Insurance in business is usually not a very fun subject. It usually implies an expense because in many cases there is not much need for it. Service businesses, for instance, must have some form of business insurance if they are renting space from someone. Will it ever be used or truly needed. Not likely but if something happens and it’s there you will feel pretty good about that ‘expense’. Of course, there is the issue of health insurance but we’ll just let the politicians fight that one out.

I am learning to see how the act of online reputation monitoring and management (or online business listening as I am prone to calling it these days) is a new and improved form of insurance for a business.

New and improved? Yes, that’s right. Traditional insurance is important after some negative event has already occurred. Of course, most companies try to prevent the bad things from happening even though their insurance is there to protect them. Why? Because when they use that insurance their costs to have it in the future increase. In other words, you may have the insurance but it’s better for everyone if it is never used.

Well, online monitoring and listening are types of insurance. They act very differently than traditional insurance in that the activity is as much proactive as it is reactive. By being aware of the complete business environment through online monitoring a business can prevent more things from actually happening. By catching that disgruntled customer early in the process a business can avert or avoid a much larger customer service issue. This saves, time, money, reputation and so much more. It’s like an insurance policy that truly protects rather than just covers you.

Would you rather find out about an issue after it has had time to fester in the marketplace or when it is just starting to smolder? What kind of damage can taking this approach prevent? It’s almost immeasurable.

Would there be a benefit if you were alerted to an industry concern earlier than a competitor? Would you get benefit if you had an insurer that was actively looking to see just how you sit in the marketplace against competitors? Of course you would.

If you could buy insurance that could actually prevent disasters rather than just react to them would you see it as something more than just an expense? Of course you would. It would be an investment at that point because it could be adding or saving real dollars that impact the bottom line.

Tracking online activity is a form of business insurance that you simply cannot afford to be without. If you do you are simply exposing yourself to greater risk than should be acceptable in today’s marketplace.

Are you going to need more insurance to stay ahead of today’s business climate? Yes, you do but with online reputation monitoring and online business listening you will be insuring yourself in a way that looks a lot more like an investment.

Interested in seeing how Trackur can help you listen? Request more information or a demo today!

I suspect that there may be more than a few readers who may be scratching their heads right now but that’s OK. That is still a common response to the idea of online listening by businesses these days.

Most people who are at least aware of their surroundings understand that something is being said or indexed or whatever online about your company, your brands, your people and more. It’s just a fact of life. When companies choose to not monitor those mentions they do so at a very high risk.

In talking with companies about monitoring the online space it’s interesting that most people have never considered the potential cost to their business of an online attack or issue. Out of sight, out of mind I suppose.

I used to sell commercial grade Internet connections to businesses back in the early days of the web and one thing we talked to companies about was adding additional firewall protection. It wasn’t cheap but we often asked prospects “What would the cost be to your company if someone breached your systems via the Internet? What could be at risk if you were not guarding against it?”

It was at this point that those who were aware of the potential damage had what a Sr. VP of Marketing at a rather large telco company termed their “Oh s%$#!” moment. It’s the true understanding of the potential hard dollar cost of some kind of negative event.

• What might happen if one of your biggest customers was unhappy but didn’t tell you the whole story? Instead they told the industry in some forum and it cost your sales team a deal? How much does a potential lost sale cost your business?

• What might happen if someone was misusing your trademark or misrepresenting your products online? What might be the hard dollar cost of this kind of action to your bottom line? How would that affect performance over a year? How might that affect a bonus payout?

• What might happen if someone spread a rumor about your company that caught on virally and suddenly your stock started to nosedive? What would be the business and personal damage done there?

If you don’t get the point by now then you likely never will and that’s fine. The reality is that in today’s world everything is much more fragile than it has ever been. People have a voice that they never had before and most people are ignorant enough to believe that if it’s on the Internet then it must be true.

So now it’s your job to decide how much is it worth to protect from such an event. Sure budgets are tight but there is still waste in many. If you don’t free up resources to protect yourself online today you may not be around tomorrow.

Is that a risk you are willing to take?

Interested in seeing how Trackur can help you listen? Request more information or a demo today!

Online listening is an important function in the new world order of business in the Internet Age. Last time I covered online listening as it relates to sales activity. There are opportunities to be had out there that have real dollar value attached to them whether it’s in gaining the new revenue of a sales or saving mounds of cash in avoiding a bad new hire. As a part of this continuing series, today we’ll look at online listening in the human resources world.

We already know that HR professionals have become dependent on tracing prospective employees’ (especially younger ones) trail of stupid human tricks. These ‘fun’ things that seem cool and innocuous to those who have no sense of responsibility end up coming back to bite them in the same part of their anatomy that is sometimes featured in ‘fun’ party antic pictures. While this is certainly a great application of any online listening tool and the associated strategy for the HR professional there’s more to consider.

Here’s a few of the things that HP professionals should consider when actively listening on behalf of their employer.

