Active listening and the resulting, informed engagement plants the seeds that flourish into meaningful conversations and relationships. Implementing engagement guidelines and best practices for personal and professional "brands" before and after any official social media program is introduced is a prerequisite for every business–that's the bottom line. But how do we know where to engage once these guidelines and directives are in place?
After all, we reviewed so many examples and will discuss many more over time, but how do we know what's right for us? Could practicing social media really be as easy as following the conversational template that seems so pervasive in marketing, communications, and customer service landscapes today?
While the tools businesses use may appear to weave a common thread, their implementation and, in turn, their usage are anything but ordinary.
Every company is responsible for charting its own course in the interactive Web and as such, each brand creates its own social DNA that's distinctive in personality and uniquely reflected in the conversations and people who define and populate our online and offline landscapes.
The process of charting engagement strategies and routing our navigation and bearing ensures that we stay on course now and in the time to come.
Be careful. You just might reinvent the wheel.
The wheel, after all, is an almost perfect example for reducing friction while we progress, but to reinvent it is to go over ground that has been thoroughly explored. However, the phrase itself is flawed. Many aspects of business require reinvention. Evolution is only as strong as its base. Let's take customer service as an example.
For many years, businesses sought to reduce costs at the expense of customers by outsourcing support services to either domestic agencies or offshore organizations. Businesses also introduced automated front–ends to call centers, to practically eliminate any level of human or official employee interaction. While companies saved money, they intentionally created chasms between brand and consumer, diminishing opportunities for advocacy and referrals. Increasing profitability is smart business, but at some point "smart" decisions did not take into consideration the value of customers and the power of word of mouth. Offshoring a critical business function that reduces negativity in company or product experiences and/or solves problems is both a function of service and also one of strategic marketing. Placing this function in the hands of teams who may or may not understand the dynamics of the business environment and the true pains and challenges of customers can engender animosity rather than instill happiness and satisfaction. It's nearly impossible to serve as a brand evangelist or champion if you're not vested nor rewarded to do so. Customers can sense whether a representative is speaking from experience or reading from a script.
In 2008, the Wall Street Journal published a research survey authored by Jonathan Whitaker, assistant professor of management at the University of Richmond's Robins School of Business; M. S. Krish–nan, professor of business information technology at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business; and Claes Fornell, a professor of marketing at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business.[61] The study analyzed offshoring and outsourcing activities of 150 North American companies and business units from 1998 and 2006. The results were not a surprise. According to the findings, outsourcing support and service caused a significantly negative impact on customer satisfaction. And, when customer satisfaction degrades, it carries with it a financial impact that can affect sales and/or share value.
Whether intentional or not, poor customer service can also affect the psychological experience of customers, introducing feelings of insignificance and a sense of being unappreciated. We've heard it many times, yet we are now just starting to acknowledge and respect its meaning and implications: "A happy customer tells several friends and an unhappy customer tells many more."
The democratization of content publishing has only made this aphorism more applicable.
Psychological research indicates that positive reinforcement is most effective when introduced immediately after a negative experience, to affect conditioning.[62]
Bruce L. Katcher, Ph.D.,[63] an industrial/organizational psychologist with more than twenty years experience in conducting customized employee opinion and customer satisfaction surveys for organizations, observed that the average business never hears from 96 percent of unhappy customers. And, for every complaint received, there are 26 customers with problems, 6 of which are considered serious. An average customer with a problem tells 9 to 10 other people, and 13 percent tell 20 or more.[64]
If we don't know that we're missing these opportunities, then we set the stage for a dramatic showdown that will almost always play out on a public stage.
Time to reinvent the wheel? Reinvention is already underway and it is driven by consumers offering and seeking answers, insight, and direction online, right now.
It's time for companies to reassess current practices and processes to proactively find and address issues with a human and empathetic voice. The role of engagement belongs with those who can effectively and genuinely represent the brand, its intentions, promise, and persona, in a social ecosystem.
Before we are marketers, communicators, service agents, product architects, and human relations advisors, we are consumers. We purchase products. We share our experiences. We recommend and also complain about brands practically every day. Yet when we approach consumers as a company representative, we tend to forget the dynamics of relationship building and consumer behavior. We stop thinking like consumers and start acting like employees.
