Throw Them Out of the Party
It’s barbeque season, and there are few things I like better than a good barbeque. But what happens if you are at a neighborhood barbeque and you realize a group of neighbors is talking about your hospital or health system. What do you do?
As best as I can figure it, you have four options:
- Walk away and ignore it.
- Mosey on over and see if you can learn anything from the discussion.
- After listening for a while, maybe offer a piece of information or perspective that might be helpful.
- If they are talking negatively about your hospital, throw them out of the party.
Okay, ignore that last one. It’s not really an option, even if it’s your barbeque. But I won’t embarrass anybody who might have chosen option #1. No self-respecting marketing or communications professional would walk away from such a terrific opportunity to get the pulse of the community.
On the other hand, maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised, since most clients we talk to don’t have any formal process for monitoring what’s being said about them on the Web.
A 2008 study by the Aberdeen Group benchmarking “best in class” companies found that 65% of them have formal processes for monitoring social media. That means more than one-third of “best in class” companies are walking away from that conversation and not even bothering to listen.
What about you? We happen to offer such a service, but there are plenty of choices. There are even some free tools that will do some cursory “listening” for you. But do something. They are talking about you!
Neal,
I think you are mostly right. Any time a person has a negative experience or impression of what we do, especially in social media, we have an opportunity to respond. We don’t want to control conversation, but we want to influence what is being said about us.
I believe that response is almost always the best way to go… almost always. What about people who have dedicated themselves to trolling sites in order to pick a fight and for no other reason? How about someone who is doing it just for a prank or joke? In those cases, responding could hurt your professionalism, and certainly will not influence the conversation.
Of course, we always want to fix factual errors and look for unhappy customers so that we can influence their experience and hopefully learn from the mistake so no one else goes through the same experience. However, I think it’s important to take into account that response is not always the best policy.
I always go back to the U.S. Air Force Blog Assessment chart. When I first saw it, I thought it was ridiculous. Do we really need a flow chart? But as I understood social media better, the flow chart and considerations it raises really makes sense to large corporations (especially). Here’s a link: http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/photos/uncategorized/2009/01/06/air_force_blog_char.jpg
Thanks for sharing the flow chart. Very useful, indeed. And we agree 100%. The problem is too many aren’t even monitoring what’s being said. You need to listen first, and then decide if you should respond.