Is (social) listening part of your plan?

Early in the fourth quarter, marketing managers are on their way to planning for 2011 and beyond.  That planning process includes defining and segmenting your customers where a new challenge is emerging: In an age where many people can be reached, or their conversations observed, for no or low cost via social media, it can be tempting to try and listen to everyone or everything.  These distractions can lead you away from your strategic marketing plan and focus on your true target.    

However, when used correctly, internet and social media resources can be a boon to marketing, brand and product managers through a social listening framework.  Social listening is often referred to as the monitoring of social media to find out what people are saying about your brand.  The key to social listening according to Neilson, however, is structure:

Listening to the entire web to get new product ideas is a bit like boiling the ocean. This is why building a listening framework around themes is key. For example, we could focus in on themes like health and wellness, sustainability, and even an occasion like getting out of the house in the morning. From there we can map those themes, look for trends over time, find intersections and conversation drivers across different segments. Then, it’s onto a deep dive of that information blending search trends and offline data among other tactics.

In other words, make sure you are listening and not hearing as Mitch Lieberman describes.  How do you know if you are listening or hearing?  One way is to test yourself, says Paul M. Banas, is to ask: have I emerged through this process with observations or insights? Observations are facts – insights lead to action.

You can learn more about social listening and how it can be leveraged to bolster your marketing plan and Chicago AMA’s 6^th Annual Anatomy of a Marketing Plan event Wednesday December 8^th.

In the meantime, we’d like to share a list of resources that can be helpful as you are deep in your planning process.  These resources include best practices, tips, strategies, ideas and more.  What are some of your favorite planning resources?

• Chicago AMA resources page (which includes links to great sites like Marketingpower.com – the American Marketing Association home page – and Marketingsherpa.com)
• Top 150 marketing blogs
• Journal of Marketing
• Marketing Strategy & Innovation
• Quick MBA – Marketing
• Journal of Brand Management
• Brandweek
• Smallbusinesssem.com
• B2B Magazine