Another good read, this one on Twitter and by Neal Wiser (@nealwiser), found via LinkedIn’s “Twitter Power for Business” group.

If you’ve yet to Tweet, it may make Twitter seem a bit overwhelming. But I believe it’s good to understand a tool and know why you’re implementing it (even if it’s because everyone else is, although I don’t recommend that as your driving factor) before you start.

The article is a bit long, but it gives you an idea of Twitter’s “growing pains” and what that means for users. The point I agree with most is the need for advanced filtering to give a little structure to the “raw barrage of noise assaulting the user,” as described by the author.

Twitter Fatigue: Rumors of Twitter’s Demise May Not Be Exaggerated

A post on the “Twitter Power for Business” group on LinkedIn led me to a short-but-sweet overview by David Griner of the top seven objections companies use when defending their decision not to enter the social media world. I like the article because it states the fears, and then provides two one-word responses — a blunt version and a practical one.

Read “Fear & Loathing of Social Media” (Kuno Creative)

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High quality listening is always important.

It’s even more important when people are stressed, as so many people are in the current economy. People are distracted, and getting more so. Listening skills are tested, sometimes to the breaking point.

In a recent brief exchange on Twitter, one writer lamented the loss of good listening skills. Here was his quick comment:

(Large coffee purveyor to remain unnamed here), “why oh why do you always insist on putting whipped cream on my drinks, even though I explicitly say no whipped cream?”

I laughed to myself, and had to respond, based on my own experience.

“Like so many things, gets down to whether they’re doing real or artificial listening.” Then I added in the 140-character limitations of Twitter-speak, “There’s nothing like deeply artificial listening to set off entire chain of events that leads nowhere grand. For co. or cust.”

He wrote back, “I’ve never heard of ‘artificial listening,’ but I like the phrase, and it’s exactly what they were doing.”

I closed with the thought that I’d love to improve the circumstance if I could. He wrapped with, “me too. Until then, I guess I’ll get whipped cream on all my coffees. ”

You, too, know those daily experiences as a customer, “Why can’t they just listen – really listen to me?”

And so, some – well, maybe all of us – could use a listening skills tune-up.

If that’s true for you (don’t rely on your own judgment on this one. Ask a friend or family member or two who will be honest with you), here are a few resources you can use:

Active Listening
Empathic Approach, Listening First Aid

What resources can you add to help people improve their listening skills?

There’s a lot riding on it.

Many of our members and affiliates know WIC through our virtual offerings: our community, member and off-topic lists, our teleseminars and webinars, etc.

For those of you who haven’t been to one of our regular monthly meetings, here’s a big secret. You’re missing out on one of the best features of WIC.

Monthly meetings are held on the third Thursday of the month, alternating between Quadrus in Menlo Park and Michael’s @ Shoreline in Mountain View, every month except December, when we have our annual gala holiday party at a location to be announced. Check the website for the schedule.

Some people come to these meetings for our outstanding selection of speakers, which in the past has included such favorites as Million Dollar Consultant Alan Weiss, speaking dynamo Patricia Fripp, marketing maven Robert Middleton, speakers on a wide variety of topics like closing business (an important focus!), as well as panels of experts on blogging and social media, corporate clients, and trends in consulting. Then there’s our special Members-Only June meeting, which focuses on the results of our annual Consultant Compensation survey. We always have a capacity crowd for that one.

Others come for the great networking and connection with the WIC community that happens at each meeting. We have both informal and formal networking time, which gives you a chance to meet new people in the WIC community and reconnect with old friends and colleagues.

Still others come for our well-known Silent Auctions, where we offer you the chance to bid on a variety of fun and creative prizes, including food and goodie baskets and unique services. This year we’ll be holding two Silent Auction events: April, at Quadrus, and September, at Michael’s.

WIC members have the option to buy a discounted annual meal pass, which includes 11 dinners, or to pay for only the events they want to attend. Affiliates and guests can purchase a seat for any of our events, except the members-only compensation survey meeting in June and the holiday party in December.

Because I feel so strongly about the value of our monthly meetings, I’m making a special offer to non-WIC members. If you are not already a WIC member and you have not attended a monthly meeting, I’d like to invite you to attend one meeting as my guest.

