Listening

I just read an awesome blog post and I just had to mention it here. The guy on this blog was writing about social media and ROI and explaining the (close to) impossible task of measuring social media marketing in financial ROI. It is of course incredibly hard to measure the amount of tweets, links, blog mentions, comments and then put a financial value against them.

I think the problem with many businesses is that they prefer to have a monologue with customers as that is much easier to measure and control. The problem is that there are millions of dialogues taking place every day on the web and they are impossible to control. However it is possible to get involved and if you are afraid of talking to your customers at least make sure you are listening to them.

Too many companies view social media as a way to touch more customers but very few see it as a way to listen more. Think about the millions of dollars marketers have been spending to find out what their customers want and need. Social media is changing the game and businesses need to make sure they don't miss to many conversations.

So my advise is that you start listening more to your customers. There are many ways to monitor the conversations online. Here are a few suggestions:

Whostalkin - WhosTalkin.com is a social media search tool that allows users to search for conversations surrounding the topics that they care about most.

Twitter search - search Twitter to see what people are saying about your brand.

Radian6 - is a great "listening platform" that enables you to keep up with online conversations.

Techrigy - SM2 is a software solution designed specifically for PR and Marketing Agencies to monitor and measure social media.

Trackur - Trackur is an online reputation monitoring tool designed to assist you in tracking what is said about you on the internet.