Things seem to have settled out in our transition of this blog over to WordPress. We’ve been repairing a few breaks from the move of 5+ years of posts. We don’t have them all but hopefully most. I appreciate any feedback you have on the new site as we continue to tweak and settle in to the new platform.
Valve magazine recently published an article I wrote, Is Listening Online Worth Your Time?
The premise is that companies are finding it in their interest to listen to what’s being said about the company and their brands since their customers have more ways to openly express their thoughts and feelings than ever–Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, online communities, blog comments, etc. And with smart phones the barrier to publish these thoughts becomes lower and lower.
We all own our own personal brand. I believe it’s important that we find ways to listen to what’s being said about us and our key areas of expertise. I wrote:
By staying in tune with what’s said, you can discover others who share your expertise. Then, by building a peer-to-peer network, you can grow this expertise and extend it into new areas… if you know what somebody is saying about you, you have an opportunity to build on it, or if it’s something negative, correct the record.
I shared some ways to do this listening from using Google email alerts and RSS search subscriptions to joining LinkedIn Groups in your areas of expertise and filtering the massive Twitter stream with expertise-related keyword searches.
Here’s my parting thought from the article [hyperlinks added]:
Even if you don’t become the world’s greatest online listener, I hope you’ll try a few of the ideas offered in this article. If you do find yourself exploring the social media world, let’s connect in LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook or wherever we happen to cross virtual paths.
