Social Listening: Insights Worth Applying To Your Communication
Gary Vee & Social Listening
Gary Vee posted a blog coining the phrase Social Listening and spoke on his perspective, application and mindset towards digital mediums of communication. From a purely business perspective, it is an interesting take on the potential of digital mediums, the human touch he brings to a stereotypically labelled cold interaction and the applications for skilled digital communication strategies.
He describes social listening as the action you do through digital mediums to mimic the listening aspect of communication in conversation. Through digital media, many platforms and applications for these digital spaces primarily revolve around content creation or expression similar to a guy on the street with a megaphone (he's not there to listen).
He juxtaposes the online communication experience to a relatable in-person discussion. In the example, you overhear someone speaking in person about your brand. It is highly reasonable and understandable in an in-person context to engage with this customer, thank them for their patronage, and engage them in a conversation about the likes, dislikes and overall sentiment towards your brand and product. However, these type of interaction occurs online regularly but business owners are not necessarily seeing the potential interaction as similar. Gary Vee argues these two situations are two peas in a pod and should be approached similarly - introduce yourself and insert yourself as the business owner into these conversations.
Social Listening And Its Implications for Communication As a Whole
I would argue that social listening is an extension of normal listening, simply with different factors or priorities. Whereas a face-to-face interaction, listening and understanding values body language, intonation, the sound of the voice and what is said, digital interactions primarily rely on what is written, why it was written and how it was written.
I would argue that social listening is a boiled-down version of real-life conversation. Therefore, I think it's important to evaluate these nuggets of wisdom and apply them systematically into our own communication.
For example, Gary Vee raises an interesting point on the accessibility to customer pain points, discernment of company image health, access to influencers and ambassadors in the industry and the ability to connect with your customer base on a deeper level.
What I hear is the opportunity to engage in deliberate and intentional communication. How often do we participate in communication with others in face-to-face interactions with limited interest, limited effort and see it as an opportunity?
What is the opportunity, you ask? I'll tell you.
I think the online dynamics of digital communication are the following:
The text-based nature focuses on strong written communication skills. Learning to develop the craft of written expression is a means of better communicating your inner thoughts and feelings clearly. By extension, applying clear, concise and straightforward principles to your verbal communication develops your ability to surgically use the perfect word to describe your thoughts.
Joining a digital conversation and trying to listen involves actually listening to what they say and responding appropriately. People can smell BS easily and we've all seen the unwarranted hawking via email, youtube comment or Instagram post. They never listen but instead ceaselessly sell, sell, sell. It becomes tone-deaf because, without social listening, they do establish relationships or show a genuine interest in others.
Online conversations have accountability. Unlike real-life conversations, digital communication has a paper trail that can be audited. The advantage to this is as opposed to real-life situations where charismatic, personable favour may score you an advantage, digital text-based interactions are largely tethered to the content. I just imagine charismatic people with a limited contextual contribution to an in-person dominate an interaction purely because they are charming, confident and command attention. These skills do not transfer so well to text because the skills they rely on have limited sway online. Instead, conversations require intentional, genuine, and thought-provoking engagement. And best of all, it is very easy for people to refer back to previous statements. People can simply score up, read how a conversation was managing prior to an individual or talking point and compare that to after an individual or talking point was raised.
For example, my online comment that I would be posting every Sunday is now forever proven false, because this blog post is going up Monday instead. Now, I can give you all the reasons and so forth but you can follow the conversation or statements that I have made and make your own judgments.
Gary summarizes his takeaways as follows:
Social listening boils down to a few key things:
It eliminates the guesswork. When you’re actively listening, you don’t have to wonder what will resonate — you know, because you’ve been paying attention.
It allows you to join larger conversations. Social listening removes you from your brand bubble and lets you view things within the context of bigger cultural conversations. When you’re properly informed about your target audience’s values, interests, and concerns, you ensure that your brand remains relevant and conscious while avoiding missteps that could lead to a PR crisis.
It shows that you care. Consumer attention is a privilege, not a right. If you want to keep it, you have to actually give a damn about those you claim to serve…and the best service comes from listening.
Now how does this skill of social listening apply to improve your communication? From the perspective of a speech-language pathologist, here's what I think.
Social listening is a good way to practice communicating clearly and concisely via text.
You practice clear, straightforward communication with a character limit.
Spelling is less important, grammar is sometimes less important and instead, content and delivery are prioritized.
You have a wonderful audience to practice your written communication with. Participating in an online community allows for authentic interactions, the practice of vocabulary use that you are interested in and potentially hundreds and hundreds of people to DM to get feedback on whether they understood you.
Demonstrating a keen and genuine interest in others is important. It was raised as a point in Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People" and the sentiment is persistent and steadfast. Gary Vee takes the spin from an entrepreneurial perspective and argues the gratitude and appreciation that consumer attention is a privilege. My perspective as a communication specialist would be the notion that giving attention to others is a communicative act. When in the digital medium, body language and eye contact and such are not relevant but it means the insightfulness and thoughtfulness of your comments and questions communicates your investment in the conversation.
So what do you think about Social Listening? Do you think it's a revolutionary perspective or idea or are these tried and true principles to communication?