Building Blocks of Social Media – The Fine Art of Listening
Your clients are talking. Are you listening?
You may have heard before that you should listen, not just talk (i.e. push your products and services) when using social media. But what does that mean? You should be listening for what exactly? And, how does this all relate to your business goals?
Put simply, you should be listening to what your potential clients have to say, because they are telling you things (about themselves, about their wants and needs) that you don’t yet know.
The biggest potential of social media is that it can be a two-way conversation. On Twitter, you might post a link to your company’s latest blog, published article, or white paper. You may push summaries about an up-coming senior executive speaking engagement or hosted webinar to Facebook and LinkedIn groups related to your industry. And although this type of one-way social media communication is the extent of most companies’ social media strategies, it is only one piece of the social media puzzle (it’s the “talking” piece). What about the “listening” piece? Relatively little attention is given to the ongoing conversations already happening – those not initiated by corporate efforts. This is a huge omission in many social media strategies, but an easy one to correct.
A great case study on the toy manufacturer LEGO, shared by Jake McKee, their former Global Community Development Manager, provides concrete examples of how listening, rather than just talking, can actually boost the bottom line.
Best practices to take away from this case study:
- Listen to understand who actually is your best customer or client. A policy of not listening to customers can create a misleading impression of who your customer base is (otherwise known as corporate tunnel vision). At LEGO, management thought that their sweet spot was 7 to 12 year old boys, who on the average purchased $10 of product a year. Turns out that the 18 year old plus/adult market, spending an average $2,000 a year, was their long neglected growth opportunity – and they were quite vocal (online) about their love for LEGO. LEGO’s old pricing cap was $150, until this better understanding of their potential customers resulted in the development of bestselling sets at the $300, $400 and $500 price points.
- Listen to hear what your potential customers and clients want or need. You should visit online forums and communities to see what are the questions raised by the average person looking for your type of products or services. This may result in new product or service ideas – or easier yet, bundles of existing services – to be offered by your company. Upon discovering that independent LEGO reseller marketplace sites existed for customers wanting to purchase parts to build their own designs, LEGO offered a profitable new service that allows customers to order their own custom designed sets online.
- Ask some questions and then listen to arrive at points one and two (above). A major goal of social media for business is to engage and interact with consumers (that’s listening, plus talking/responding). After listening to your consumers, request your online followers to tell you what they think about issues affecting your business, your products, or services. Be careful that your questions are not leading, nor do they reveal your future business strategy to your competitors. It can be a casual conversation, or you can take advantage of the multitude of poll/survey features offered by social media platforms. The feedback can be invaluable.
Salespeople learn early in their careers to ask questions to determine a customer’s needs before pitching a product or service. A dream situation is when this information is provided by the customer without asking. This is social media in a nutshell. Your new client base is online and they’re saying, “here is what I need” and “this is how you can help me.” All you have to do is listen!
