BroadVision Marketing Blog

Have you been in business all your life, but are new to social media? Have requests from your clients (or your kids) forced you into the 21^st Century kicking and screaming? Does the terminology turn you to jelly or send you reaching into the liquor closet or the chocolate box or both?

Believe it or not much of this is so new that it’s just as new to the young entrepreneur as well.

Let’s just look at some of the current terms and see if we can’t turn them into plain language.



What is with this social media business? Why can’t I just keep doing my ads the old way only put them on the computer?

Have you ever wanted to be a fly on the wall in your store and hear what people are saying about your product? Have you ever taken a call from a very angry customer and wondered what went wrong?

Social media can turn you into that fly. It can help you get a problem worked out before it becomes a massive disaster. What you need to do is realize that you can create a “social listening strategy” and hear the "Voice of the Client (VOC)."

Social listening has never been more necessary. Brands that listen and respond to customers are ahead of the competition. You will find the conversations that you seek on Facebook and Twitter primarily. So there are some things you need to do to have a social listening strategy that works

One of the main ways you will hear the VoC is to have someone designated to do the listening. This person should be in front of your social media dashboard every day and be empowered to react or get in touch with your organization immediately.

Another thing to do is to start now, today, as soon as possible. As your company grows, the social media becomes filled with noise that has nothing to do with the VoC, but is hard to clear away. The fewer fans you have, the easier it will be to identify brand advocates, people who love your product and mention it. Some companies even have hyper-engaged fans who write blogs about their favorite place or product. You want to find these people and foster good relationships with them.

Not everything is of equal weight. Your employee will have to learn to focus on the right conversations and react at once to conversations that are relevant to your audience. If your customers are middle-aged women, who are taking over Facebook, you need to have a middle-aged woman listening in and responding.

There are getting to be more ways to get this information from programs available on the internet. These programs should provide tracking data to look at performance over time as well as diagnostic data to look at specific issues.  Remember that you still need that live person available to respond to people in real time.

Related articles

• Social Media: How to Listen (servantofchaos.com)


• Using Social Media and Online Surveys Together Leads to Engagement and Growth (blogs.constantcontact.com)