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Tag: listening

Are You Making Time To Listen and Respond?

“Yep”

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.

.

“Uh huh”

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.

.

“Wow. Really?”

You’ve said those things when you’re trapped in a conversation with someone who only talks about themselves and their interests, right? You never get a chance to offer a real response, adding the things above when they pause to breathe. You really are trapped in that conversation, but you aren’t sure if they would even notice if you left, no matter how rudely you made your exit.

Listening to What They Need

Remember when we talked about the guy who sold refrigerators at the party like a psycho? We discussed the need to listen in order not to be “that guy.” Real listening. Actual, active listening. Not what we do most of the time, which is to be so busy thinking about what we will say next that we don’t actually hear what was said to us. 

On social, that means consuming a lot of content by those in our community. It results in reading, listening, and watching what those who follow you, and your competitors, share. You have to know them, their likes, and their dislikes, to fully engage with them and include them in the community you build. 

This consumption isn’t just of the posts they create though. You also need to read the comments and replies they make as well. There is even more truth about who they are and how they feel in the reactions they have to what others create. 

Your effort can’t stop here though. You are posting to your accounts, reading/watching/listening to the people who matter to you and your brand, and then there’s the most important piece of advice for engaging your community. 

Respond With Care and Thought

You have to respond to them thoughtfully. You have to comment, reply, or react to their content in a relevant way that shows that you’re listening and that you care. The easiest way to do this is to be grateful, both inside and out, about every interaction you have online. When you respond to every comment, even if it’s just with a simple “thank you,” you build your relationship with that person. When you go beyond that thanks with a heartfelt, honest reply, you are building a lifelong relationship, instead of a transactional one with that person. 

Early in your digital marketing journey, it’s easy to broadcast what you want to say and say that you’re too busy for anything else. This is actually the best time to build the habit of listening actively and responding thoughtfully. When you make it part of your routine early on, it will remain a part of your routine throughout the rest of your digital life. It will follow you from platform to platform, no matter which one gets the attention you crave and allows you to interact best with the community you serve. Take advantage of the early days by making this a part of your activities online.

Straight to Marriage?

Take a moment to imagine that you just meet someone for the first time. Would you ask a girl (or a guy) to marry you right away? Without so much as a conversation? Or getting to know one another? That sounds a bit silly, doesn’t it?

Of course, it does! 

First Meeting

When you first meet with the intent of seeking a relationship, you are focused on listening to have enough information to ask him or her to join you for coffee or drinks. At drinks, you get to know him or her better by listening to what he or she is comfortable sharing and learning about her. That date gives you an idea of whether or not you will move on to dinner, a concert, or a hike for a second date. The whole point of the first date is to figure out if there will be a second. You spend your time together on that second date learning and thinking about how compatible you might be. 

Are you compatible? That second date might lead to a third and so on.

When you post content online that goes straight for a sale, without an introduction, getting to know your community, or building a relationship, you are basically doing the same thing as proposing at your first meeting. While the internet is an amazing thing, it can’t build trust or help solve the problems of your customers without creating a relationship. Without context or having done anything to foster a relationship, how can you be ready to ask already?

So much content online cuts out listening, learning, and context, zooming past a first conversation, let alone a first date, straight to marriage. If you attended a party where someone stood alone at a party, shouting, “Come buy a refrigerator from me!” over and over at the partygoers socializing and interacting like normal people, would you think about buying a fridge from him or her?

Here’s how to avoid being “that guy” at the party that is the internet:

Dating

First, you listen. You listen to the customers you want to “date.” They will tell you what they need and the problems they struggle with, giving you a glimpse at how you can guide them to the solution, even if it isn’t a solution you primarily offer. 

They will also let you know if and how you can even help. If you can offer something in response that’s valuable due to your expertise, even if their needs and the problems they face aren’t primarily the ones you help solve, you can show your eagerness to help. If the problems they face or their needs they have don’t line up with your expertise yet, you know to wait for a better time, because they just aren’t ready for “the relationship” with you. 

Listening is imperative early on, and you can’t do it if you’re too busy talking.

Next, when you can offer something of value, you need to respond in context to what they’ve told you they need. It does neither of you any good to respond to what they’ve said with something that doesn’t address their needs or the problems they face. 

Responding to someone who needs something other than what you offer with repeated broadcasts of your generic message to buy from you does neither of you any good. They will simply walk away, and you’ve lost their attention because talking to you is like talking to a recording of what you want from them. 

Finally, your conversation is about adding value to their lives. When you add value, you have their attention. You’re building your brand, and you need them committed for the long-term, not just some short-term sales goal. When you build for brand, you will be the culmination of the value you’ve added to their lives. When you chase the short-term, you’re only as good as the last time you hit your sales goal.

Marriage, Not a Hook-Up

By looking beyond the short-term at a single sale (that you weren’t likely to get anyway) and building a reputation of adding value to those you interact with, you’ll build a long-lasting relationship. That relationship will be centered on your reputation as someone helpful, and who adds value. 

Doesn’t that sound like someone you’d like to buy from?