In the interactive Web, people aren't lured into relationships simply because you cast the bait to reel them into a conversation.
Sincerity extends beyond the mere act of creating a profile on Twitter or forming a fan page on Facebook or a group in LinkedIn. Transparency carries a dual definition, see–through and genuine, with each separated by intent and action. Relationships are measured by the values, actions, and sentiments that others take away from each conversation. To talk "at" or respond automatically without merit, intelligence, or quality is to grossly underestimate the people you're hoping to befriend and influence. It's the difference between a community and a halfway house; one will flourish, while the other will shelter transients, never growing into a thriving citizenry.
Identifying connected communities and observing the themes and culture of each provides entrée into the personification necessary to foster a genuine and equal ecosystem for dialogue.
It's about bringing information and solutions to people where they congregate before attempting to host their attention on our terms.
The art of conversations is mastered through the practice of both hearing and listening.
Identify opportunities to engage, but more importantly, experience the nature, dynamic, ambience, and emotion of the dialogue in order to sincerely and intelligently empathize and converse as a peer. Customers have been neglected long enough, don't you think?
Navigation is only as effective as the map we use to plot our course. As social media represented an uncharted world, the industry required a social cartographer in order to safely navigate its passages and accurately map the thousands of online continents, countries, and islands, and the rivers and oceans in between.
The map, as we would soon learn, exposed a vibrant and expansive new world that would only continue to magnify and improve with every new discovery.
In 2007, I initially sketched a proposed map for the social landscape that would later see a formal introduction, two iterative releases, and millions of views and downloads. It wouldn't have its official inauguration until mid–2008, and would never have earned intellectual consideration if it weren't for the design prowess of Jesse Thomas of JESS3.
We titled this cartographic visualization as "The Conversation Prism"–see www.theconversationprism.com. Version 1 of the social map officially debuted in August 2008 and provided the first comprehensive and structured view of the Social Web and the networks and communities that defined it at the time (see Figure 18.1).
What it also offered initially, besides an organized view of the new Web, was to demonstrate the sheer volume and magnitude of the Social Web's potential, activity, required commitment, and overall reach.
Source: Brian Solis and JESS3.
In the processing of mapping and arranging "the conversation," I recognized that the act of categorizing social networks within a visually rich graphic would be temporary at best, demanding endless iterations in order to accurately document evolving and shifting online conversations as well as the communities that promote them.
In the two years since its official introduction, the speed by which the landscape evolved only hastened and therefore required active cartography in order to maintain relevance and structural integrity.
The goal was to observe, analyze, dissect, and present the dynamics of conversations, how and where they transpired. It was driven by necessity, based on my work with many emerging and established brands looking to engage or already participating in the Social Web. The companies I would counsel required tangible evidence to support the notions that online conversations and communities were thriving in less popular, but still relevant networks other than Facebook and Twitter. And, in many cases, after initial research, we would prove that the activity in these newly recognized networks would validate instinct and demonstrate volumes and velocity that far outperformed those of the mainstream networks originally targeted.
The social map presented an organized view of social networks and communities categorized by subject, intent, and capabilities. Like the social networks that were forcing revisions of the Conversation Prism with every merger, introduction, or disappearances, top–level classifications for sorting them also continually transformed. The prevailing methodology and framework for cataloging social properties was most effective when condensed and simplified:
Social bookmarks: Sites and communities dedicated to allowing users to share, organize, and search relevant content from around the Web in one place.
Comment and reputation: Networks and platforms that centralize the ability to assemble a view of an individual based on the conversational interaction in the Social Web (comments, ratings, etc.).
Wisdom of the crowds: Participatory sites that benefit from the crowd–sourcing of content and intellect and in turn offer an aggregated, community–edited, and systematic index of relevant content.
Crowd–sourced news and content: Networks that feature content and stories submitted by users, which are then open to voting and commenting.
Collaboration: Networks and application platforms where invited or general visitors can collaborate on any given document or project.
Blog platforms: Platforms that host the blogs or provide blog software for the creation and hosting of fully customized blogs elsewhere.
Blogs and conversations: Search engines and networks that reveal activities occurring within the blogosphere.
