Social Media Best Practices: Listen & Respond!

Mitch Joel over at Six Pixels of Separation is asking:

"Are there best practices in Social Media Marketing?"

Chris Brogan already offered his 'social media best practice:' "Learn How to Listen"

Chris says...

"we tend to rush right into the “speaking” side of the toolbox without giving much thought to the “listening” part." -- Chris Brogan on "Five Tools I Use for Listening" 

I couldn't agree more with you Chris! Too often companies are quick to yell through the loudspeaker at the masses ready to pitch a product...hoping to bag a customer...hoping to make a sale...

Personally, I dislike the "hard sell" approach. My philosophy is different. It's: "Solve. Don't sell!" It's worked well for me over the years and it's worked for brands like Apple as well; they have the best customer service in town and I'll be an evangelist for them for life because of the brand experience they created and delivered. They're good because they know how to "listen." But alas, listening is only half of the equation...

My Social Media Best Practice:

Listen and respond.
What Hitch calls "basic principles."

We tune in and listen to the problems our customers (and potential customers) are having and we use social media to market our product; with the intent of showing them how our product is going to solve their problem.

A good social media marketer, a good brand, has taken the time to listen to the needs of their audience (their target client) and they deliver a product accordingly. But, and here's where exceptional brands stand out and differ... Exceptional brands deliver beyond the product. They create and deliver a brand experience by being responsive/engaging and sharing in the conversation.

They not only listen, they respond.

Valeria Maltoni over at Conversation Agent shares with us a good example of this and leaves us with a few questions to ponder...

Do you take the time to respond? When you do, how do you do it? Do you do it in a way that "wows" your customer and keeps them engaged?

Comments

[Davina]

Hi Ribeezie. I take the time to respond to readers. I appreciate their comments, knowing how much time is involved in that part of blogging. Boy do I know! :-)

I like to respond with humour when I can, maybe borrowing their voice in the process, or just say, "Yeah, I agree with you."

[Cath Lawson]

Hi Ricardo - finding a solution to people's problems is what smart businesses do isn't it? Most folk hate hard sell.

I must admit - Twitter terrified me at first. So many people seemed to be telling and nobody seemed to be replying to any of them. So, I just sat and watched.

I've been trying it again lately and you can get into some good conversations with folk and get to know them.

[debateur]

I so agree with this article. For me as a consumer I get completely turned off with the hard sell.

[Barbara Swafford]

Hi Ricardo,

If people could learn to listen, really listen, to what is being said (by customers, blog commenters, or those on social media sites), much can be learned. Too often we want to "have the floor" and forget that a conversation happens between two or more people.

[Lance]

Sometimes the best thing we can do is close our mouths and open our ears. Same goes for online, we need to really listen to what people write. And only respond after really listening. When I blog, I really take comments seriously. They are what makes it all real for me, and I try to respond how I would like to be responded to.

[meleah rebeccah]

I love INTERACTION. Thats why I always respond.

[SpaceAgeSage]

Coming from a journalism background, I'm still working on how to engage readers. I love blogging because you actually get feedback! As a reporter, I only heard feedback from the community or the persons interviewed less than 1 percent of the time.

[Ricardo Bueno]

@Davina: I've always felt that responding to comments is the single greatest compliment that you can give a new reader. It's the biggest "welcome" you can offer and at least with me, it creates a greater sense of community and belonging. I love it when a blogger takes the time to respond to my insight(s) and it goes even further when they write a personalized e-mail welcoming me to their site (canned e-mails don't work as well for me).

@Cath Lawson: Re: "finding a solution to people's problems is what smart businesses do isn't it? Most folk hate hard sell." Personally, I hate the hard sell approach. Do something to solve my problem...do it with a little flare, and I"ll become an evangelist for your service or product for life. Apple did that for me when they resolved an issue I was having with a new mac.

As for Twitter; there sure can be a lot of noise on there you can harness some good conversation out of it as well. I haven't used twitter much lately but I did utilize it a lot in the past and with some success. The 140 character limit forces you to say more in less space. Avoid the spammers and you might get some good conversations going while getting to know people a little more intimately. That's what I liked about it and we even managed to get some good tweetups going in my area :-P

@Debatuer: you and I both! And many others here for that matter...

[Ricardo Bueno]

@Barbara: Learning to listen is definitely a pivotal part of the equation but that knowledge is useless if we fail to execute on the second half of the equation. We still have to take the time to respond and be engaging. If we're not being engaging, we're just yelling through a loudspeaker and though you'll bag some customers with that approach, it's just not what good brands are made of; at least not in my opinion. Good brands, great brands, take the time to engage and build on that conversation.

@Lance: Re: "And only respond after really listening" You said it! Be genuine in your writing AND in your responses. We (consumers) are smart and we can tell when you're being disingenuous.

@Meleah: Heck, the interaction is what makes the "experience." It's what makes the experience real, fun, worth talking about. That's what I want...for people to talk about my brand. Ya know?

@SpaceAgeSage: Wow! Was it really less than 1% of the time??

You know, when it comes to engaging readers, I really do feel like the easiest way to do that is to get to know people through your comments and even emails to one another. When someone new visits/comments on my site, I take the time to read their own site and their about page to get to know them and find a common ground before ever writing my "response" comment. That's what makes the interaction more personal.

[Dube]

What a great post. Responding seems to be important in a lot of fields, even beyond social marketing. I could certainly find ways to employee it in my freelance writing business, too. Thanks for once again giving me ideas to think about. :)

[Dube]

I was also thinking... A great way to do this in a blog would be, if you read something exceptional, don't just comment there, but write a post about it in your own blog with a link. I'll have to do that in the future!

[John Lockwood]

To me the distinction is not between hard sell and social media, but between having something to say that attracts visitors and search engines on the one hand and frittering away my life in MyFace on the other.

The core limitation of profligacy as a business model is not that Twits hate hard sell -- it's that they're not buying at all. I can listen to them all day long and starve, or I can work on my business.

[Susie Blackmon]

So many important places to socialize now, and I do try to keep up. It's a better use of my time these days than waiting on the phone to ring. Buyers are almost non-existent at the moment; there are a few lookers.

[Robin]

Hi there Ricardo - I find that the comments on my blog really extend the topic - often people fill in the gaps where I left things out. I don't know how much my responses to comments encourages that - it probably helps a little.

[BloggerNewbie]

The first thing I learned in sales was to LISTEN. Let the customer talk. How else are you going to solve their problems. There is nothing more annoying than a sales person trying to sell you something they want. I often ask them if maybe they didn't hear me?

Good points Ribeezie and everyone else.