Can’t do a Dell Listening Room? You don’t need to.

So the trick is not in collecting the data - but the way it is distributed. Many can collect (to varying degrees), but very few can do anything about it properly (i..e respond in a timely, valueable fashion). This video has been around for a while, but it is a great indicator of how things could be done:

Remember, there are all manner of listening tools out there, free and paid (some good, some great, some utter pants), but it’s not what’s out there that makes the difference, it’s what you do with it. Here’s a few starter points about how to get going:

1) Define your tool reach - be happy that that the terms and brands you are monitoring for are accurate and relevant. The last thing you want to do is have a monitoring system that pulls in almost no, or even worse, largely irrelevant findings.

2) Establish benchmarks - I’d bet that almost all your metrics will have little historical value - but be patient, they will. Volumes, frequency, media type and sentiment (and more) will all become useful metrics for various objectives over time. Stick with them, they will help determine who, where and how long you spend on it all.

3) Understand - be clear broadly, then very specifically, what the key issues are (and opportunities) for which area of the business. This will lead you directly to the area(s) of the business most needing to be kept abreast of live events.

4) Organise - Until it becomes part of everyone’s, everyday job, make sure you establish a working party of key individuals within the business - remember, you are telling them what needs to be fixed/changed - they are the ones needed to implement those changes. Begin to develop a process by which the fixers (from point 2), will eventually become the listeners, capable of then reporting those changes themselves.

Organising your business for social media management is going to be a big task, and I wager, will set the fake guru’s out from people who really understand what business is all about. Understanding your landscape is the key.