Being Cheryl: Social Media Marketing Tips from Columbus, Ohio

Some thoughts on listening in the social media space gained from a panel with Mike Spataro from Visible Technologies, David Alston from Radian6 and Dave Armon from dna 13.

- Paying attention to what others are saying allows you to have conversations in the context of what your audience is interested in talking about at that very moment. Then you can create content within that contexts. But you need to know what people are interested in first.

- You can find people online who are as passionate about what you, as a business or organization, are passionate about. Then you can start to build relationships with those people. But you have to find them first.

- Most people think of listening and monitoring social media for two reasons: negative content and customer service. But there is so much industry and competitive intelligence to be gained from listening, too.

- You need to understand WHAT you’re listening for. Why do you want to listen? What do you want to learn? What are you going to do with that information? Once you have that sense of what you want to monitor, start with simple, free tools to get an idea of what is out there. Here are 6 steps to get you started in 10 minutes. After you know what’s out there, you may need to purchase a monitoring solution to help you manage and interpret the information that’s available.

I can haz more coffee?