The lost art of listening - how do you manage?

Where the heck is our social media marketing eBook for the HR marketplace? I've been busting my own chops for me to get that dang thing done (as well as others at HRmarketer!). You'll finally see it in September, or my name is mud (and it isn't thankfully).

But whoa Nelly, just like you shouldn’t just jump right in set up a Twitter account and start tweeting randomly about your products and services, I couldn't just jump right in and tell you how to use Twitter without effectively using it for a while.

Right?

These online strangers don’t care about your products and services, nor do they care about me telling them how to tweet out of the gate.

You must first listen. Listen and learn. I pushed finishing the eBook out multiple times because I listened all summer to the smart social media marketing folk out there today.

While the eBook will be primarily about participating in the great online experimental conversation in order to organically generate more visibility, traffic and leads via content marketing, you need to answer some not-always-so-simple questions first:

• Who are my target influencers and buyers? (i.e. – HR, executive management, industry thought leaders)
• Where are my target influencers and buyers online? (i.e. – social networking services, professional networks)
• What are my objectives? (i.e. – drive blog readership, website traffic, content downloads, lead generation)
• Who in my organization will manage and measure your social media marketing efforts? (i.e. – marketing, business development, PR)
• Who in my organization will participate in your social media marketing efforts? (i.e. – marketing, business development, PR, executive management, other employees, all of the above)

If you’re already a successful business blogger with growing and participatory readership, then you know how important it is to know these answers, and it all plays the same in social media marketing.

It’s very important to define these answers and then start listening to your target influencers and buyers online:

• What are they talking about?
• What types of industry information are they sharing and why?
• What are the hot HR marketplace topics driving extended conversations?

Now, if you’ve answered all these questions, started listening and already have accounts set up in the relevant social networking channels, then you can skip ahead to conversational content marketing and reap the benefits therein.

More on that soon! In the meantime, how do you manage the lost art of listening?

Post by Kevin Grossman (join me on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn)