Social Listening

The old model of the static web site as an advertising medium where we talk and they listen is a dinosaur whose time has gone. There is no question that we need a web presence, however, we need to up our game to foster innovation and collaboration. We need to pay more attention to social media tools, like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, to turn communication into an interactive dialogue.

Organizations are learning how to productively engage their end users much earlier in the process to co-create game-changing products and services that are intuitive and meet newly identified needs.

Speeding Up the Learning Curve

The manufacturing industry has traditionally lagged behind other industries in bringing their social media and Internet platforms together to create a space for listening to the customers and end users. And while the technology is fairly easy to master, the listening part is where I often see disconnects. One recent survey revealed that a significant fraction of manufacturing web site content is focused on their company information rather on the needs of the customer.

Understanding the role social media and crowdsourcing plays in the manufacturing company’s overall strategy is beginning to pick up speed, as more companies realize the value of social marketing.

The best place to begin is not with our own ideas, but with theirs. What is the No. 1 need of each stakeholder group? How are we delivering — and not delivering — what they are looking for? Getting to these answers isn’t easy, but that’s where social media tools can help. Your customers are engaging in many different social arenas, and more companies are looking to enter into those circles with them.

Companies of many sizes are reaching out to consumers through social media vehicles to empower them to create and build products and help them take their niche products mainstream.

Bringing End Users In

Years ago we never gave much thought to putting LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook into the innovation toolbox, but now you are at a disadvantage if you don’t use these tools to build stronger innovation engines. There are many examples of companies that are leveraging social media to better listen to their customers and successfully drive their growth strategy.

IBM is encouraging employees and even external partners to collaborate on new ideas and innovation through their internal Facebook-like application called SocialBlue. Hundreds of employee-hosted internal blogs are buzzing about the latest discovery or product design, and while bloggers are responsible for their individual content and keeping proprietary information under wraps, pretty much anything else goes.

When the food giant Kraft Foods wanted to get serious about crowdsourcing for customer ideas, it launched innovatewithkraft.com and created a toolkit for customer idea competitions, which resulted in some new-to-market products and packaging like the easy-open Oreo Snack ‘n Seal package and the Maxwell House Flavor Lock Lid.

Hallmark has been actively stimulating co-creation through its web site where customers can interact with the company and compete in card design contests for cash prizes. Today in many of the larger card shops you can check out many of those creative consumer card designs.

Smart companies like those mentioned above are fostering collaborative conversations to harness the creativity of their suppliers, customers and consumers and forever change their relationships with stakeholders. If you haven’t started already, now is the time to begin developing your social media strategy, because we all know what happened to the dinosaurs.