Why is that we don’t want to listen? In the modern rush for social media presence, organizations are not spending enough time listening. Instead they want to be heard. Even the search trends show it. The relative search volume for “social media marketing” is nearly 8 times larger than “social media monitoring”, and the gap is widening. Granted, true marketers know that the term “marketing” encompasses the environmental scan “listening” component, however let’s face it, most people don’t.
I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit lately. In my opinion, 75% of a social media engagement plan can very quickly be completed if an organization has done it’s due diligence in listening. The web is full of free monitoring tools. There are also plenty of great fee-based comprehensive monitoring solutions such as Radian 6.
Listening should not be a one-time practice either. It should be occurring around the clock. Don’t have the resources? Build it into existing job-descriptions, as I’m sure if you look at them as we often do, you’ll notice that plenty of items are out of date (e.g. cutting out newspaper clippings and putting them into a scrapbook…really?).
Does your organization have social media monitoring written into any job descriptions yet?
Awesome site you have here but I was curious if you knew of any user discussion forums that cover the same topics talked about here? I’d really love to be a part of group where I can get feedback from other experienced individuals that share the same interest. If you have any suggestions, please let me know. Thanks a lot!