It is clear that companies should be listening to social media conversations, but what exactly should you be listening to?  Over the past two years I have developed the following approach that has really helped the companies that I have worked with think about listening at three broad levels:

• Brand Level listening - Chris and others have blogged about this often.  Organizations need to be listening to what is being said about their brands in the social marketplace and to listen in on competitive conversations.  Powerful listening platforms such as Radian6, Techrigy SM2, and at last count I found over 80 of these social analytics tools... all can help your organization digest the huge amounts of conversations into more meaningful data that you can react to in a timely manner.
  
  
• Targeted Influencer - But battles are not won by reacting, but instead by being proactive and engaging.  Developing a targeted list of relevant influencers that you listen to and engage with via Twitter, blog comments and FriendFeed is essential to demonstrate not only that you are listening, but that you are proactively engaged and want to comment on their conversations.  By creating that dialog with key industry influencers, they will start to engage and notice you as well. 
  
  
• Project Centric Listening - Project level listening is frequently overlooked, but can have a huge impact on the overall return of a project.  An easy example to consider, if your company is participating at an event such as CES, listen for the relevant tweets, blog posts, YouTube videos, Flickr images and more. By leveraging this information through your company's blog and Twitter account, your company is further engaged with your targeted audience and you will increase your overall ROI from the event.

Forrester Research recently published a post about defining Paid, Owned and Earned Media and helping to categorize the types of media communicators utilize today.


Paid Media is the old school traditional advertising / sponsorship model for print, broadcast, radio or online.  This model of media is still driving most marketing budgets & programs today.

Owned Media is content and material created and produced by a Company or organization where they drive and control the messaging and distribution channels - be it videos, ebooks, case studies, customer testimonials, podcasts to be promoted through blogs, website, newsletter or branded social networks.

Earned Media used to be recognized as that third bucket dominated by traditional public relations & perhaps analyst relations programs.   The past few years it has expanded to encompass User Generated Content, Word of Mouth and the ever-misunderstood Viral Marketing Programs.

So, this begs the question of where do you focus on producing content that puts the heart, interests and needs of your customer first and you earn you way in?

2010 may be the year of earned media and customer attention where reviews, mentions of your brand with linkbacks and online conversations drive greater SEO and more cost effective sales, channels leads and drives cross-company collaboration.  But there is much more that can be added to Paid and Owned media to greatly expand the value of the committed marketing and communications funds and channel building to spur an ever dramatic increase in Earned Media.    We're seeing it more and more often - major ad buys are showcasing where to find them online.  Better yet, we're seeing ad buys pointing customer attention to where they can join the conversation with them - be it a website, Facebook or Twitter.

Owned media is rapidly moving beyond the static brochure-ware on the web.  Instead it is being viewed and created as a catalyst and fuel for conversation and yes, ultimately - Engagement.  Here in lies the greatest untapped communications, sales and business growth opportunities.   Content has always been King but it's important to remember that it became King for it fueled what was essentially more important - Engagement.

So as we move into 2010 find more ways to not only increase your earned media content but to also instill an active listening, monitoring, content producing, community building and sharing strategy that supports the needs of your marketing, industry and customers.  Execute this strategy properly and you will instill excitement, interest, and conversations.  That level of engagement when executed upon effectively will not only help grow your business but accelerate your earned media effectiveness 10 fold - within the next year.

What's your take on Paid, Owned and Earned Media?  Do you agree that 2010 will be the year of earned media through engagement?

Every few days, I wander into Twitter Search and Google Blogsearch and type in a few brands and product names. I look around to see who's complaining about these products or companies. Then, I see whether or not there's been any contact (at least out in the open) by the company or product line in question. 

The good news is that "more often than before," I see someone come to answer a negative comment or a frustrated blog posting. The bad news is that there are still many companies not responding. Many.

This is baseline customer service. A customer or prospective customer is complaining and no one's taking an action. The excuse? Well, they didn't fill out our official web form or they didn't call our 800 number. Do you think that will hold up for long?

How You Can Jump In and Listen

There are two levels of listening available for your company to take with regards to the social media space. You can start with some free tools cobbled together, and then, as you start to see some value, you can consider upgrading to professional tools. At New Marketing Labs, we help companies implement the professional tools, but more often than not, we start them by pointing out how to use the free stuff.

• Build a free listening station base by getting an account for Google Reader. This is a tool built for gathering up RSS feeds (RSS = Really Simple Syndication), and the way we'll build your free listening station is by plugging RSS feeds to your search results into the reader.
  
  
• Go to http:// search.twitter.com and plug in your desired search terms (your company, your product, things like that). There's a syntax to the searching. For instance, if you're searching for our company, I might plug in (in quotes) "New Marketing Labs" OR NML. The "OR" means that it'll return results based on either the name of the company, or our abbreviated name. Repeat this step as often as you want?
  
  
• When you get your search results, look for the "Feed for this query" in the upper right hand corner, after an orange RSS graphic. Right-click that link, and copy that link location. 
  
  
• Go back to Google Reader. Click "Add a Subscription" directly below the Google Reader logo, and paste the search result into that box. Click ADD.
  
  
• You've just entered a search result. 
  
  
• Now, go to http://blogsearch.google.com and type in a search query. When the results pop up, look down to the middle-left part of the screen, to where it says "Subscribe." Right-click the RSS link, select copy link, and then bring it back to Google Reader, where you'll do the "add subscription" and paste step again.
  
  
• After a few tweaks, you have yourself a free listening station.
  
  
• A few other sources: http://www.icerocket.com , http://twingly.com , http://news.google.com

What To Do With These Results

You will suddenly find lots of information. It might take some tweaking and prodding to make it more accurate. Once you've got the results such that you start seeing actionable information, what do you do with it? We recommend making the results available to both customer service and public relations. There are two reasons for this.

In some cases, someone's tweet or blog post will be an actual customer complaint. In other cases, it will be an opportunity for education, or perhaps conversion. This isn't always readily apparent. Making the results of listening a function of customer service overlooks opportunities for corporate storytelling and relationship opportunities. Making the results of listening a PR function means adding lag to someone's already frustrated customer problem. Besides, having two ears on the track is much better, as it will add to response time, opportunities for interpretation, and spread the work load.

Why Buy the Professional Tools?

The problem with the free tools is that they require a lot more work to interpret the data, and a lot more manual hand-holding, and a lot of holes in where to search. They're good enough for starting (and I'm using them for tracking some of my personal projects), but if you want the full picture, features like "group response options" and more, you'll need a professional tool.

We are friends or friendly with most of the professional tool makers in the listening space. We have the potential for bias. I'll list a few of the professional listening tools we're familiar with here, but know that the list isn't at all exhaustive, nor are we advocating one tool over another:

• Radian6
• Scout Labs
• Sysomos
• Crimson Hexagon
• Spiral16
• Nielsen Buzzmetrics
  
  

There are many more. They all have different values, different takes on listening, different mindsets on how to get the job done. I won't break out their values or merits here, but if you're going to evaluate listening tools (or if you want to work with New Marketing Labs and want us to evaluate them), you'd best consider at least these choices above, at the least.

Listening is Table Stakes

These days, using listening tools to field customer concerns as well as to hear potential opportunities for relationship-building is a must. Many companies have adopted at least the free methods, and several are moving into the professional tools. It's a heated space, investing-wise, and many new products are coming out every few months. Not having a listening platform is like not having a customer service function. 

What's your experience been so far? Have you used listening tools to augment your other functions? Are there other departments taking advantage of the information? What concerns do you have? We'd love to talk more.

Photo by: Steve Rhodes