What Could Your Firm Learn From Listening?

"Is now a good time for us to take a look at what people are saying about you when you're not around?"

That's how we tee up one of our favorite parts of the Rock The Boat Marketing Introduction to Social Media for Asset Managers workshop. We usually get to it right around the time energy is ebbing—a condition we attempt to reverse with our collection of tweets that we've seen about our client and other asset managers. Not all are as complimentary or as playful as the one we show here.

Whether you're ready to participate on Twitter or other social networks or not, your company is being talked about. Of course, you care about what's being said.

As important as listening has always been, it's essential now. Your company can't opt out. Customers, prospects, partners all are active on the social Web. (The expected benefits of listening to Twitter-using financial advisors is what drove us to develop and operate AdvisorTweets.com.) 

Some of your shareholders and advisors are having problems and grousing about your service, others are describing needs that your products could or will address. Your competitors may be talking about their ideas and business opportunities. Your own employees or vendors may be inadvertently sharing disclosable information.

If you're responsible for the digital marketing efforts of a mutual fund or exchange-traded fund (ETF) organization, the very first step to take is to lead or at least call for the development of a listening competency at your firm.

One of the leaders in the social media monitoring product category is Radian6, whose Director of Community Amber Naslund took part in a panel discussion yesterday at a Chicago chapter meeting of MENG (Marketing Executives Networking Group).

We caught up with Amber after the meeting and asked for her thoughts on the following questions:

• What's the argument for companies to start "listening"?
• Who tends to initiate listening as a discipline within an organization?
• How are companies organizing to listen?
• We know there’s a cost to not listening. But how much are companies investing in listening?
• How are companies in regulated industries like financial services approaching listening?
• …And how are companies responding when they hear something?

She says a lot in this six-minute video. We hope you listen.