Picking up where Geoff left off, this week’s “Social Media for Social Good” class is diving into online community research. As part of their group projects, the students will be creating social media strategies for several area nonprofits. The first step towards strategy – and sometimes the most difficult – is listening. (Image by DrBaloneyMD.)
The Burden of Listening
Our ears are always on, sometimes to our chagrin. But although we listen non-stop, we often don’t hear. Therein lies the challenge and opportunity associated with assessing an online environment.
Listening requires depth and patience regardless of the situation. Whether talking with another person, hearing a presentation, eavesdropping on a conversation, or analyzing online discussions, you must intake and process words, retain the knowledge and sometimes take action.
It’s the listener’s burden to determine the significance of the message, sort through non-verbals, and decide what to do next:
- Disregard
- Ignore
- Learn
- Change
- Repair
- Improve
- Trust
Turn Yourself Off
In the case of online conversations, you must sift through many voices talking in many places, without the benefit of eye contact or other nonverbal cues. When you don’t have to look people in the eye, it’s easy to overlook things that don’t fit your vision and instead search for what you want to see. But strategy demands that you exploit differences and loopholes, and therefore turn off your own mind and preconceived notions.
Making Sense of What You Hear
It’s not enough to reveal a conversation and pull out data. Discovering a passionate community of people 50,000 strong doesn’t mean jack if it’s the wrong audience. Similarly, a very small community of people only loosely interested in your issue should not be written off. Collectively – that is, in the context of all your research findings – does what you find matter, and how will it affect your strategy?
The term most commonly used for this aspect of research is insight. An insight is more than a fact, data point or sweeping recommendation. It’s a revelation core to moving in the right direction, and moving away from dead ends.
Getting to Insights with Guiding Questions
When “listening to the Internet” for the first time, it helps to know what you’re looking for. The more focused your search, the less overwhelmed you’ll be. In addition to knowing your goals, objectives, and specific target audiences, start with questions you need to answer.
Here’s a sample set of questions that you might use to build an insight related to community engagement:
- Is there a [topical] discussion taking place in my organization’s hyper-local social media community?
- If so, what key topics and themes are being discussed?
- Is the conversation fragmented or is there a clear leading voice(s)? Who are the leading voices? Is the local media leading or hosting these conversations? Competitors?
- Does my organization have a voice in the conversation? Is anyone talking about us?
- Are our target audiences participating in this conversation?
- Are there any passionate fans of our issue or cause? What about detractors?
- Is the conversation more prominent in a particular type of social media (e.g., blogs, message boards, social networks etc.)?
And of course, the capstone question: “So what? How do all those answers add up in a meaningful way that will move us forward?” If you can answer that, then you got what you were after.
Metamorphic Listening
An initial, passive deep dive into online discussions is excellent for strategy development. However, next time you dip your toe in, be ready to engage.
After all,
The value of listening is not in the act of listening in and of itself, but when an organization or individual uses the information to improve programs or marketing. This requires engaging in a conversation.” (Wise words from Beth Kanter.)
And active listening, while much more demanding, can be much more rewarding. It gets you “Results on Insights” as Beth Kanter says, and should ultimately become your bread and butter.
Qui — thanks for the mention. It is much appreciated; and an excellent article as well … tweeted and bookmarked. The topic of “listening” to folks in social media is something I am very passionate about; and I am seeing more companies starting to use these tools more effectively.
Listening — as mentioned in the post you linked to – is only half that battle. It’s the act of “acting” on the information that nurtures the community, builds relationships and has the potential to create brand advocacy.
Michael
Qui,
Love what you’ve written here! You’ve also identified a few other listening literacy skills. I’m adding your post the resource list.
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2009/01/listening-literacy-skills-keywords-are-king-what-keywords-or-phrases-have-brought-you-some-insights.html
Very nice job, Qui. Really got me thinking about listening on its most basic level, which I believe has application here.
When we were infants, we learned to speak by listening to parents, grandparents, older siblings, family friends, etc. By listening to those who were important to us, and hearing what was said, we then had something to speak ourselves. It was simple, normal and natural. Then in our formal academic schooling, we were taught the skill of reading and writing. As our communication skills develop at a young age, they mostly do so without any formal education on “how to listen” and we end up losing our simple openness to learn from others without even knowing it. As a result, we as a society are really good at tuning others out because we are so interested in making sure others are listening to us. Active listening involves taking a real interest in what others are saying and asking clarifying questions to be sure we understand. As you have excellently stated here, this means engagement. When we listen like you have outlined, what we have to say will have more relevance and make for a better connection with our communities. As someone once said, God gave us two ears and one mouth, so we ought to listen twice as much as we speak.”
Your most welcome, Michael. I liked your post!
Beth, I love what you wrote re: Literacy skills, thanks for including my thoughts. Other parameters that I would add to yours re: keywords – super specific audience, and timeframe for research. And know how to weigh the metrics you run into eg. number of community members or inbound links. No magic formula as they say.
Listening is very basic and simple. Some companies may be struggling with this because they are not wired to think that way. Many are stuck with their traditional protocol or ways of doing business. Looking forward to class today.
As usual, you’re right on top of things, Qui.
Your LQ is off the charts :)