Blog communities: Communities dedicated to featuring blog content, conversations around blogs, and organizing blogs within an organized network/channel.
Micromedia: Online communities that focus on brevity and short updates, including text, video, and audio.
DIY and customer social networks: White label social network platforms that allow users to build their own custom, dedicated social network for hosting within a fixed community or on any website of their choosing.
Activity streams: Networks that channel social objects and updates from around the Web into one personalized stream.
Mobile devices: Services, social networks, and communities that connect people, things, and content through mobile devices.
Virtual worlds: Online communities where users create avatars, virtual representations of themselves or favorite characters, and interact with one another within the constructs and missions of dedicated worlds.
Forums/groups: Message boards, groups, and discussion forums dedicated to topics, themes, projects, and purposes–this category represents sites and networks that are among the earliest examples of socialized media that are still pervasive today.
Attention dashboards: Desktop and mobile clients used to stay connected to those who define the social graph.
Social networks: Networks that house our social graph and facilitate the ability to interact, share, respond, publish objects, and post updates in and around the activity of our contacts.
Nicheworks: Social networks specifically dedicated to topics, activities, targets, and intention.
Reviews and ratings: Sites that feature user–generated feedback, analysis, and experiences with products, brands, and services.
Location: Social networks and communities that combine updates and posts while revolving around the physical location of the user and their contacts.
Video: Sites that feature user–generated videos and host corresponding activity such as comments, ratings, and also the external embedding of videos in outside networks.
Customer service: Communities that host user–generated or brand–hosted interactions that detail the experiences, challenges, problems, and recommendations for the improvement of products and services.
Content and documents: Social networks that host interaction, embedding, as well as the connections between people and relevant content, such as docs, spreadsheets, and presentations that span a wide variety of subject matter.
Events: Sites that feature events as the central point of conversations and activity.
Music: Communities tethered by music and music–related dialogue and networking.
Wiki: Hosted and white label wiki platforms for joining existing dialogue or creating new frameworks for collaborating on specific projects.
Livecasting: Online networks that offer the ability to stream audio or video in real–time and host corresponding conversations and interaction during the broadcast.
Pictures: Social networks where activity revolves around pictures as the social object.
Questions and answers: Also fusing Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 sites, Q&A networks provide forums for asking and answering questions related to popular topics and companies, as well as highly specific subject matter.
Using the Conversation Prism as our starting point for either venturing into the Social Web for the first time or changing our current course, we can effectively identify and assemble the coordinates necessary to create an accurate social map that's specific to our journey and destinations.
The Conversation Prism is not the only means to discover the social networks and critical conversations that are relevant to defining and positioning the sentiments, perceptions, and resonance of the brand in the Social Web. It is the cornerstone of the bigger discussion as to where, why, and how to engage. The purpose of the prism is to inspire action and research that leads to earned relevance.
The impetus behind the prism was derived from a consistent observation of top–down methodologies and practices of brands, professional and personal, employed to create a visibility on the Social Web. Simply stated, brands focused on building presences in the most popular communities without regard to relevance nor to how they would attract attention. Ultimately, it is the interactions with people within each network that will determine the success of the ensuing dialogues.
The Conversation Prism also introduced lessons much more profound than simply listening to conversations in social networks to document activity.
It suggested a reversal in the traditional top–down approach to publishing and distributing content and associated activities, instead inspiring a bottom–up strategy that promoted social research, mapping, and ethnography (the study and systematic recording of human cultures).[65]
For those so inclined, aware, and prepared, the process of listening encouraged and detailed in these pages also offers a window into the cultures and relative behaviors of the communities you're researching and observing.
This sociological fieldwork is not only obligatory, it changes everything. At a minimum, it provides the insight necessary to develop an enlightened and culturally aware social media program that sets the stage to potentially humanize the brand, foster relationships, engender emissaries to carry goodwill, and inspire action across the Social Web.
The Conversation Prism is a reference tool for marketing, communications, and service–focused organizations to start listening to the voices that define and steer your markets. Unlike a map for all things Web 2.0, it features only the networks where conversations occur.
