Social Listening: New rules connect dots
Did you hear anything I just said? Genuine listening has become a rare gift in an era where we screen calls to avoid robots and script-reading advocates.
Information overload, short attention spans and the splintering of mass media have made social listening and true customer support (the foundation of social selling) the ultimate advantage for brands like Caterpiller and Comcast.
We crave a genuine human being who can listen like a true friend.
But most organizations (and many young people who've grown up staring at screens) live by the Steve Covey adage: "Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.''
One of my mentors, Craig Ruff, now senior education adviser to Gov. Rick Snyder, required his University of Michigan grad students to read and learn from the classic, "How to Win Friends and Influence People.'' Such basic social skills, he knew, were rapidly being forgotten or ignored in the digital era.
Anyone can paint but that doesn't make you a painter
Social media, social listening and even most communications tasks are like painting: numerous business people assume a low-level employee can handle them. But knowing the basics (like knowing how to paint) doesn't make you a painter, artist or expert.
I've literally worked on every kind of digital project from free websites to $200,000 web projects. Each has their own advantages just as we treasure finger painting done by a child as well as the art of the greatest masters. Consider your ultimate goals and budget before starting any project.
How marketers ruin everything
Marketers have a habit of seizing a good idea and over-doing it so much that we flee as soon as we see them taking over a medium.
As a result: our home mailbox got overwhelmed by junk mail, our email box got overwhelmed by Spam and we started using Caller ID to screen every call because most calls now come from solicitors.
Texting the new refuge for being heard? My son, one of the top Chevrolet salesmen in the nation, has found he has had to shift to texting to actually get a response from customers (who are screening or ignoring most other communications tools).
The best answer: Listen and communicate like a genuine human being (not like a scripted marketer). Genuine listening and honest responses go far - in any communications medium.
Why the old media rules don't apply any more
Too many executives and marketers are still playing by 20th century rules, recalling a mass marketing era where most Americans watched the same TV shows and read the same news.
For example, "The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon" gets about a third of the viewership it averaged in the Johnny Carson era (when the nation had 100 million fewer people). Today, more viewers see clips of such shows online than actually watch a show live and uninterrupted.
Similarly, the Sunday Detroit Free Press now has 321,297 subscribers compared to 690,054 in 2005. Yet it remains one of the nation's top 15 papers (online).
One result of that splintering that we dubbed the iPodization of America in 2011, is that a growing number of Americans are reading (or watching) their own individual "news feed" so we're still reading the same number of stories but getting each from personalized source preferences, unique stories others aren't seeing.
Think back to World War II movies where U.S. troops (still living in a mass media era) "test'' newcomers to see if they're American by asking questions "every American would know'' like the names of baseball players.
Today, many sports are on Pay Per View or pricey sports packages so there are few questions (including sports) that every American would know the answer to.
10 rules for Social Listening in a post-Mass Media era
1. Listen to understand - make your answer demonstrate you heard what they just said.
How often do you answer a call and get frustrated by the recorded voice asking you to buy something? We now look to see who is calling before answering because we know most calls call from solicitation machines.
How often do you talk or web chat with an off-shore customer service representative and realize they're reading a script and don't really understand what you're asking for? Such episodes explain why many companies are moving call centers back to America.
Yet the robot-calls keep coming, alienating more people than they help win over.
2. First listen, respect, then help or pause before shooting off your scripted talking point - and never, ever tell someone, "That's not my job.''
Most people just want a little respect and if you're busy reading your talking points or script, they know you're not genuinely responding to them. Frustration quickly follows.
Even if you can't really help them, showing respect is the most important thing. Comcast learned that if you empower someone to actually help, you can turn a potential enemy into a vocal fan.
The cable giant empowers teams to search social media for people complaining about them then enables those social media specialists to respond and help solve their problems quickly.
A complainer is looking for help and has the potential to be won over while the angered customers who don't say anything are more likely to just leave and move on to a new vendor.
But no matter what, don't infuriate someone by telling them "That's not my job,'' acknowledging you're powerless (or unwilling) to help.
3. Remember the Bill Clinton Rule
Our friend David Marannis won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of Bill Clinton's 1992 election and wrote probably the best Clinton biography, "First In His Class,'' which explains how Bill Clinton, as the adult child of alcoholics, has a burning need to play the family hero and to win over critics.
As a result, when Clinton addresses an audience, he will look for the least friendly audience member and try to win them over.
The Bill Clinton Seduction Technique involves listening extremely closely to whoever he is speaking to and repeating back phrases in a slightly different way (also known as "mirroring'') to convince friend and foe alike that, "He's just like me.''
4. Common knowledge is fading fast -- You can't count on someone else to "know what you know.''
Children of the Mass Media era (myself included) too often make the mistake of assuming someone else knows many of the things we know as common knowledge.
You assume if someone else shares a common interest that they've surely heard of the most famous experts, authors or "stars'' of that field. But that's no longer the case.
You may know a dozen stars but they might know a dozen others so you have to listen closely to see what they know and don't know and be ready and willing to provide the most basic background information.
Most Americans watched the same newscasts 20 years ago, which were often following the lead of The New York Times. As a result, there was a great deal of knowledge that all Americans knew. Now we each have far more information sources and less shared common knowledge.
5. Attention spans - and news cycles - are shorter than ever.
Last Monday, the Dow recorded its largest point drop ever (more than 1,000 points within minutes) but the market recovered and was roaring back within days.
A veteran business journalist friend who is prominent on social media was startled by the fact that hardly anyone was talking about it (unlike past crashes). Watch the "trending'' feature of Twitter and Facebook and it will show how fickle we now are about what we talk about.
