Social Media Tools Are Like Phones
One thing we misunderstand frequently when talking about how great and amazing social media is comes from the fact that we’re thinking from the perspective of what we want the tool to do while the people who are receiving the message might be thinking about the tools in the abstract. When we talk about how Twitter forges real time conversations and delivers business value, others show up and see us bitching about a late flight and live tweeting the baseball game. When we talk about how blogging changes the world, other people are slogging through all the crap blogs indexed by Google when they’re looking for actual useful information.
Marcel LeBrun, CEO of Radian6, was probably the first person I heard use the “social media is a phone” analogy. In his case, he was talking about the need for companies to realize that some of their customers are “dialing the social phone,” and that they’d better have some “operators standing by.” (I swear, if I had extra time, I’d write an ebook out of my talks with Marcel.) He’s not wrong, and that’s why I tend to stretch the analogy even further when discussing social media tools to audiences.
Social Media Tools Aren’t The Revolution
A phone can be used to talk to Mom, talk to the grocery store, talk to customer service at your bank, and a phone can be used to give a teleseminar, to dial for dollars, to market a new product or service. This is the same with all these tools like blogging, podcasting, social networks and the like. The tools themselves are just different (better?) ways to communicate. They involve more nuance.
This Part is the Revolution
The revolution comes in how we use them. At once, these new tools allow us a one-to-many opportunity similar to what publishers and TV producers and other large scale media used to own. And at the same time, these tools have created allow us to be much more personable, more nuanced, more one-to-one in how we reach people who share the same interests as us (or our customers).
If You’re In Marketing / PR / Advertising
Getting on the new tools and blasting out the old methods will fail (is failing). This isn’t rocket science, but it is art, and it requires a different set of approaches. It’s as different as comparing the phone book to a personalized invitation. To many of you, you’re rolling your eyes and saying that I’m preaching to the choir, but if that’s so, then we’re not all singing loud enough, because there are still many people in need of better approaches, in need of teaching, and in need of concrete things to do next. If you’re on my side of the fence on this one, and if you’re out there sharing the good gospel of the new social phone, then stop saying “join the conversation.” That’s like saying, “Now dial the phone!”
Instead, share with people the creative ways to dial. Remember when call waiting came out? Remember when we first learned how to forward our phones? Share these things with people. Show them the tools, and further, show them applications for them.
In preparing for the upcoming New Marketing Summit in a few weeks in Boston, I’m most certainly going to bring this message out loud and clear. In several speeches between now and the end of the year, it’s my goal to show that it’s HOW we use the social phone that will change how business is done. It’s part of what Julien and I are doing with TRUST AGENTS.
Will you help people understand this, too? Will you share your new dialing methods? Will you teach them the difference between a teleseminar and a call to Mom? Most importantly, will you show them how to listen?
Ring ring.
This post brought to you by RingCentral: Get your own Toll Free or Local Number with voicemail for as low as $9.99 per month
Photo credit, jumpinjimmyjava
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Five Tools I Use for Listening
As part of the social media strategy series, I thought I’d start with listening.
Social media tools are a great way to get the word out about your passions, your interests, the company’s latest products, but we tend to rush right into the “speaking” side of the toolbox without giving much thought to the “listening” part. Knowing what people are saying about you, your competitors, and your industry as a whole are just as important as blogging and making good video.
It’s interesting to note that companies will spend anywhere from $20,000 to $150,000 on a good website design, but will fail to implement even the most rudimentary listening tools to move their capabilities to understand the impact of such a site beyond the realm of hits and clicks.
As part of our social media strategy, let’s presume that all businesses will need a way of listening to their audience, their customers, their partners, and their detractors. Let’s start with the tools, and we will talk about the strategy for dealing with what we hear in a subsequent post. By the way, the guts and tech behind most every one of these tools is RSS. Click that link to watch a quick YouTube video by Common Craft, if you want a refresher on what RSS is/does.
Five Tools I Use for Listening
- Google Reader - I use Google Reader as my home base for collecting and reading all the various sources of information I collect. It’s web-based, fast, and easy to use. It allows me to blaze through content without thinking much about it. Use Google Reader by adding various searches to it (described in the next few bullets).
- Technorati - Go to Technorati, put your company ( product, brand, personal) name into the search bar, and see what people are saying about you. Note the little orange RSS subscription button in the upper right. Copy that link location (Right click the link and say “Copy Link” or however your browser words that). Now, dump that into Google Reader as one of your listening searches. Repeat this for your competitor’s name, brand, individuals, and some industry terms (if you can make them succinct).
- Google Blogsearch - Go to Google Blogsearch and do the same thing. Sure there will be some overlap, but it’s important to capture both. The subscription to searches link is on the left hand side about 1/3 down the page.
- Summize - If you’re thinking about using social networks and social media, it’s likely that some of your customers are using Twitter. If so, go to Summize and put in your search terms there, too. Cook as many searches as you need, grabbing the RSS feeds and throwing them into Google Reader. Build a strong catalog of searches, and then remove bad or ineffective ones after you trial them out a bit.
- Link Checker - Here’s an off-the-beaten path one. Go to SEO Pro and use their free link checker. (Note: it’s a bit slow to crawl for technical reasons, so don’t get worried if it takes a while to respond to your query). This tool checks who’s linking to your URLs, what the link text is (what’s in blue on the web page that people might click to get to you), and all kinds of stats that matter to search engine optimization experts, but might not matter to you. Why? Because it’s important to know what people are saying about you with their linking efforts.
- BONUS ROUND: Crazy Egg - If you want to see how people are looking at your website when they’re NOT commenting and talking about you, try out Crazy Egg. The tool is chock full of visualization data, including heat maps, that show you how people are interacting with your website. Sometimes, people aren’t saying something on your blog posts because they’re being distracted by something else. Here’s your chance to figure that out.
The Pro Stuff
If you want something a little more advanced than hacking search tools and sucking the RSS feeds into readers (which isn’t that bad, you know), you might try tools like Radian6 (note: I just completed a 3 part webinar series with them that we’re airing soon. Go to Twebinar.com for details) or BuzzLogic or a series of other tools in the same category (they’re all listening, so I’m sure they can swarm here and give links in the comments section).
There are values to the professional products, and if you’re a larger company and can afford the not-too-very-expensive splurge, you get a lot more dashboarding and reporting with such tools. But if you’re bootstrapping, stick with me, kids.
How are You Listening?
I’m curious to know who’s doing what in the world of listening. Are you doing something formal with your organization? Have you tried any of these tools for this purpose? What else might we be missing in our tool set?
Photo credit, tanakawho
Tools Restrict Your Thinking
Never forget that the tools you use to think, to dream, to figure something out, are also opportunities to restrict the way you think about a problem. If you’re already thinking about using a wiki for a project, or a blog, you’ve already made some decisions on all the actions that take place thereafter. Deciding on audio versus video versus text early in the project means that you’re talking tools and not the desired goals of the project. Wherever you can, think with outcomes in mind, not which tools you can use.
Inspired by Jon Udell’s interview with Bill Buxton.
