« Web 2.0 Expo (Berlin): George S. Jones from 2058 reporting on Development
Blogging from Berlin – Tuesday 21st October »

Listen first, then speak…

Anyone who is involved in social media knows the story. Success using the internet comes from listening to the conversations and reacting and engaging accordingly. However, Liz Strauss made a shrewd observation when she suggested that perhaps in our enthusiasm for the technology, we may forget to practice what we preach, and really listen to what our potential customers know and want.

It is easy to think that you know best – when you are immersed in any kind of industry, especially one which provides a service, and you are really passionate about that industry then it becomes very easy to let your enthusiasm run away with you and start telling first and listening later. I see it in so many places, and it is normally called push marketing or broadcast marketing. You know when you get stopped by the charity people in the street trying to sign you up to donate regularly to their charity? They are so keen on telling you all about the charity that they often fail to hear you say that you in fact already donate to charity and you aren’t interested in donating to another. It can be quite annoying, but are you doing that too as you try to convince someone of how beneficial your knowledge could be to them?

Listening is a lot harder than many of us think. The reason being is it requires concentration and active engagement with the person speaking. Just being quiet while you wait for them to finish is not listening. Interrupting them mid flow is not listening. And ignoring their concerns, limitations and beliefs is not listening.

I have written before about how not everyone in the world is immersed in social media. As Liz says, it would be worth our time to have a conversation with some of these people and actually listen and find out exactly what they feel about it. Only then can you provide them with answers or suggestions which will actually fit with them, rather than those which you want to give.

Img: I, Timmy

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

If you like this post, why not subscribe to our RSS Feed. Or you can visit our main website at Tiger Two or follow me on Twitter or Friendfeed

Post to Twitter

Tags:

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 16th, 2008 at 5:51 pm and is filed under Attention. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • I agree that listening is very important as a general principle.

    Having said that, in online reputation management we are introducing new concepts that our customers are simply not familiar with and often don't understand. Much of ORM is 2008 (not even 2007) and therefore we have to educate our customers about the possibilities offered by ORM and the ways in which the principles of transparency, dialogue and engagement with the blogosphere can be of true help.

    In business school we were told that we must aim at not just what the customer says he/she wants, but about at what the customer might want if they knew the possibilities available to them. I therefore initially do my best to educate the customers at the many chances opened to them thanks to ORM, and then of course I listen to their concerns and do my best to address them. To do it the other way round is not only time-consuming but just not truly helpful when we are dealing with an uninformed customer.

    Needless to say I expect this state of affairs to change in the coming years as ORM becomes 'standard practice' and we as professionals work hard to publicize the many benefits that ORM can provide within the framework of an integrated online communications strategy.
blog comments powered by Disqus