To take advantage of this offer, email me at linda@popky.com and tell me which meeting you’d like to attend. June and December meetings are available to members only, so you may want to choose to attend  in April and May so that you can consider joining WIC before June.

Hope to see all of you at a WIC meeting soon. Our upcoming speakers are exciting. Check out the website for more details!

I recommend reading “7 Things I Learned Online that I Use at Work” by Valeria Maltoni on Social Media Today. A nice common-sense read like Jen Berkley’s latest post, “Encourage Your Clients to Talk to Their Customers…Now More Than Ever!”

Why do I like these two posts? They focus on basic communication principals. In Jen’s, it’s talking to our clients about what they want — common sense, but not common practice, as Jen writes. In Valeria’s post, it’s about talking to customers within existing tools the same way you would using social media. Simplistic? Yes. Always done? No.

“7 Things I Learned Online that I Use at Work”

“It’s not necessary to launch a full social media marketing campaign to get the benefits of new ways of talking with customers and colleagues.

“Every company already has the tools it needs to do that — they’re called marketing communications, public relations, and customer service. They are each powerful when the proper definitions are used.

“Think about it — put the relations back in with public, the communications back into marketing, and the service for customers. To help either reinforce or create a community, all you need to do is listen, hear, act on what you’ve heard, repeat.

“I can assure you I’m fully aware that it sounds simplistic. Yet, whenever things get out of hand, one should step back and return to basics.”

1. Ideas come from anywhere
2. Sharing and deciding are not the same thing
3. Talking needs to be paired with doing
4. Simple does not mean easy
5. Transparency is key
6. The currency of modern business is adaptability
7. Sometimes doing more means accomplishing less

Read Valeria’s full article

Business is brisk for me…I feel grateful!  But I wasn’t expecting this…I was hunkering down like everyone else, looking for ways to find new customers and slim down on the overhead…(haven’t stopped either of those, by the way!).

I recently talked to some of my clients (who had come to me for help with customer surveys and interviews) about why were considering talking to their customers and getting their input so important right now?  I knew that their organizations were tightening their belts in order to save jobs and keep their businesses afloat.  Why was getting customer input a big focus in the midst of all that?

What I heard made so much sense…I wish I had thought of it myself!

These clients consider the act of talking to their customers and making decisions with their customers in mind to be KEY to their survival of this crazy economy…their customers are having to do their own tough analysis of costs and are looking for ways to cut costs.  My clients want to be partners in that process vs. just wait for the fallout to see how things turn out.  They want to make their OWN decisions about what to cut by focusing on the activities that provide less value to their customers. They don’t want to make mistakes and alienate their customers.

They consider talking to their customers a key survival strategy.  See my recent paper, 7 Reasons to Talk to Your Customers in a Bad Economy, for more information about WHY your clients should be talking to their customers.

Below are ideas about HOW they can talk to their customers…some they may already be doing…others may be good additions to the mix:

• Personal calls from upper management, salespeople, support staff
• Customer surveys
• Questions/conversations during support calls
• Conducting an ongoing customer loyalty monitoring effort
• Monitoring and commenting on existing blogs and discussion boards where their customers are talking about your client and their products
• Monitoring Twitter for comments about their company and its products

Help your clients get started…encourage them to call a customer today and see what is on their mind…they’ll be glad you did!  (I sure was…)

MB Deans, a Women in Consulting member and a friend in my Facebook network, asked me a great question on Facebook in response to my “Skeptic’s View of Social Media” post:

“Great perspective. I agree; you can’t NOT communicate…. (Or you can, and let your customers and competitors do it for you.) Are social media just another channel, or are they really something new and reshaping communication?”

My quick answer: yes to both — social media is another channel and it’s reshaping communication.

The question and my answer remind me of a similar question I was given in college for a classical rhetoric midterm: Does Aristotle think rhetoric is ethical or unethical? During review prep, I asked my professor, “What if you think the answer is neither?” To which, she replied, “Great, I’d love to hear more about it. Build your argument.”

