ENGL 111.301 is a course offered by the Department of English at the University of Pennsylvania. If that doesn't surprise you then the course title will: "Wasting Time on the Internet." Participants are required to spend three hours each day in front of their laptops or tablets just wandering aimlessly across their social media feeds and whatnot.
There is a catch, though. At the end of the course they need to be able to convert all of this social media wandering into a significant literary work. Apparently, Facebook news feeds, tweet streams, idle chatting and other mindless explorations on the Web make for legit literary inspiration.
Could this type of mindless wandering also benefit your business? UPenn's course is deliberately exaggerated, of course. But spending an hour or two each day combing through the right social status feeds can actually prove useful for your online business.
It's called social media listening, or sometimes social media monitoring, and it aims to give you valuable information and actionable insights about the people you want to do business with. And, yes, it does involve reading social media feeds, blog posts and forum comments.
But while the UPenn course exercise is a random trek through the online landscape, social media listening is deliberate and focused. While the college course aims to stimulate literary creativity, for you the aim is to derive clues to the sentiments of your target markets.
The great thing about social media listening is that it isn't rocket science. It's literally just listening to the sentiments of the people who patronize your business. The popular bourbon manufacturer Maker's Mark once announced that it would be diluting its product.
This immediately kicked up a howl of protest tweets from its loyal patrons, some of whom threatened to boycott the brand altogether if it pushed through with its plan.
Maker's Mark listened, got the message and immediately overturned its original announcement, assuring people that it would not push through with these plans. It even capitalized on the incident by adjusting its advertising to acknowledge that the company was on the same page as its loyal fans.
Here are the takeaways from the Maker's Mark experience.
Seek first to understand. Maker's Mark heard a torrent of sentiment and understood that it was not just one voice whining about their plans. The feedback helped them see the big picture and adjust their actions to avert a trend that could negatively affect their brand.
Place things in context. Maker's Mark clearly saw that people were not simply venting out their opinions to their friends; people were actually reaching out to them to voice their displeasure at what they intended to do. The company was able to understand the right context of people's reactions, and so the consequent response was also made in the same context.
Respond by providing value. Because they understood the message and its context, Maker's Mark was able to come up with an appropriate corrective course of actions that honored and upheld the value perceived by their loyal patrons. Maker's Mark drinkers wanted 45% alcohol, so the company assured them that's what they would get.
Reinforce the relationship. Maker's Mark made it clear that it related to its audiences and even adjusted its advertising to say that the customers spoke and they listened.