Tools and networks will come and go. Popularity will shift across existing networks, up–and–coming social sites, and not–yet–introduced websites. If you're not everywhere, then you're addressing onlyasmall portion of a highly vocal contingent that may or may not reflect the perspective of your larger community. And there are important conversations taking place without you right now.
The risk and reality is that your customers and influential trendsetters could be misinterpreting your value proposition without dispute. Concurrently, they're also subject to the influences of your direct and indirect competitors.
Listening, learning, and participating in a measurable and effective social program require you to look beyond the usual suspects. This is one of the reasons why being proactive and not necessarily driven by the corporate case study du jour can help you innovate and excel. Not doing so handicaps the overall reach and effectiveness of your marketing, communications, and service strategies.
In the current stage of social media, online conversations, along with real–world activity, cannot be ignored. Identifying these discussions is only the first step, however. It takes much more than simply running Yahoo! or Google searches, setting up Google Alerts, monitoring Twitter, or limiting your results to any one listening service to unearth relevant dialogue. Casting a wide net in order to identify where your communities are thriving is the only way to truly identify which networks are important to your brand and business. It requires a manual approach, which can later be automated–mostly. And, once you understand where these conversations are transpiring, you can observe the cultures, climate, and basis for the dialogue and activity to create an intelligent participation strategy while also defining and justifying the participation of affected divisions throughout the organization.
Champions are defined not only by their enthusiasm; they are memorialized by their ability to always go above and beyond the call of duty. But, as in anything we attempt in life and work, everything begins at the beginning.
Use the Conversation Prism as a perennial resource. It answers the very questions we wish to ask of others. With this as a guide, we're empowered with the tools, methodologies, and strategies that allow us to become the experts we sought to consult.
Here's a secret–although after I reveal it, you'll realize that it's not really a secret after all–yet nevertheless, it's something that is oft–overlooked and definitely underutilized. Every network contained within offers a search box, and those results are frequently absent from the monitoring services to which we subscribe and upon which we base much of our activity.
If you don't already have it, now's the time to create or access the list of keywords that are pivotal to your organization. This list should include brand, products, industry lingo and buzzwords, names of competitors and competitive products, and any subtle nuances specific to your world that we may miss here. But also, just for laughs (and for creating a sense of urgency), maintain a separate list of results for keywords associated with "name+sucks," or variations with the word "hate" in it. To expedite the process, try using Boolean search techniques that include:
NOT: Brand X NOT Brand Y
AND: Keyword X AND Keyword Y
OR: Keyword X OR Keyword Y
Many database searches are based on the principles of Boolean logic, named in honor of the British–born mathematician George Boole, it refers to the logical relationship among search terms.[66]
We'll review the results and how to package them specifically for usage by you and your team in just a few pages, but allow me to pave the way a bit here.
In order to make the case for direction, focus, and applied resources, we are required to document important and relevant discussions by each network to form the foundation for what will ultimately serve as our brand–specific social map. A social map condenses the vastness of social networks presented in the Conversation Prism to visually communicate definitive communities where important dialogue is materializing as chronicled by your research and observation. Suddenly, the social world becomes a much smaller place and a case can be made for how and where to focus.
In the social economy and the imminent attention economy, relationships and influence are the new currencies.
Conversations are increasingly distributed. This social distribution fragments our ability to connect with masses, but promotes a one–to–one approach that yields a one–to–many upside through the influence of social beacons.
Many companies who are actively engaging now are not actually reaching those social beacons through calculation and premeditation. They're either broadcasting to anyone or they're interacting with everyone. Reaching influential voices in social networks carries the ability to scale and extend your story across a multitude of social graphs.
The Conversation Prism offers instruction that details the initial steps to proactively survey the entire social landscape and pinpoint relevant dialogue, prioritize participation strategies and direction, garner sentiment and feedback, and document activity, volume, pitfalls, and also opportunities. The results populate a social map, yes, but also unearth a tremendous amount of answers to the questions you already had and didn't even know how to ask. Fundamentally, you're also able to design a detailed and precise conversational program as dictated by the words and actions of the people with whom we're trying to reach and connect. And, once we understand the implications and extent of activity and hotspots, we also can design an engagement hierarchy and organization chart that matches resources with current activity. This process offers initial insight to the manpower and corresponding budget required to participate at varying levels.