At the time, this annoyed me to no end, because I wanted to be told what the correct information was so I could spit it back out on the test and get an “A” just like kids are trained to do through most of their schooling. In hind site, it’s the best learning experience that I’ve ever had (thanks Anne!), because she taught me to:

1. Think critically, don’t just absorb ideas
2. Develop well-reasoned, well-supported arguments
3. Not be afraid to go outside established parameters

How does this story relate? Because my answer was that Aristotle didn’t think of rhetoric as ethical or unethical, but rather as a tool that could be used ethically or unethically. Similarly, social media is a channel, just another channel. However, that channel has the capacity to reshape communication, just like other new communication channels that marked a dramatic departure from the status quo: the printing press, radio, television….

As a channel, social media shouldn’t be ignored. Social media should be assessed like any other channel for effectiveness with your target audience. If you decide it’s a good fit, it should be entered into with the same level of commitment that you give any other channel, and it should be integrated with your overall communication strategy.

As a dramatic departure from the status quo, social media demands your attention. Follow it. Assess it. Keep track of what’s happening, because at some point it may impact your business. As I mentioned in my “Skeptic’s View” post, you don’t have to like social media, but you should pay attention to it. Time will tell whether it’s life-altering or a fad; but if it’s the former, you don’t want to be left completely out to dry. So keep tabs of what’s happening where, make decisions based on you and your audience and not just what’s the latest and greatest, and don’t ignore it just because you don’t like it or think it’s just for kids.

A side note on MB’s statement, “…you can’t NOT communicate…. or you can, and let your customers and competitors do it for you;” I think this underscores a core characteristic of social media that you don’t control — nor should you try to control — the conversation. Just because you’re not participating doesn’t mean your customers and competitors aren’t. Nice point MB!

I have a slightly different take on the “you can’t NOT communicate.” Even when you do or say nothing, you’re still sending a message by the very act of not doing or saying anything.

So, let the discussion begin…. Of course, I would rather have the discussion face to face over tea or wine or at WIC meeting featuring a panel debating the topic….

I must confess that I grudgingly signed up for many of the social media tools. They simply aren’t the way I prefer to communicate. At the same time, the entire phenomenon intrigues me. The reason for my simultaneous disinterest and intrigue in relation to social media can be traced back to my education and that which I love and love to study: communication.

I much prefer to speak to someone face to face or over the phone, or watch/hear someone express their views on TV or over the radio. I like the richness that those modes of communication provide, both in the nonverbal cues that accompany the words as well as the depth of information that they provide because they’re not limited to 140 characters or a screen page.

However, so much about social media gets my nerdy side operating in hyper drive. What is it about Facebook that has people spending endless time sharing brief snippets of their lives, taking quizzes, writing notes, and the like–and why should businesses care (my consultant self asks the latter part of this question)? Why is everyone chomping at the bit to express their thoughts in 140 characters or less on Twitter? And why have these become almost the standard for hooking up with friends–and now colleagues?

I am on Facebook. I do Tweet (although right now I’m more in stealth mode, listening to the conversations). I blog. And I am active on LinkedIn. However, as I mentioned, I went on Facebook and Twitter reluctantly. I needed to, I didn’t want to. As a consultant who helps companies develop and implement effective customer communication strategies, it’s my job to understand the various mechanisms by which users want to interact–and more and more users want to interact using social media.

Bottom line: it doesn’t matter if you like social media or not, if your audience does, you need to consider it–seriously.

You CANNOT Not Communicate–this is one of my favorite phrases. I even use it as my company tagline. It’s also a good reminder that everything you do–and don’t do–sends a message. If you write off social media because you’re not interested in it, then you likely risk alienating at least a portion of your audience. More importantly, you risk losing a pretty amazing opportunity to get to know your audience in a way that you might not otherwise be able to do.

And it’s this latter component that has this skeptic convinced that there’s value in exploring social media. In addition to giving your customers something they want and expect, you have the potential to gain incredible customer insight and see a side of them that might otherwise remain hidden. 

My next post will be ”A Skeptic’s View of Social Media: LinkedIn” (a tool I’ve been using for quite some time and the one that I was least skeptical about). I’ll then do one on Facebook and the Twitter. And if someone wants me to cover another social media tool, let me know.

When it comes to running or growing a consulting business, getting the word out about your business and new happenings is critical. Unfortunately, it also costs money.

@PublicityGuru shared an article on Twitter from prinyourpajamas.com that I thought might be useful to consultants who often don’t have much if any budget allocated for press releases. I know I’ll assess these for use in WIC’s PR efforts.

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