Listening Literacy Skills: What keywords or phrases have brought you some insights?

Flickr Photo by Incurable Hippie

I've been writing a lot about listening through social media channels in preparation for a live workshop for WeAreMedia next month in San Francisco.   I'm passionate about listening - the skills, tools, techniques, and how it translates to continuous improvement of strategy and understanding the value it provides to organization's mission.

Whether your nonprofit is using listening tools that are free or a professional tool to take a deeper dive, after you figure out who will do the listening and how to make it actionable, it's time to address the nitty gritty of what and how. 

The most important listening literacy skills are

• Keywords Are King: Composing and refining keywords
• Seeing the Forest Through The Trees: Pattern analysis and synthesis of findings
• Engaging effectively:  Don't just listen unless your mission is market research or you're a peeping tom

I would really LOVE to hear about stories about what keywords you've used and how the resulting listening
brought some value. 

In the meantime, here's some how to tips.

The Basics

Give Me The Facts Mam

These are obvious.  But it helps to have them listed and even better to create a one-pager and get input from other staff members.

• Nonprofit Name
• Other nonprofit names in your space
• Program, services, and event names
• CEO or well-known personalities associated with your organization
• Other nonprofits with similar program names
• Your brand or tagline
• URLs for your blog, web site, online community
• Industry terms or other phrases

Andy Beal also suggests searching on intellectual property and your known strengths and weaknesses.

What Not To Search On

Try to avoid generic terms.  Like searching on google, it will bring you lots of noise.  If your organization's name or program names contain generic words, use Boolean operators like "AND" or "NOT."  (Need to brush up your Boolean skills, here's a tutorial)

Going Deeper

It's Not How You Talk About It Behind the Firewall

Once you've had a chance to scan results from the basics, you should keep a spreadsheet of phrases or words that people actually use to describe your organization and add these to your other phrases list.  This should give you a reality check and avoid assuming that your audiences uses the same words as your staff or you.

If you are using an analytics software program like Google Analytics, run a search engine referral report and see what words people are actually typing into search engines to find your site and try using some of these. Or the Goolge Adwords Keyword tool

Reiteracy is Social Media Listening Literacy

You may not know what is not worth searching until you try it and revise based on what you see.  Don't assume that you'll get it right on the first try, either.  It takes some and a little bit of a reiterative process to fine-tune those key words.

Use Some Creative Thinking Skills

Recently, a nonprofit that provided services to caretakers, including grief counseling, wanted to look at how caretakers and family members think or talk about grief and dying of an elderly patient.   After trying broad terms and got nothing, they tried phrases like "My elderly mother died of cancer."

Another way to play with key words is to add your organization's name or program, and the word "sucks" or other complaint word.   If you are a visual thinker, try the visual thesaurus to help you brainstorm.

Before You Use Tools, Think Offline

Remember that the more phrases and keywords you add, the more results you'll have to look at and that could get overwhelming if you're not using a professional tool.  So, if apply the so what test:

1.) List Your Keyword Phrase or Topic Word
2.) List 3 reasons why you're interested
3.) List 3 specific sub-topics or related ideas
4.) Review and pick the most relevant

Listening is only half, Connecting and Engaging is the other half

Unless your mission is to do market research and use listening techniques to feed research reports, you want to take the next step of actually engaging.

Danielle Brigida shared some wonderful insights about the other half of listening which is having that conversation.  "I spend a majority of my time listening and responding to questions, commenting on blogs, and tracking NWF's mentions and various programs. But also it's important to connect with people based on their interests (I will sometimes search twitter for "kids outside" and then compliment them on giving their kids a green hour!) 

This is probably where you're wondering about how to manage the work without getting information overload.  Amber Naslund from Radian 6 offers some good questions on how to manage the participation side of listening:

• Do we have to respond to EVERY brand mention?
• How much time does it take each day to do this?
• What’s the best way to handle negative comments? Ignore or engage?
• How does one person manage all of that information?
• How do we keep track of what happens after someone responds?
• Who should respond to brand mentions? What should they say?
• How will we know if all of this is making a lick of difference?

What else makes up listening literacy skills?  What are your stories about how your organization's listening literacy skills have returned value?

Updated:
Qui Diaz, The Big Dig: Online Research and Listening

She points to a few good posts on the value of connecting listening to action. Trust, Listening, and Doing Something by Valerie Maltoni
How To Survive A Social Media Revolt, by Mashable
In Social Media, Listening Is Only Half the Battle by Britopian

Comments

[Amber Naslund]

Beth,

Fantastic post, and some incredibly practical information about how to build effective searches.That's the cumbersome part for lots of people: what, exactly, should I look for? What I always suggest for people is to think outside the realm of communications, and across the company for how more intelligence can help all areas of the organization do their job better. Development, programs/services, even finance and operations. Inevitably, there are those "I really wish I knew what our community thought about..." questions that monitoring can sometimes help answer.

As for the engagement piece, there are no blanket answers, but there can be some helpful guidelines. I'm hoping to tackle more of these in future posts, based on what I'm hearing from organizations as well as my own experiences. Look forward to sharing those, and your insights on them too.

Best,
Amber

[Lucy Bernholz]

Beth
Great post! Someone once said (how's that for a reference) that if you want to know the future of your industry, 80% of what matters will come from other industries. In this regard, I think the tips you provide are right on, and the next step is how to apply these listening skills to the world beyond...our own organizations, our own industries, our own bubbles. Some of the tips still apply - just need different keywords or to "lurk" in different conversations.
As wonderful as social media and online tools are for listening to those we know, they are really expansive when it comes to broadening our conversations and opening our ears to others. This too takes some deliberate effort, but is well worth it when you're trying to manage for the present and peak around the corner a bit.
Lucy

[Sharon Wilson]

I enjoyed your post. Tips are right on the money. Thanks for sharing.

[Qui Diaz]

Ooooh we were channeling each other, I love it. "Pattern Analysis" is so treacherous sometimes!

Qui

[frank]

Beth, I really appreciate you breaking it down into simple steps. I REALLY think this is exactly the kind of practical information nonprofits and pretty much anyone else in the world needs when getting started with social media.

I talk a little about listening here:
http://budurl.com/gfwb

... People need to think about listening in social media just like in real life. Others want to be listened to and heard.

http://twitter.com/franswaa

[Miriam]

I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

Miriam

http://www.craigslistdecoded.info