Is Anyone Listening?

By far the most frightening part of social media is the concept of all these thoughts and messages floating about online -- a collection of voices, chaos in many tongues (even when we speak the same language), and little chance that anyone would hear us, you.

Twitter in particular feels to the uninitiated like a conversation in my family -- everyone is talking and nobody is listening. That's how I got so good at being an interpreter, by the way, holding a collection of words in your head until you can talk can be useful.

It almost feels like entering traffic in one of those Italian roundabouts -- you do it at your own peril. Regardless you must dive in to get into the flow, and to your destination.

So you try it, timidly at first, a few people may express their displeasure with you in no uncertain terms... or maybe just pretend you're not there and almost run you over. Then something incredibly orderly happens. You move in confidently, and you're in. It's not like taking the plunge; it's more akin to gaining a sense of timing.

The not so secret 'secret' is that you need to know what you're listening for. It's the same with marketing, except much more exciting than driving your new car into Italian roundabouts. What we're driving with marketing is more customers, in the case of your blog, a greater audience. Today's topic at The Blog Herald was a suggestion by Chris Brogan on Twitter, one I might have missed had I not been listening for it. To make things more interesting, I am marketing with one arm tied behind my back -- the request specifyed that I should not talk about content as a driver.

These 8 easy marketing tips to increase your blog's audience imply that content is solid.

Comments

[Chris Brogan]

This is great. Listening is definitely part of the story. Finding tools to make sure folks are listening is a good thing. I'm enjoying the hell out of using great tools to find things like this blog post. Not only am I subscribed to you, but my ego surf finds your mention of me.

That's the way it should be.

Love your blog, superstar. Thank you!

[Joanna Young]

Valeria, thanks for this piece, I enjoyed it (and your blogherald article that I read earlier in the day). I am back trying twitter again myself and am aware of that feeling of apprehension - where on earth do you start? Listening would be a good place :-)

Only one small point - it took me a while to fathom your reference to Chris's suggestion at the end - it might have helped non-twitterers (tweeters?) to type it out in full, or maybe show it with a screen capture so people could see, quickly, what you mean, without needing to wade through Chris's multiple tweets? Otherwise it seems a bit like an 'in' reference - which I doubt you intended.

Plus I got thrown by the ref to "not talk about content as a driver" when I was still picturing you (the driver) sitting in your wee car waiting to jump into the Italian roundabout! But maybe I shouldn't be reading blogs so late at night :-)

All best wishes

Joanna

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Chris -- this right here is a metric, the degree of engagement people have with content thanks to a tool. Most blogs have a much richer and deeper click through ratio than corporate sites that have been around a long time. I've measured both ;-) Thank you for asking the question and inspiring.

@Joanna -- your approach has been mine. Watching, observing, seeing myself in the environment, then diving in. I realize I've taken you and other readers for granted with regards to Twitter. Because of the fleeting nature of the tool, with several dozen messages being posted in a day, I linked to Chris' identity vs. the specific request. it was simply "Teach us about using other methods for driving more audience, omitting 'write good stuff' as a hint." As I wrote in my note to you, being a linguist sometimes I cannot resist a pun. Thank you for stopping in and taking the time to comment. You are welcome at any time!