Comments on: Building Your Own Listening Post

By: Kyle James

Kyle James — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:17:39 +0000

Nice post Fienen. I wrote about this like a year and a half ago with much of what you said here, How to Monitor your Online Identity. Of course that being a while ago it was definitely time for a revision.

Like I tell people all the time that think with social media they have to be engaged. Not so. If your website sucks then the last thing you want to do is spend your time in Social Media and not making your website better NOW! So with that I tell people to do the following with social media:
1. Listen
2. Come up with appropriate content creation ideas (because nothing on the web is brand new and someone has probably already written it up nice and you just need to relate it to your audience)
3. (and a very distant 3rd) Engagement

By: Nick DeNardis

Nick DeNardis — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 16:35:06 +0000

For us, this is a must for not only image management but also to find student generated content.

On thing I would add also is searches for unique landmarks on your campus. Do some searching first but if you know your campus is the only one with “XYZ Hall” it can get you some results event if they don’t mention your institution’s name.

Also the tool we have like a lot is a Yahoo Pipe called “Social Media Firehose” which does quite a bit of what you’re describing with some filters and makes it into and RSS feed.

http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=f1ae63990f6d5b9e48ce807a77bb9995

By: TimN

TimN — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:16:02 +0000

Well said! I find Addictomatic to be a great listening post. I’ve learned about a lot of things going on at my college through it … which is not ideal but it’s something.

By: Michael Fienen

Michael Fienen — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:35:48 +0000

The great thing about this though is that there is a low amount of effort going in that results in good output. With a handful of clicks, you can show just how much stuff is out there and isn’t being utilized, without any real burden to do it. If you have no channels to put it to use in, you now have leverage to show that channels need to be established. You can go to Dept X or Office Y and say “Look, see how many people are talking about you? They have problems with A or are starved for B. How can we make it easy for you to engage these folks?” With they data in hand, you can show the need from the very start.

By: Jess

Jess — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:27:27 +0000

Great post, and a simple and easy to use listening strategy which everyone should do. My issue is what you allude to at the end – what do you do with this information. I come across many points that are inherently institutionalized and require big changes in the way things are done. Many wont be changed, and that, to me, is the biggest issue. Great research falls short if big change doesn’t come with it.