

There are different ways to listen. I found this on a site about learning disabilities (my formatting):

“It has been shown that people listen with a preferred listening approach:

Appreciative – listens in a relaxed manner, seeking enjoyment, entertainment, or inspiration.
Empathic – Listens without judging, is supportive of the speaker and learns from the experience of others.
Comprehensive – Listens to organize and make sense of information by understanding relationships among ideas.
Discerning – Listens to get complete information, understand the main message and determine important details.
Evaluative – Listens in order to make a decision based on information provided and may accept or reject message based on personal beliefs.

Most individual listen with more than one listening style. To be a good listener takes practice in becoming proficient in each style.

This refers to individuals, but organizations also need to learn how to listen in some of all of these ways, depending on the context. It’s not enough just to have the “technological translation tools” – technology will always move faster than any of us can really keep up! Many organizations get too worried about what platforms to use and what tools they need. Learning to listen is not about what tools you use to do it, it’s a change that has to happen from within in order to learn how to understand the language of this new world and stake your place in it.

Thanks for listening!

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Marketers know that social media is impacting their business, but no one knows exactly how much. In what ways is social media changing business, how is this new medium different, and can we measure it? Should we even try? In short, what is the worth of social media?

• Listening: Social media offers infinite market research, branding, and listening opportunities. I dare you to search for “[Your brand] sucks” and see what you find. Listening – a simple yet often over-looked aspect of human life – may be the Web 2.0 killer app and smart companies are catching on.

TNS/Cymfony found that “Revolutionaries” – companies that focused on listening rather than selling – “have a more sophisticated approach to creating strong relationships with consumers and as a result are gaining a competitive edge,” said Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer Jim Nail. (Bill Green at MakeTheLogoBigger has some more great insights.)

• Responding: Social media gives marketers the chance to give quick feedback and break down unnecessary walls. Businesses are using twitter to quickly solve customer’s problems or connect straight to the CEO (try @Zappos or @ComcastCares). I have also had success reaching VIPs through LinkedIn questions – it is amazing the number of higher-ups who gladly answer queries on the site.

So how does this change business?

First, it means that business success will increasingly be more merit-based rather than on spin or sheer advertising dollars. But marketers will also need to be ready to change their strategy to adapt to this new medium. This involves less top-down thinking and a different consideration of what makes a site profitable.

When I heard AOL had bought Bebo I cringed just thinking about the energetic startup in the clutches of a Web 1.0 holdover. From The Economist: “The non sequitur is to assume that the new service will be a revenue-generating business in its own right.” But the service could be amazingly valuable if marketers used it as a listening mechanism.

Second, expect customer behavior to change as social media changes from a destination to a platform. Marc Andreessen, one of the creators of Netscape and all-around Web wunderkind, said it best in an interview with ZDNet on April 25, 2008:

“It’s been this cliché in the industry that email is used by old people like you and me, and then instant messaging is used by kids. Well, it turns out instant messaging was used by kids 5 years ago…It turns out that kids – real kids – today are communicating primarily through social networks.”

Has your business changed its strategy because of this? ‘Nuff said.

The Gist

In most instances, when marketers talk about measurement or ROI of social media, they are trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. You can’t apply a Web 1.0 gestalt in a world where the audience cannot only respond, but can also generate more content than any single company.

Instead of measuring how well we are pushing our message onto potential customers, we should instead gauge our success on the number of conversations listened to, problems resolved, and useful suggestions received from the community of customers we already have.

One day, we may be able to get quantitative metrics on social media (the folks at Forrester Research are on the right path). While we have to settle for qualitative data right now, I believe that this will prove the best type of information in the end.

Ian Schafer, CEO of Deep Focus, said in AdWeek that “The other risk is that in the zeal to track, marketers and agencies will lose sight of the need to trust that getting closer to customers is a worthy goal in and of itself.”

Marketers seem obsessed with assigning value to interactions on social media sites. But real success comes when you value the interaction itself.

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Photo By shoshanah (Flickr)

Hey! Yes, you. Are you interested in writing a guest article for this blog? And why wouldn’t you be? THINKing has a worldwide Alexa ranking of 133,100 and a US rating of 33,108, so you have an opportunity to build your personal brand.

If interested, comment on this posting, letting me know what advertising, PR, marketing or social media topics you would like to address and what your premise is. I’ll get back to you on deadlines and such. Looking forward to hearing from you.

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