Listen Up

I spend a lot of time with clients talking about how their brand can best engage in a dialogue with their customers on a day to day basis. Of course the way we 'do' marketing has changed; data changed it.

The availability of information and how that information spreads creates speed on one hand; bad customer service can be shared quickly with the use of twitter and the like. But also that data also demands that we listen to what our customers are saying and react to it. If I am sitting in an airport and I get pissed off with the flight delay, the lack of information or that they dont even give us a glass of water I expect an apology and some miles within an hour of my tweet. When they do I get excited and it somehow feels ok that i am inconvienienced....at least they care
All the clients I work with understand that marketing is less archery and more ping-pong and so they are embarking on getting a 'listening tool'. You have to get a listening tool, right? And social is big...and confusing! So it just feels neglegent these days if you haven't signed up for one



Working with a number of clients and seeing all the major playors up close this is what i've learnt: maybe if you think i missed something or completely misunderstood the point maybe i'll learn something too! Feel free @arvindzz....

- What's the point? Do any of our consumers really care about our brand enough to say anything? Maybe you should get a free trial for a month, choose some keywords and get them to provide some insights. Yes, insights - not a canned report

- Secondly I love infographics. if you read this regularly you know that i a sucker for a cool chart. However I personally think we can't be seduced on charts alone. A pig is still a pig no matter if it shops at Sephora. Any thing that doesn't make it easier to understand than the information being in a table is more problematic than helpful. Always ask yourself 'how am I going to act on this information?'

- Thirdly (yeah yeah ok, perhaps it should have been first) - what are you trying to achieve? I think that competitive analysis is different from monitoring ongoing to help develop conversations with your customers. Also if you want insights, make sure you get them...see above

- What do you need? The world of the internet is flat...so even two people in their garage are global. But filtering and languages are always a minefield.... Then their are demographics and sentiment. Is that sentiment done automatically or by human intervention. This drives the cost

- Oh and talking about cost how do you compare apples with apples? A license? A cost per keyword? A cost per campaign or by the volume of mentions? How much is charged for insights?

My big caveat here is that the whole area of social listening is young and undeveloped...but important. So this is merely my opinion - I am sure that this post doesn't go deep enough any of these considerations...how real time is it etc? All of these things are crucial when selecting a partner, however these are my headlines to get started