“Hey, have you thought about listening to social media?”

“yeah….. that is a good idea!  Or maybe, before that I should listen first!  hahaha!”

It was literally about 20 minutes of pure immaturity which you’ll see after a few days packed full of learning and business.

After I left though I was thinking about why that was so damn funny.

Is it because “Listen” is such a simple command that it’s hard to imagine giving it out as a plan?

Is it because you can’t really audibly “listen” to much on the internet – it’s really just reading?

Or is it because it’s only half the idea, like telling someone to “get in the car and go”?

I think it’s the latter.

With so many people urging us to listen I think it has become a bit oversimplified.  Are we telling marketers to listen to EVERYTHING that’s being said about their brand or industry on the internet?

I would amend that instruction to “listen with a serious filter”.  You don’t have to just turn on your computer and read Twitter or Facebook posts or blogs all day.  It’s a waste of time and if you don’t know how to filter the information you won’t be any wiser after reading all of it.  As you “listen” online, you need to immediately decide which stuff is just noise.  Brands aren’t going to be able to work with their community online if they pay attention to all of the noise as well.  Look at it this way – a local grocery store sends out coupons to everyone in the neighborhood and wastes a ton of paper because most of the recipients aren’t going to be interested.  With listening online, you could send every person who even remotely mentions groceries at all a coupon.  Better?  Yes, slightly but still wasting a lot of time grabbing those grocery conversations.  Most brands have 1 or maybe 2 people trying to manage their social media and marketing and print and now they are expected to deal with every person online talking about groceries.  What if that grocery store could reward those people who really like their store?  Not people with a grocery blog but people who are genuinely their fans?  Wouldn’t that be a better use of their resources?  Sephora thinks so.  They have figured out who goes on their mailing list for coupons (sort of fans) and who are their Beauty VIP people (people who buy every pot of sparkles on the shelf….  me).  They reward them differently and as a result, people like me who used to go there once in a while now are avid fans.  They brought me into their community.

So should you be “listening” online?  Yes you should.  However, you need to listen with a filter for people who can be in your community, not just every person talking about a certain topic.

This is actually an ad for a laptop.  Clever!

A simple question I like to ask is: What is a conversation to you?  You’d be surprised how many people think that putting an ad on a social networking site means that a conversation is occurring.  Really though, what constitutes a conversation?  Is it someone following you on Twitter?  Is it asking a question in your static banner ad?  Is it making a really cool video that garners some comments?  It seems we have some confusion as to what a conversation is composed of these days.

Wordnetweb says it’s “the use of speech for informal exchange of views or ideas or information etc.”  Of course, online we don’t use speech but you get the idea, it’s a back and forth of information.  This doesn’t really describe a lot of what’s happening with brands online right now.

Audiences, however, want to talk to brands online so the quest for conversation by brands continues and the whole thing poses a bit of a problem in the ROI department since your customers want to talk to you online and you want to get them to do something that may not have anything to do with the conversation.  It’s interesting because people are, as a species, used to conversations.  You go back and forth and during the engagement and you will draw some conclusions or get some information that you find useful or entertaining.  Brands trying to determine ROI on a conversation will have trouble because they probably see value in telling you about their product or service but not much in whatever you say back to them.  So they have started translating it into a numbers game.  100 comments = good 2 comments = bad.

Once we get into ROI and “direct sale” and “lift” we aren’t even talking about conversations anymore.  This can only mean one thing: audiences are valuing the online conversations but the brands really aren’t.  This is understandable considering these are businesses and are there primarily to make money.  Non-profits are a natural fit for social media but that’s another post altogether.

So how do you measure a conversation so that both the audience and the brand is getting something of value from it?

1) It’s Not Really A Numbers Game.  Change your reports from “number of conversations” to “conversation types” or “value of engagement”.  Your reports that reflect the number of comments or followers or friends don’t mean anything to your CEO.  They might not mean anything to anyone in your whole company which makes your reports useless.  Change them to reflect what you really want to know – are your followers mainly spammers?  Are the conversations junk or are they people asking you questions?  Reports will have to tear themselves away from just the number of engagements as a whole in order for them to become more useful to your brand.  This simple change internally will allow conversations to mean more and therefore be worth more.

Your reports should have sections for:

How many total posts, followers, friends, etc.,  how many of those are actual people, and how many of those are posting or engaging frequently.

What are people bringing up a lot?  Are people mainly asking questions, complaining, suggesting new ideas?

2) You Don’t Have To Participate In Everything As An Expert.  If you find out your audience is really interested in movies but your brand doesn’t have an expert opinion then ask.  You don’t have to release a Top 5 Movies to See post if you don’t really know what those top 5 might be, spend some time having a dialogue to find out.

3)  You’re Allowed To Bring Up Your Brand.  Know anyone who is constantly pushing their own agenda every time you talk to them?  Don’t be that brand.  Know anyone who deftly places a bit of self promotion here and there in a conversation?  Take note next time you talk to them and remember the wording, tone, or context of how they are speaking.

Amen to this…  I haven’t heard the term “fake networking” much before this video but I think it’s an important concept.  Lots of companies really, really want Facebook fans or Twitter followers.  I always ask them “why do you want that?”  It’s a throwback to the mass advertising idea that if you reach a billion people, some will buy.  The problem with this and social networking is that if someone “follows” you “friends” you or otherwise decides to engage, you have to then work to keep that relationship going.  What good is Twitter follower number 428 if you still have no idea who that person is and have never talked to them?

The one in Seattle is called 15th Street Coffee and Tea.

A company distancing itself from the branding that made it famous?  Is that crazy?  No, here’s why:

The New York Times is interviewing restaurants and bars that say their expensive bottle service is down so much that they are closing and re-opening as bars that can bring a keg to your table.  Speakeasies are back.  Homemade is in and Etsy is booming.  Doughnuts are suddenly cuisine to contend with everywhere from the street to Top Chef.  Starbucks built their name on being a fancy cup of coffee and represents the idea of the same exact atmosphere in every store no matter what the city or even country.  It was comforting right up until unique and creative got a big boost in popularity.

It’s rather brilliant actually.  Anyone seen the “Starbucks” in Seattle that’s not called a Starbucks?

This is a German ad campaign for those tiny little Smart Cars!  I think it’s slightly gimmicky as you can’t really play a tiny retro game within an icon but it still gets points for creativity.

They’ve also been praised for their Twitter account if you want to check that out. They’ve got about 23,000 followers.