Me Talking About Listening. Oh, The Irony!

Not that they'll do you a tremendous amount of good, being all static and with bullet points that were intended to be more evocative than information, but I thought I'd put up my slides from the other night's AAF Triad event. Who knows! Maybe one of you will find them useful anyway.

So here's the presentation along with some short captions to give you the basic talking points:

My title says it all. For most businesses, our primary concern is interact well with our customers without it blowing up into some embarrassing incident. It's a legitimate worry, given the history of the Internet and well worth keeping in mind.

Alex Bogusky's famous Twitter quote helps to put things in perspective. I used it to set up my next slide about no one being an "expert" yet.

I was worried this was a little too negative sounding, but afterward it was one of the most talked about slides. People appreciated the fact that the true experts are loathe to call themselves experts yet. This is new for everyone. The slide helped to set aside the intimidation factor.

This key point is essential to hammer home. Whether you want to participate or not, the online conversation about your brand will be happening. Admittedly to varying degrees, but it will be happening. So your choice is not whether your company will be impacted by social media, but whether you will hear it and maybe even help shape what is being discussed.

If you read my blog, you know all these points already. This is just a short list of benefits to be derived by a brand that chooses to engage in the online conversation.

I love this quote by Peter Shankman. (Probably paraphrased, so sorry Peter.) It captures the real role of social marketing, which is not to push communications, but to foster environments where your customers can converse about you.

This slide is a staple of every client discussion I've ever had. It all starts and ends with listening. The more you can get out of the way, the better. Listening must be the foundation of any social platform you build.

This is a rundown of the basic elements of fact finding within an organization. My emphasis is on using social marketing techniques on your own organization before turning them loose on the world. Listen to the concerns and needs of every department, especially legal. And engage in healthy discussions. This will raise up those individuals within the organization who can be recruited to lead the social effort. The object is to decentralize and see how deeply the social marketing effort can permeate the organization. This will guide you in determining what can and can't be done as the effort starts.

My final slide highlights the things that everyone always calls "social marketing." For me, these are the things that need to be shelved until you see how willing your organization is to embrace the effort and understand how your customer's would prefer to converse with you.

So that's it in a nutshell. Can you believe that filled a half hour. Admittedly, you're not seeing all the cool builds and the high-energy Bobness. But maybe one day.