Listening

Social media is about conversations. As with any good discussion, a critical component of the online conversation is listening.

In the social media context, "listening" is knowing what people are saying about your organization online. It's also about "hearing" the issues that your stakeholders think are important so that you are able to participate in online conversations and respond effectively.

Listening is important because it helps you...

Understand the needs/issues/concerns of your consumers
Address perceptions (positive and negative) about your organization.
Understand how to best serve your various stakeholders (consumers, staff, funders, etc.)
Stay on top of developments and news in your field and in your occupation (it's a GREAT staff development tool).

Listening isn't just about seeing what people are saying about your organization online. They may not be saying anything. Listening is also about "finding relevant conversations from within the communities you serve and understanding how those impact your (organization) and its growth potential. Listening is a holistic activity with great potential to bring you intelligence, insight, and focus for your social media efforts." (from Listening When No One's Talking (About You, Anyway). Listening can also provide insight about how you can better serve your community and your various stakeholders offline.

Nonprofit Examples of How Listening Returns Value - from Beth Kanter

Getting Ready to Listen

From Getting Your Nonprofit Ready to Listen - by Beth Kanter

Why are you listening?

Here are a few conversation starters that you may want to have with your social media team on staff to help you prioritize your listening.

What are people saying about our organization ("brand")?
Are there negative issues/complaints that we need to correct?
Is there an articulated need that we can help fulfill?
Are there insights we can gather than can help us improve a program?
What do they like or dislike about your program or service?
What ideas might they offer for new services or marketing/fundraising campaigns?
Who are the influential voices in the social media space covering your issue area or topical domain?
What communities have already formed on social media outposts around our organization, issue, or topic area? Does it make sense for us to maintain a presence there?

List Five Ways You Plan To Use the Information

It is important to link your listening to actual decisions or action. Next, have a brainstorm session with your team about how you will use what you learn. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Internal Process

There are many different ways that you can organize your listening.

Who in the organization will do the listening?
Who is empowered to do the responding?
What is your policy about responding?
Do you have to respond to every comment?
How much time will you allocate to listening every day?
How will you share the information with your team?
Not everyone has to do the deep dive or heavy lifting, how will you organize your team effort?
How will you analyze the results of what you heard, analyze patterns, and share insights?
How will we you know if listening has be useful?

Developing Your Listening Literacy Skills

by Beth Kanter of Beth's Blog

Keywords Are King: Composing and refining keywords - Search for:

Organization 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

Seeing the Forest Through The Trees: Pattern analysis and synthesis of findings. Summarize your findings and look for trends and patterns in what you're hearing:

What words and themes keep coming up?
Where are the sources of the most comment and discussion? (i.e., certain blogs, Twitter, Facebook?)
What are people's concerns?
What are people excited about?
Using Numbers To Harvest Insights by Beth Kanter
Visualizing Data to Trigger Insights by Beth Kanter

Engaging effectively: Don't just listen unless your mission is market research

Respond to what you hear - comment back on a blog, retweet, etc.
Ask questions to clarify
Share information and links to answer questions
Help people find information they're looking for
Refer to services or programs

Information Coping Skills: Avoiding information overload

Avoid using generic keywords - that just increases the noise
Use RSS to manage the information coming in
Assign staff to manage this who are comfortable managing information and using social media (often younger staff are able to do this well)

Google Alerts: The Simplest Way to Listen Online

With Google Alerts, you can have keyword searches delivered directly to your email inbox. You can see what's being said on websites, blogs, newsites, etc.

Good keywords to search on are:

Your organization's name
Names of key people in your organization and in your field
Keywords related to your field (i.e., "Centers for Independent Living," "Disabilities," etc.)
Keywords related to areas of professional interest (i.e., "Marketing, "Nonprofit Fundraising," etc.)

Setting Up a Google Alert

RSS: "Read Me Some Stories"

Online, the bedrock of listening is a tool called RSS or "Real Simple Syndication." This is a technology that allows people to subscribe to be notified when new content is added to a website. Rather than you needing to visit a site to see if something new has been posted, you can sign up for what's called a "feed."

Reading Your Feeds

There are two ways for you to get feeds.

Email Subscriptions - Many sites allow you to sign up through an email subscription. Look for a link that says "Email subscription" or "sign up for email notification" or something similar. Blogs, in particular, will often allow this option.
RSS Aggregator or "Feed Reader" - While blogs and some websites provide an option for an email subscription, to get full use of RSS feeds you have to use something called an RSS Aggregator. Just as you need an email program like Outlook to read your emails, the RSS Aggregator (also known as a "Feed Reader" is what allows you to be able to collect and read the new materials you're subscribing to.

Where Do I Get an RSS Aggregator or Feed Reader?

There are a number of free, online RSS readers you might want to consider using. Below we list some popular readers and include some links to instructions on how to work with them.

Netvibes RSS Reader
- FAQs on Using Netvibes
- Video on How to Set Up a Netvibes Page - This video walks you through creating a Netvibes page.
- Trick Out Your Netvibes
Google Reader RSS Reader
- Google Reader Instructions
- Google Reader Video Tutorial (no captions)
Bloglines RSS Reader
- Using Bloglines Tutorial
- Bloglines FAQs

How to Find Feeds

Each Feed Reader has its own protocol for adding feeds, so you'll want to get familiar with the procedures for your feed reader. As you surf the web, look for sites you like and then look for the words "feed," "RSS feed," "Subscribe" or similar terms. This means this is a site that you can subscribe to, so click on the link for further instructions.

Blogs - Here are some blogs you may want to visit and add to your own feed reader.
Twitter Feeds - You can also search Twitter for keywords through Twitter Search. Once you set up your search terms, you can sign up for the feeds to those terms. This is a link to a Twitter search on the term "disabilities."
Social Bookmarks - Delicious is a social bookmarking site. (Definition of a social bookmarking site). Look for "tags" ( Definition of tags) that are related to topics that interest you. You can then sign up for the feed to that tag by scrolling to the bottom of the tags you want to follow and clicking on "RSS Feed for These Bookmarks."