Wednesday morning's shooting of two TV Virginia journalists on live TV dominated the news networks that day but the hash tag for that tragedy, #WDBJ, was battling all day for the top spot with #NationalDogDay on social media. By Thursday both fell out of the top 10.
6. Do some quick digital due diligence.
Two-thirds of online users first learn of news stories via their social media feed. Unfortunately, today's splintered media is filled with fake or outdated stories people routinely share or only take a quick glance at before believing it.
You can often put out a fire quickly simply by checking the links to make sure it's from a credible source and/or do another quick Google.com/news search to see if anyone else is reporting the same news.
When Planned Parenthood claimed undercover videos showing their staffers selling baby parts were "highly edited,'' the video makers added the original un-edited video as well. This is similar to the old academic rule of "checking the primary source."
If and when you correct errors, be certain to be polite and respectful. An "I'm right, you're wrong'' attitude will only create a new enemy. No one enjoys being corrected: Less is more, keep it simple and just try to listen carefully.
7. Verbal Jujitsu listens closely to the other side's argument and helps deflate it.
Verbal Jujitsu literally involves using your adversary's greatest argument as leverage so the other person's argument will fall from its own weight.
We used verbal jujitsu to help influence the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Congress and lawmakers by literally using video and news clips of decades of broken promises to take the air out of the other side’s argument. Our side won big and quickly.
My colleagues and I used a similar strategy to help stage come-from-behind victories in five statewide ballot initiatives and the campaigns worked so well that no similar initiatives even made the ballot in 2014.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal last week used his own verbal jujitsu move against pro-choice advocates protesting his defunding of Planned Parenthood. He granted their request for time to protest but made sure their protest would occur in a location where the protesters (and reporters) would see the undercover videos that have cost the organization funding and support.
Most of the backers of Planned Parenthood haven't watched the videos because of a tendency we have to read "our side'' but not review the other side.
“We hope the protesters will take a minute to watch (the videos) so they’ll have an opportunity to see first-hand our concerns with Planned Parenthood’s practices,’’ Jindal said.
8. Don't get used.
Psychiatrists believe mass murderers are demanding to be heard and paid attention to and the journalist-turned-killer followed every news, PR and social media trick to ensure his Wednesday attack would steal attention.
He committed his act of murder during a live TV interview, he recorded his actions and posted his own video online, he made live updates on social media, said he wanted to start a race war because people discriminated against him because he was black and gay, he sent a 23-page manifesto to ABC and even tied it to recent news events.
He also uploaded background video and images of himself online and left numerous records to assure his story would seize global attention to make him famous.
But what he didn't count on was how personally other TV journalists around the world would take his evil actions. Most refused to air his video and Facebook and Twitter quickly suspended his accounts to discourage copycats. One law enforcement leader said the best way to discourage such shootings would be to never utter the killer's name again and quit giving him the fame he sought.
Journalists and social media instead focused on the lives of the victims, Alison Park and Adam Ward, sharing their work, their life stories and images throughout the day.
As Bill Giles, former editor of The Detroit News and The National Observer, taught myself and other students years ago: "The most important rule of journalism is 'Don't get used.'''
Media and social media companies weren't going to let anyone use them. And you'll noticed I named the victims but haven't mentioned the name of their killer.
9. The battered are beautiful too - their suffering made them stronger and wiser.
How often do you tune someone out because they look or seem unpleasant or strange? Just last week, a recruiter called from an odd sounding company with a vague, generic job description that didn't seem appealing but I expressed interest and learned the offer was actually from one of the world's greatest brands.
Often the plain, unassuming package masks something worth paying much more attention to while the flashy package is all hype and no substance.
The same day the Virginia TV killer was trying to steal all media attention, our friends at St. Josaphat Roman Catholic Church in Detroit, were celebrating the Black Madonna, Our Lady of Czestochowa, an icon, who gets more annual visitors than any other destination in Poland (yet a figure who is little known or noticed in attention hungry America, even within the church).
The Black Madonna is a dark, hard-to-see image lacking the vivid, inviting beauty of most religious art. Strangers aren't always sure what to think of her.
Nevertheless, more than 200 people weaved around road blocks in a rough corner of the city to attend a Wednesday night Mass and candlelight vigil thanks to social media event requests (people with a possible interest were personally invited via Facebook) and good old fashioned fliers and word of mouth.
This icon of the Virgin Mary, first painted according to legend, by St. Luke on a table top from the Holy Family's home, was literally attacked, cut and almost burned by invaders centuries ago, literally "a mother rejected by her own children.'' Efforts to lighten her or remove the scars from her face failed.
But the power of those stories and sacrifices have endured for centuries. She is a symbol of strength, sacrifice and wisdom for those who take the time to learn her story. Every successful Polish leader visited the image for strength while the first Polish king to lose his country didn't. Even the communists "arrested'' the image, afraid of the power of a simple image to inspire people.
So Poles keep coming back to her, learning to look beyond the book cover and to study the subject in depth. The battered beautifies often have far more interesting stories.
10. Just listening can even save lives.
The late Don Ritchie, also known as the Angel of Gap, gained worldwide fame
because he lived on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Over 45 years, he saved at least 160 people (his family says the number was more than 400) from suicide, simply by seeing what was happening, reaching out, listening closely, talking to them and inviting them to his house for a cup of tea.
The humble listener would simply ask: “Can I help you in some way?’’
Joseph Serwach is a contributing author to The Book of Social Media Strategies & Tactics Volume 1. He’s also authored:
Social Media: Little things, beautiful, good and true
How social media moves relationships from like to love
Own your media: True thought leadership secrets endure centuries
‘The Grandma Test’ and four other ways to gauge your content