At the center of the Conversation Prism, we visually document the conversational workflow to which we refer in the previous section in a hub–and–spoke model that garners insight and gleans value for the umbrella brand as well as the individual business units as it turns.
The designation and rotation of the concentric circles within the Conversation Prism assist in the conceptualization of the systematic processes and prompt the value–added engagement that rhythmically beats a drum for listening, publishing, and participation.
To understand how to listen and accumulate value by using the Conversation Prism, let's dissect the meaning of each ring.
As a brand manager, you'll find yourself at the center of the prism–whether you're observing, listening, or participating.
Halo 1: The System
The next layer of circles is supported by the activities of learning and organizing engagement strategies.
Observation: Discovering the communities that are actively discussing your brand by using the search box within suspect and targeted social networks and communities.
Listening: Hearing the people, assessing volume, and documenting the underlying sentiment in order to accurately craft response and participation programs, by assigned company representatives with each community.
Identification: Recognizing and acknowledging the social beacons to potentially enlist as brand ambassadors, as well as the consumers who simply need a response or your attention.
Internalization: Not every bit of feedback will be beneficial to your organization, but you will recognize patterns or spots of brilliance that provide necessary insight to improve existing products and services over time. Remember that actions speak louder than words or intentions.
Prioritization: Assess and structure where and how your team should focus, who should respond, and how. Ensure that a conversation management system is in place, as it's easy to lose track of who responded to which person if documentation that captures and shares status, required follow–up, or results is decentralized or nonexistent.
Routing: Serving as an extension to number 5, a system must be in place whereby delegates are assigned by topic and expertise and accountable for engaging, documenting the interaction, and communicating the outcome, conclusions, and any valuable wisdom or recommendations to consider. We'll review the lessons shared here and also in number 5 in the Chapter 23 discussion on social CRM, or sCRM.
Halo 2: The Workforce
Social media represents the intersection of all departments that interface with the public and requires that each define a supporting infrastructure that employs a socialized series of guidelines, assigned players, and response and management strategies. Inward focus now must include outward contribution. Ideally, each organization will appoint a community or listening manager to monitor and also assign and manage the responses of each department. Over time, this process will be seamlessly integrated within the company's CRM infrastructure and, where applicable, will help establish an SRM (social relationship management) system for those departments not yet acclimated to social media and the technologies that support its scale and efficiency.
It's easy to see how this could quickly become overwhelming and unmanageable. One of the most fascinating aspects of listening, however, is that conversations and activities always map to specific disciplines within the organization and therefore authorities should be appointed within each organization to provide a competent and helpful response or to steer conversations as necessary or defined. These divisions usually include:
Customer or product support
Product and sales
Marketing/PR
Community
Corporate communications
Crisis
Support
Halo 3: Actualization
The outer ring completes the imagery of conversational workflow, but not the cycle itself. It is the representation of lessons we're learning through listening and participation that shape our future, from engagement to introspection to evolution. The process is powered by the continual rotation of listening, responding, and edification online and in the real world.
Ongoing feedback and insight: This is a necessary ingredient to build in portraying a socially aware and trusted brand. We must learn and demonstrate growth based on the feedback we receive. We must also continually share knowledge, provide resources, and communicate vision to earn trust, authority, and respect.
Participation: It's been said that participation is the new marketing. Perhaps it's better said that participation is a great well of knowledge that leads to more effective marketing and communications. The things we learn online practically serve as a free focus group and mechanism for embracing humility to genuinely inspire us to humanize our story. It's how we learn and improve.
Online: Effectively building online relations and relationships increases brand visibility and strengthens brand value within social networks. Embracing and empowering the community carries our brand personality across social graphs. Our engagement defines our status, stature, and capital within each network.
Real world (or IRL, in real life): The true metric for relationships is how well they carry from the Web to the real world. It's not about reaching customers using the latest shiny new object or jumping into the hottest new networks. It's about reaching stakeholders and influencers where they go to discover and share information and interact in ways that build meaningful relationships that have meaning and worth, both online and offline.
This social map demonstrates the scope of missed opportunities to the team and decision makers and also unveils new possibilities.
