WeAreMedia: What are the best first steps and a few advanced tips for listening? What are the best how to resources?

Photo by Paulgi

For NTEN's WeAreMedia we're working on a tactical module about listening.  Earlier this week, I put a call out for stories from nonprofits about how they've used listening as part of the social media strategies - and we got some fantastic stories collected on the wiki like the one below from the American Heart Association and American Stroke Association.

Learning the reality of being a stroke caregiver

Stroke is a very intimidating and personal subject. While many stroke survivors don’t engage in social media, at least early in their recovery, their caregivers do reach out and share their experiences. By using search.twitter (formerly summize), we follow conversations about stroke. Looking at the comments on just a "one at a time" basis is good, but seeing a long string of messages is very insightful. We shared this "trail" back with our staff responsible for our stroke survivor and caregiver networks. From this very visible series of conversations, they were able to see for themselves how social media is a powerful way of communicating and sharing in these experiences and in being in the right place to provide support and resources to those in need. They are now developing a plan to put social media front and center to expand reach to those who might never come to us.

Christian Caldwell & Kristi Miller
American Heart Assocation/American Stroke Association

There are several more over at the wiki from Ben Martin, who writes the Certified Association Executive Blog,  Jennifer Caleshu of the Bay Area Discovery Museum, and MailOurMilitary.   Go read them here.

To flesh out this module, we need help answering these questions:

• What are the first steps for listening?
• What are some more advanced tips?
• What are the best resources?

Feel free to add to or edit what's there in the wiki, lots of blanks to fill in.

Comments

[laurent]

Beth,

Took a look at your wiki.

In why listening is important:
I would say 'because if you want to be listened to, you first need to listen'
In what are some easy ways...
Compile a list of communities where your target market socializes online. The list may be in the hundreds so you need to be patient and build it other time.
In advancted techniques
Use sophisticated filtering (on the content published by the communities you selected)
Do it collaboratively as a team.
Use a bite/snack/eat approach when looking at content - bite= read the title/scan the post excerpt to determine the likelihood of relevance, snack=read the excerpt to further qualify the relevance, eat= read the entire post, comment etc...

[Ashley Messick]

I loved Ben Martin's blog post on Antisocial media (http://tinyurl.com/6ofptr), specifically the quote: "My mom taught me that God gave us two ears and one mouth so that we could listen twice as much as we speak. Unfortunately, many seem to believe that God gave them ten fingers and two eyes so that they can type five times as much as they read."

Not only did I LOL but I then spent some time reflecting on how I use my ten fingers and two eyes, in social media contexts and in the simple use of email. How often do I respond to an email before truly understanding what the other person has said or asked for. In a time of instant communications maybe I need to more often slow down and truly digest information before jumping on the keyboard.

[Ben Martin, CAE]

@Ashley, glad to give you a little LOL. One of my other favorite quotes about listening: "Lurk before you leap!"

@Beth, thanks for the link! Keep talking about listening; it seems to be the piece of social media that is most frequently overlooked.