• Rogue employees – When you put a group of people to together you are going to get a certain percentage of people that were born a cynic and use the rest of their life to sharpen this skill. As a result, they often are the first to point out the various shortcomings of their employer because, let’s face it, they are simply smarter than everyone else . I speak from experience because earlier in my life I thrived on this kind of subversive activity. Thankfully, I have grown up and see it for what it is which is just harmful and unnecessary rabble rousing that helps nothing and hurts everything. HR folks can now find these folks when they post on their personal blog or tweet that their company is full of morons etc etc.. Getting rid of these kinds of employees can save countless hours and dollars.

• Ruthless headhunters – Want to know who is trying to cherry pick your best employees? Keep a watchful eye on your industry to see who in the world of recruiting has a taste for the kind of employee you offer. Better to learn their tactics and see just what they look for in a potential target. Knowing even a little something could prevent losing a valuable player which would be harmful to morale and the bottom line for who knows how long.

• Management gaffes – Ever have a manager or someone who has responsibility for employees in the company do something that puts the company at risk?  Sexual harassment or age discrimination cases can turn up at the worst possible times. I have seen what companies are capable of and just how someone within an organization can act in a way that would put the company at risk if only people knew. Now with the world of everyone knowing and saying everything you can catch these instances before the sparks erupt into flames.

• Industry insight – While most companies that provide benefits to employers update their customers on changes in policies or regulations it doesn’t mean that they are giving you the full story. Being able to network with other HR professionals through online listening and engagement can bring something to light that may have been missed otherwise.

• Find the best employee for the job – Tired of bad candidates being paraded in front of you by recruiters and others? Tired of sorting through piles of resumes of unqualified people for that critical job opening? Listen to the buzz out there and find who is looking. Be careful you don’t cross any lines though and become the ‘recruiter’ you hate when they get in your way.

There are likely to be endless applications for online monitoring and listening activities as they relate to the human resources professional. If you have some to offer and add to the conversation here please do.

Listen well and you’ll be rewarded.

Last week I discussed very briefly several areas where online listening is much more than just a buzz monitoring activity. Online listening is more about gathering business intelligence across the enterprise (or SMB for that matter). We get caught up in talking about social media monitoring but there is a lot more to this.

Over the next few posts I will be looking at how using a tool like Trackur can help a business in many areas including sales, marketing, PR, HR, legal etc. etc. I’ll start of by examining how online listening can allow your sales efforts to flourish in these less than robust times.

Sales are about opportunity. This opportunity has to exist on both sides of the equation in order for good business to be done. In old school selling everything is an opportunity. If your prospect doesn’t need your product or service you would then have to convince them that they did and make sure you “close them” before they truly understood that they were making a poor decision based more on coercion than need.

As the buyer has evolved so has the sales process. Sales people have to be more intelligent about who they approach, when they approach them and most importantly why they are approaching them. Online listening can help turn the sales process into a truly productive activity for both buyer and seller alike.

So how can online listening help sales?

• Identify prospects early in the cycle – As a sales person there is nothing worse than coming into a sales opportunity right when the prospect is set to decide within a week about who they will be going with. You are late to the party and chances of success are very slim. By listening online your prospects may be giving off clues about their desire to find new sources / vendors long before they actually start the process. Get in early to make your case over time and not against it.

• See where the competition is faltering – If you are not monitoring your competition’s brand just as closely if not more than your own then you are making a huge mistake. Disgruntled customers of the competitor may be talking about their bad experience right now online. Would it help your cause to be aware of this? Of course! So don’t hope you catch a prospect at the right time with a cold call. Know you have someone interested when you call because they have already said as much.

• Look smarter than your competitors – By listening about everything in your industry and. By default, your prospect’s industry you are going to be more informed and appear more intelligent than the competition. People like to work with smart people. Listen and get smart!

• Work smarter than your competitors – Picking up a directory and making cold calls is something that can only work at scale. In other words, there has to be a large number of people making a large number of calls for the law of large numbers to kick in. Most businesses don’t have that luxury so they need to be more targeted and intelligent in their efforts. Online listening saves the time, effort and tiring effect of unnecessary cold calls in large numbers. Anyway, no one in sales actually makes a lot of calls if there is a better way. Find the better way and use it.

• Have objections answered before they are asked – There are plenty of hints online as to what are roadblocks to purchasing just about anything. You can know the trouble spots and have answers for objections simply by being aware. If you get caught in a sales call with a question that an answer exists online for you will look bad and will hurt your cause more than help it.

• Be an internal information depot – An informed salesperson is very important to many organizations. Why? Sales touches all aspects of any business and if the sales team / person is a source of incredible knowledge then they get more done internally. Be a source of information to your co-workers not a source of frustration.

What other benefits can a sales team member get from listening online? Let us hear your suggestions because we know that the world of online listening is evolving rapidly every day. Let’s learn together.

When discussing brand management online most often the conversation gravitates toward monitoring buzz and handling comments from customers and the like. There’s nothing wrong with that at all but is has become the online listening industry’s equivalent of the lowest common denominator. It’s a concept that everyone gets and can nod their heads at the right time during a conversation so it is the new safe subject.