While we can't control how our messages are internalized, we can surely shape perception at the point of discourse.
Remember, it's not what you say about your brand that reverberates and resonates as much as it is what your audience hears, how they share the story, and how you weave that insight into future conversations.
The Conversation Prism is a representation of social media and will evolve as services and conversation channels emerge, fuse, and dissipate.
In the social economy, relationships are the new currency, and in Socialized Media, you will earn the relationships you deserve, in the individual communities where stakeholders and influencers assemble.
Transform the Conversation Prism into a brand prism specific to you.
It's our job to identify the communities where our customers, peers, and influencers communicate with each other in a way that's transparent and frictionless. It's how we build relationships and how we establish our personal and corporate social capital while simultaneously increasing intellectual equity.
Social networks are magnets for marketers, but the people who define each online community are increasingly savvy about and leery of hollow attempts at connecting as a means to create or extend a channel for broadcasting messages in a one–to–many hyperbole assault.
True social marketing is not marketing at all. The new era of communications necessitates personalization through a genuine and humanized approach. It fuses marketing, service, sociology, psychology, creativity, soft–selling, and a dedicated practice of transparent relationship management. Human nature and the desire to connect, interact, and elevate is perpetual. It's our job to determine our role within the ecosystem.
Before a company can collaborate with its extended community, businesses must first learn to collaborate internally. The greatest social network is the one that perpetuates and exemplifies the values, expertise, and capabilities of the organization.
We must operate as one or risk the appearance of operating alone.
Step 1. Listening
The first step is to "listen," by searching keywords that populate and bind our marketplace and performing an initial audit within a given time frame. By assessing the volume, frequency, and tone of conversations throughout each network, we can establish the Conversation Index (CI), a benchmark to assess the state of our brand in the Social Web and also serve as a metric by which to compare our future activity to past presence and brand perception.
Establish a Time Line
We cannot measure what we do not know. We need a baseline that extends across the Social Web. This process begins with a social audit that reveals activity and the state of our brand and competition within each network. I recommend researching keywords, at least initially, for a fixed period of time, usually spanning 30 days. For example, begin and end the audit using the previous month or a month that was uneventful as the research window. In months where a noteworthy or significant milestone occurred–for example, a product release, earnings report, or a shift in executive management–the results may offer a false impression of an increase in activity.
Determine the Keywords
Prior to listening, formalize the initial keyword list for which to research. While it's important to create a comprehensive list, it's critical that we limit the short list to only a handful of terms in order to provide a top–level, organized review and analysis.
The Conversation Index is measured first for a baseline and then at regular intervals to draw comparisons and insight. The CI is also helpful to capture sentiment, reactions, visibility, action, and feedback surrounding specific events, leading up to, during, and following the landmark.
Step 2. Documentation
Documenting the activity that you uncover is critical to establishing the Conversation Index. It is how you capture it for analysis and presentation that later determines relevance, direction, and strategy.
Many existing listening tools, such as BuzzGain, PeopleBrowsr, PR Newswire's Social Dashboard, Radian6, and so forth, offer a report template that captures activity and packages it in an easy–to–read format for analysis and presentation. I recommend that when you're initially listening to the Social Web, especially if you're following the principles and methodologies that define the Conversation Prism, that you do so manually.
It's time consuming.
It's potentially tedious.
Some of this research can be automated through other tools.
These points may be valid. However, the time and energy you save is directly linked to a loss of perspective, insight, and perception. The process of establishing the Conversation Index serves two purposes: documentation of activity and also the ability to garner empathy. No tool has proved that it can capture everything. In fact, in many cases, tools can miss a significant portion of result–altering data. And as you manually digest the updates you're recording, you can't help but sense the underlying meanings in what you're reading. When we discuss the need to humanize our brand, we do so through an earned sense of compassion, concern, and caring.
As listening produces results that are unique to each brand, this template provides a framework for you to further customize.
Use a spreadsheet that includes our criteria in order to effectively capture and export our findings into reports, charts, and presentations. Assuming that we run a search over a 30–day period, the elements necessary to define, identify, and capture the Conversation Index includes, at a minimum, the following columns:
- Network:
The social network where the conversation occurred.
