The Importance of Listening

When it comes to social media we often focus on metrics. The hard facts and numbers seem to be most helpful for growth into the future, and analysts go through these statistics to pull them apart in depth. While these factors are an important piece of the puzzle, we must remember the importance of listening to our audience and their responses to content. Through listening we are able to find inspiration for future campaigns and moves within the social media world. Stakeholder input on channels such as Facebook and Twitter display the heart of what they want to see from a given brand or company. 

Think of it this way, over the past few years in my time as a student at Ohio Northern University there has been a lot of social media content regarding our poor wifi and having a very outdated app for students to use. The marketing and communications team for the university saw that we were unhappy, and dedicated time and money into creating a new and innovative app for us to connect with not only our professors, but also each other. Without students speaking out and giving ideas for this new platform, the creative team wouldn't have had as much inspiration and help in identifying the things that we were most passionate about in terms of creating the new app. 

Listening to your stakeholders is crucial when trying to use social media to improve a company's image and overall reputation. In order to satisfy their needs in the future, you must be able to listen to the opinions that they have currently regarding your content and how they would like to see it change. We can learn a lot if we just take the time to listen to one another.