A couple of weeks back, I had the great honor of presenting at the RKG Summit, where I explained some of the issues around social media listening. I’ve been the Chief Strategist at Converseon, a leading social listening company, for nearly four years now, so I have some experience in seeing what clients need in this area. But I have been reflecting lately on how much has changed.
Four years ago, even large companies weren’t certain about how important social media listening was. It sounded good in principle, but they weren’t sure they needed to devote resources to it. In fact, some flat out told me that there was no conversation about their industry, which sometimes was true. I don’t think that is true anymore.
Sure, there are some companies where they don’t speak about your company constantly, but it is hard to find an industry where there is no conversation at all. Recently, I’ve been involved with a company that treats waste water from manufacturing plants and another that sells industrial gases, neither of which I would think would have little conversation about it in any venue–yet we found enough online conversation to be interesting in both cases.
If you run a small business, it might be true that no one is speaking about your individual business. I spoke with an insurance agent who told me that he has checked and no one mentions him or his business. But, I asked him, do they talk about your competitors? He hadn’t checked. Do they talk about the insurance business and insurance agents in general? He hadn’t checked, but thought undoubtedly they do.
In these situations, it makes sense to listen to the industry conversation. After all, wouldn’t it be great to find out what customers hate about the industry? If you’re doing it, you get to change before they are complaining specifically about you.
If you’re interested, take a peek at my slides from the RKG Summit, What are your customers saying about you?