- Instance:
The specific mention of the keyword and the supporting context.
- Date:
The specific date of the mention.
- Sentiment:
Hand–curated sentiment to assess whether the instance was negative, positive, or neutral.
- Response candidacy:
The assessment of whether or not the captured update required a response from a company representative and, if so, an additional column that suggests the division most appropriate for responding. In my research, I've noted that usually conversations can be handed over to PR, service, product development, marketing, and HR.
- Reach:
Depending on the network, this input varies. Reach refers to the potential degree an update can range. For example, if the incident was on Twitter, document the number of followers that particular individual is connected with. If the mention is in a blog post or blog comment, note how many visitors the particular destination receives on any given day (determined by Alexa or Compete.com). While it's not intended to provide a total representation of influence, authority, or definite impressions, this information does give us a sense of scope, scale, and potential impact.
- Competitive mentions:
While it's time consuming to research this activity on behalf of your brand, it may be unrealistic to do so when measuring the volume of your competitors. Simply running through each network and documenting total numbers of mentions may suffice in order to establish a sense of the general share of voice between your company and its competition in the Social Web.
Step 3. Presentation
When documenting the results during the listening exercise, it's absolutely critical to capture persuasive and credible criteria in a way that's presentable and incontestable to decision makers. Exporting the numbers that dictate key findings as visual charts will establish a compelling case and benchmark for further endeavors into socialized engagement, as well as the ability to reference past status.
Packaging counts for everything as it visually demonstrates all that we've speculated and theorized. We either make or break our case with the information we've collected and the method for communicating our findings. Fundamentally, we must create a document or presentation that visualizes what we know and what decision makers and affected groups and individuals need to know. Ten categories to consider are:
Timeframe.
Volume: Total number of "conversations" captured.
Active Networks: Organize the most active networks of relevance based on quantity of collective activity, justified by numbers, sorted by activity (for example, Facebook 10 percent, Twitter 30 percent, Blogs/Blog Comments 30 percent, Forums/Groups 10 percent, YouTube 5 percent, Flickr 5 percent, Digg 5 percent, Delicious 5 percent).
Sentiments: For example: 25 percent positive, 25 percent negative, 50 percent neutral. Provide examples of sentiment in cases of positive and negative.
Perception: Provide a general summary of how a brand is perceived through text or graph and share a few examples of each to hammer the point home.
Reach: Total potential impressions (however, this is not representative of a true audience).
Network reach: Potential reach by network (for example, Facebook reach = 125,000, Twitter = 175,000, Blogs = 250,000, YouTube views = 75,000, Flickr views = 5,000).
Responses required: Quantity of missed opportunities for responses.
Affected divisions: Divisions tagged to respond based on missed opportunities (for example, Customer Service 35 per–cent, PR 20 percent, Marketing 15 percent, Product 15 percent, HR 5 percent, Sales 10 percent).
Share of voice: The share of conversations between your brand compared to that of your competition as established by the total quantity of mentions as well as the number of mentions by individual social network.
For extra credit, as you're reading through the instances that you're collecting, record trends that emerge and reappear related to potential topics, themes, areas for improvement, common questions, recommendations, and so forth. Provide these themes in an aggregate format that can be presented as a list or pie chart. For example, in the past 30 days we observed the following themes: new product, 20 percent; earnings, 25 percent; comparison to competitive product, 15 percent; questions about the future, 10 percent; missed opportunities, 10 percent; requests for response in social networks, 20 percent. We can also analyze data to anticipate trends and possible scenarios over the next 30, 60, or 90 days.
Among the potential trends we're observing, we're also subject to, and privy to, honest feedback and product/brand experiences that will reveal a sampling of consumer satisfaction and recommendations. The data that you will possess will serve as a leading indicator as to market position and will also divulge potential ideas and supporting rationale for improving or developing new products and services.
Monitoring reveals the Conversation Index, the state of conversations and the networks and people fueling the activity. This process also reveals potential calls to action that can be presented to demonstrate tangible next steps. Essentially all of the answers you need are contained within this research:
Conversation state
Active networks
Brand awareness and resonance
Business divisions and required resources
Potential reach
Framework for social media plan
Rough estimates of required resources and costs
Innovation
It is imperative that we fold in a response mechanism to our social network programs while moving forward. Monitoring offers intelligence. Activity, action, and response steer perspective and encourage a sense of community and advocacy.