Online listening needs to be expanded though because it encompasses so much more that should fall under the heading of business intelligence. B to B Magazine did a nice article (with a Trackur mention, thank you) on the subject and said

The use of “listen” and “response” processes, as well as formal reputation-management tools, is a trend that’s taking hold. What’s more, these procedures are moving beyond the PR department to marketing, product development, sales and customer support. That phenomenon is itself triggering a related call to pull social media data into more systems, such as CRM or call-center platforms.

“Although a majority of marketers track customer feedback, they’re still in the early stages of putting that information to work for them. And, in most cases, [they] use fairly basic tools to manage their data collection,” said Zach Hofer-Shall, an analyst at Forrester Research. “We’re still in the early days of companies adopting these tools, but the marketers I speak with see a lot of value in the investment.”

While I am not ready to give social media a free pass in to CRM and call-center platforms just yet (Let’s figure out some of the basics first please! Crawl before you walk. Walk before you run. Get it!), I do applaud the call for online monitoring and listening being more than just about reputation.

So what can be done with an online monitoring tool that goes beyond just seeing your brand mentioned online? Here’s a quick and far from exhaustive list:

• Sales intelligence: Determine what keywords and phrases prospects may be using to gather their own information about product and services. Maybe there are leads out there ‘advertising’ their need for your product or service. If you’re not listening for them, though, your competition may be.

• Competitive intelligence: This often goes hand in hand with sales intelligence because it’s very helpful to know where your competition is falling down with their customers. No better time to strike then when a customer is airing your competitor’s dirty laundry in a public forum. You have to be listening though to learn.

• HR intelligence: Got a rogue employee who likes to give away company secrets or bad mouths the company online? Minimize the damage remove them before their efforts leave a scar. There is also a positive side to the human element. What if you found an employee who is going above and beyond what is expected of them and is being praised by a client or other employees. Those people are the keepers and they, more often than not, are not the usual loud-mouthed internal self-promoters bucking for a raise. This may be the way to find these gems.

• Market research: There are great ideas being floated every day in open forums about how to improve things. What if you heard directly from your customers about changes the would like to see that would improve their experience. What if you enlisted their help? Think that goes a long way to building brand loyalty? The answer is yes, by the way.

• Cultural intelligence: The old way of identifying trends was when they were already underway. What if you saw them at their earliest stages through online conversations? Wouldn’t it be great to help shape the next trend rather than react to i

• Market intelligence: Often the mood of a marketplace is practically palpable when observed through online interactions. You can unfiltered feedback and data that is nothing like any artificial focus group environment could ever provide. People won’t tell you what you want to hear if they don’t know that you are listening. What you will learn, however, is the truth no matter how good or bad it is.

So don’t limit your thinking about online listening to just brand mentions. That’s so 2009. Open up your mind and your online ears to hear it all. Of course, what you do with that information is a whole other deal so we’ll save that for another day.

Interested in seeing how Trackur can help you listen? Request more information or a demo today!

If you have ever watched a war movie where the lead ‘scout’ goes in front of a platoon to help navigate tough and dangerous terrain, the skill that is usually the most important is listening. Listening tells stories that the other senses can’t understand. It warns of unseen dangers long before the eye can see them, or the nose can smell them. It’s arguably the most important sense we have.

So why do so few companies actually spend time doing it? Why do most attempts to “get the ear” of the right person at a company fall on deaf ears? Why is listening so undervalued in today’s corporate world? Here are a few thoughts:

• Listening requires silence – Many people have mistaken social media as a one-way bull horn that can be used to beat anyone within earshot into submission with buying messages. If you are shouting in social media and talking about yourself too much no one will listen to you. They’ll follow you but they won’t listen to you. That’s not a good thing, by the way.

• Listening takes patience – Listening is about being quiet and patient. The reward comes from letting those who are truly most important, like customers and critics, have their say. It doesn’t happen every second of every day. Just because someone isn’t talking doesn’t mean you have to start talking. Be patient and keep your mouth shut.

• Listening is a discipline – In our world of immediate gratification there is less discipline than ever. Disciplines become habits with practice. They are not natural actions for the most part. As a result, we have to learn the discipline of listening to be effective using it for our business

• Listening requires courage – Ever had to sit back and listen to someone read you the riot act and you just had to sit there and take it? It’s hard and it’s uncomfortable. It is also, incredibly valuable. Growth and knowledge come from listening even during the times when you think you should fight.

• Listening is a team sport – With a good guide who listens everyone else is free to do their job. They can still listen but they can also work and be looking for things within their control. There is great value in letting people do what they do best.

• Listening is a lost art – In today’s “ME! ME! ME!” world listening is not valued because it seems so old school. Guess what folks. We are in the current mess we are in because we didn’t follow time-tested principles that have worked since the dawn of commerce. We stopped listening to the right voice so we could use our own voice. You get what you pay for.

So are you and your company ready to listen today? Do you have what it takes to listen and learn and succeed? What are you hearing right now that needs your attention?

Interested in seeing how Trackur can help you listen? Request more information or a demo today!