When it comes to sites like Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace everyone is heavily involved in one activity, and it's got nothing to do with buying stuff. On social networks people are having conversations, countless studies have shown people go to these wildly popular websites to talk with friends, keep tabs on long lost pals, and enjoy the fruits of conversation in the digital age. Doing such things as trading pictures, favorite songs, and even products are all done at the click of a button.
So how does a company enter the conversation when its agenda clearly conflicts with that of the typical user? The answer is simpler than most would believe, through listening. The most powerful brands on social networks listen first, engage second, and lastly broadcast any marketing messages to users on social networking sites like Twitter.
Obviously listening in the most literal sense of the term is out of the question, since most computers don't talk. So the term listen is really defined in the context of to read carefully what others are saying about your brand, your business field, and your industry at large, before reaching out to them.
Fortunately social network websites have made listening for companies an easily achievable feat, largely through the robust search features offered on the websites. With Twitter for example one can easily find mentions of their brand by using the Search.Twitter.com tool. Facebook offers a similar search tool to allow users to search for brand mentions, conversations about a given brand, and so forth.
The idea here is simple, the more you listen, the more you will be able to accurately engage with users on these networks on a level that is comfortable to them. It truly is a numbers game, the more time spent listening to people on these networks the more value your brand is gaining in their minds, even if your response is a simple thank you, or recognition of the comment from a company standpoint.
Arguably the most valuable brand in the world is Coca Cola, worth billions of dollars in brand equity alone. Several weeks ago a Twitter message broadcast from my personal account was responded to by Coca Cola within an hour. Two striking things about this interaction stand out. First, the fact that a billion dollar company was as intimate with a single customer as to respond within an hour to a message posted on Twitter shows how committed they are to this effort. Secondly, a company that could virtually invest in any technology to market their product chooses the social network Twitter as the place they wanted to be omnipresent on.
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