On Monday, I posted a blog about why having a listening strategy is important before you begin your social media outreach. Equally important is who you listen to and what patterns you are watching out for.

Here are 1) the groups you should be listening to at a minimum and 2) things you should be listening for with each of these groups.

Customers

While this group is very obvious, it is often easy to to get lost in a lot of information that is not actionable. You need to focus on customers’:

• objectives and needs–what is it that they are trying to do with your product or products like yours
• unmet objectives and needs–what is it that they have tried to do or wanted to do that they were unable to
• priorities–how important is it to the customer to meet those objectives and needs
• willingness to pay–this is often a function of their priorities. If willingness to pay is low, you might want to find another market or product. You can even package the product in a way where the willingness to pay is higher
• language–what language do they use to describe their needs. This will help you when you develop your own social media content

You can segment customers’ by where they land on the above. But try to ensure that you are listening to as random a sample of your customers as possible, this may include reaching out to less vocal customers. Those talking about your product on social networks are self-selected by their very nature. If you don’t incorporate outreach for ideas from the less talkative ones it may bias results.

Competitors

Another very obvious group. The key is to not inundate yourself with your competitors’ social media marketing. Here is what you should watch out for:

• offerings–form, medium, features
• use cases–are the different offerings for different use cases
• customer types–what kinds of customers are they trying to find
• visitors–who is interacting with them online. Do they fit a profile?
• resources and capabilities–people in their company and their skills/capabilities
• what they think differentiates them–what are they touting as the unique value they provide
• what the customer thinks differentiates them –what are customers experiences with them. What are they asking for? What are they loving?

Just like you segmented your customers you should segment your competitors. Try and do this from a customer perspective and not what your competitor is saying. The reasons for this are that your competitors may either be trying to change customer perceptions via their marketing or they may simply not understand what customers want.

Experts

Who are the experts in your industry? Once you define them, listen and hone in on:

• their analysis of the market
• trends they see as important in your industry
• kinds of content generated by others that they are sharing

But ALWAYS double check experts’ assumptions. There is nothing worse then developing your product or marketing based solely on what experts want. The expert is probably a power user and must more advanced then the majority of your customers, this may bias their understanding.

What do you think? Have I missed out on anything about these groups that you think are important to include in your startup’s listening strategy?

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• Importance of listening to your social media strategy
• How to develop an effective value proposition for your startup
• Launching a startup entirely via social media, lessons from Tweetphoto
• Marketing and product development strategy through the customer funnel
• What your honest marketing consultant wishes you knew

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