Listen or Lose Out

We all know the importance of listening. How will you know what people are saying about your organization if you are not taking the time to listen to them? Today, listening is not only important; it is vital. 

Most organizations use online monitoring systems such as Google alerts to keep track of relevant mentions of brands, products, topics and people. If mentioned on any website or social media community, an alert is sent to the organization. Not all of this information will be relevant to specific functions of the organization, but it is vital for them to be monitored.

Listening to your followers on Twitter is practical, but difficult. Listening to your influencers on Twitter by scrolling through your newsfeed is time consuming and inopportune. Organizations utilizing tools such as TweetDeck or Hootsuite can filter the streams and target influencers more quickly and efficiently.

Listening is vital. As discussed in “Share This” by CIPR, “PR practitioners must therefore ensure that they have invested the time in identifying which significant media influencers to their organization’s objectives are among them, and ensure that they have the skills, knowledge and systems in place to effectively listen and potentially engage with them in this dynamic medium” (Pg. 135). If organizations do not listen, they could potentially miss out on important conversations about their brand.