Learning How To Listen
While this week’s Facebook module is all about the type of content you should be publishing and pushing out to your community, this week’s Twitter content is all about listening to your community, learning what they want, and discovering the best way to communicate with them.
What many people do not understand about social media and the new Internet is that it’s all about listening. Of course, the content you choose to publish to your Twitter and Facebook accounts is important, but if you don’t listen before publishing your content, you’re never going to have the amount of social media success I know you want to have.
Social media is not about a one-way message from your school or business to your parents, teachers and students (although some schools do choose to use it that way) or customers. Instead, social media gives your community the ability to talk back, share their ideas and express their concerns. This, of course, can be scary for school officials and business owners, but if you truly want to succeed with social media use, you’ve got to accept that this is a reality. And once you do accept that social media use is as much about listening as it is about publishing great content, then your community will grow, you’re trust and credibility within the community will expand, and everyone involved will be grateful that you stepped back and took the time, not just to push out irrelevant content, but to actually hear what your community wanted in the first place.
That said, this week’s module is all about discovering what your customers and community members want and learning from other Twitter users, so that you can work to start giving your local community the information and the resources they most desire.
But before we get into all this, let me tell you a story.
When I was in college I took a class about Microeconomics. On the first day of class, my professor – a short aging man with white hair and thick rimmed glasses, came wobbling into the room, put his briefcase down on the desk and began to speak in a deep baritone voice.
“I’ve been teaching this class for a number of years,” he said, “and I know that once this class is over, you won’t remember 99% of what I’ve shared with you.”
The class erupted in laughter, exchanging excited glances back and forth at the absolute truth our new professor was spewing.
“But if there’s one thing I want you to remember from this class,” he continued, “It’s that when people have a decision to make they ALWAYS act in their best interest. They don’t care about you. They don’t care about your family. They don’t care about the amount of work it’s going to take in order for you to get the job done. All they care about are the things that are going to benefit them and the people in their lives.”
The class continued giggling, but we all knew our elderly professor was serious.
And he was, in fact, not joking around!
On the last day of class we were handed our final exams and three hours passed as we nervously spewed out the knowledge gained from the last 16 weeks of classes. But then, just five minutes before the test came to and end, on the very last page of the test, I saw the final question:
“What is the one thing I want you to remember from this class?”
Needless to say, I’ve never forgotten the lesson I learned that semester. And neither should you!
As we move forward in the course here, it’s important that you keep this lesson in mind. When you go to publish something to your website, blog, Twitter account, Facebook Page or anywhere else… ask yourself, “Does my community really want to know about this? Is this going to be important to my customers, teachers, students, parents or community members? Or am I just publishing this because it makes ME feel good? Makes ME look good? Or makes ME look knowledgeable?
The difference between the two is tremendous… and the power gained from giving your community what they want is substantial.
Click here to go to the next Twitter Module.
Send all questions to contact@socialmediaschools.com and we will respond within 24 hours!