Step 4. Observation
Communities support each other. Citizens actively help others make decisions, offer suggestions and referrals, proactively share negative experiences, and repeatedly ask questions–with or without our participation.
As we are quickly learning, "management" and "relationships" are as distant from each other as their intentions.
Either way, we are missing opportunities right now.
Once our target networks are identified and our Conversation Index is documented, we must observe the conversational ecosystem within each network to understand the corresponding culture and behavioral dynamics. We may have the answers now, but the disconnect between execution and collaboration is represented by the cultures, behavior, and personalities that define the communities in which we will attempt to participate. And, they're different within each network.
We need to ask and answer several new questions. For example, How are people communicating within network A versus network B? How are subgroups interacting within each network? What does the back channel look like? Who are the power users within our segment and are they connected to each other, and if so, how? Are people publishing, responding, asking and answering questions? How are other brands interacting with their stakeholders and prospects, and how is the community responding?
This information can be captured by employing ethnography, a branch of anthropology that studies and describes modern human cultures (rather than human behavior or physical attributes).[67] The goal of ethnography is to provide cultural interpretation to define "webs of meaning," the cultural constructions of our communities of interest.[68] Through case reports or field studies, our role as pseudo ethnographers is to capture and communicate the definition and in–terworking of cultures through an emic[69] perspective, which we can refer to as an insider's point of view. It is this perspective that is missing from our listening and monitoring analysis and will serve us invaluably as we forge our engagement strategies and tactics.
As ethnography captures data that defines cultures within our relevant nets, we must also document behavior to effectively interact within each. Through observation, we can also characterize and personify the communities that are active and vibrant within our target markets. Interactive media unites people around topics and partisanship and therefore encourages an approach where we also organize our potential stakeholders and advocates by behavior, interests, and preference. Typically, brands have approached marketing and communications through the use of demographics to distinguish its audiences. Now we also embrace psychographics to better match the patterns of behavior and activity that are rife within the socialized Web that groups individuals not by age, gender, education, and so on, but by similarities, passions, and interests.
Demographics are defined as the statistical characteristics of human populations used to identify markets.[70]
Psychographics are statistics that classify population groups according to psychological variables or trends.[71]
The insight that we learn from listening and observing reveals dedicated and intermittent conversation ecosystems that spotlight real–world brand perception and the potential for evangelism, as well as crisis. It resets intentions, crystallizes engagement strategies, influences how we adapt our story to each community, humbles us, and introduces empathy into the process of connecting.
We learn, earn credibility, and procure strategic intelligence through immersion–before we have an official agenda.
To excel in social media, we have to embrace modesty and refrain from egoism. We must not only build roads that pave the way for outward engagement, but also build paths back to our organizations in order to hear, respond, and learn from our interactions. Negativity is onerous. Unwelcome feedback is grueling to swallow. Whether or not it's right or wrong, it's nevertheless real–world perception, and it impacts our bottom line.
We have to be open.
Let it touch us.
Reaction, change, and the practice of listening, hearing, and responding is the art and science of instilling trust and confidence that feed communities and determine the health and prosperity of brand resonance and social capital.
Allowing outside stimulus, instead of deflecting or disregarding it, is the art of embracing and embodying transparency and practicing genuine, unbiased engagement to facilitate meaningful relationships.
Otherwise, transparency and engagement are merely buzzwords in the quiver of marketing arrows.
Productive and mutually beneficial engagement is powered by effective listening and productive participation that results in measurable and favorable actions. It's not only measured by the Conversation Index, but also by the sales, referrals, relationships, and ensuing brand loyalties that escalate, and sometimes dip, in reaction to our contributions.
Influence is the ability to listen, learn, engage, and inspire measurable actions. It's also the observable progress people make as the result of engaging in a dialogue with us.
Observation will help you refine your program so that it's in cultural alignment as you immerse the brand within each community.
Adaptation will help you evolve and increase in relevance, both online and offline.
In the end, we are measured by our actions, and our words.