I’ve been nominated for the awesome B2B News Network’s Social Listening Influencers Index (nominate someone you love, I swear I don’t know who nominated me but now I love them). When asked questions by the press, there’s always an opportunity for a blog post, too!  (See Dave Winer’s Why I Don’t Do Interviews)

Here are my answers to the questions they asked, I hope you find them useful and check out B2B News Network – they’re a good site.  And I don’t say that just because they gave Little Bird a glowing review!

1. How can professionals become better social listeners?

A few tips from my experience:

Find credible experts on social media and listen to what they talk about, don’t just listen for the mention of your brand’s own name.

Second, try making a habit of reading 3 or 5 messages in your stream for every 1 you post.

Third, turn on mobile push notifications for selected influencers on Twitter – you’ll really get to know them and the cutting edge of your market that way!

2. How did you become proficient at social listening? 

The method I’ve developed over the years is: (1) oversubscribe, (2) then create a filtered feed of just the highest-priority sources. Then (3) create a system that makes it easy to see almost everything from the high priority list (mobile push notifications, browser bookmarks). Then (4) dip into the general non-priority feed from time to time to see what serendipity delivers.  Repeat! Engage!

3. What’s different about listening for brands vs b2b? 

There’s a lot of overlap, but in B2B – a single conversation can include insight that informs a company’s whole strategy or opens up a big line of business.  A mention is less likely to drive a lot of direct sales (I don’t know how much that really happens in B2C either, directly) but is more likely to help inform would-be-buyers when they see favorable mentions showing up in search.  So listen, engage, and earn supportive engagement in return.  Also, B2B influencers may be more interested in two way dialogue, whereas B2C listening is more closely associated with immediately transactional relationships.

4. How does social intelligence help YOUR business? What do you use it for? 

We use social intelligence to look for opportunities; opportunities to find new customers, opportunities to be informed early about important trends, and opportunities to help the customers we already have with their efforts.  By systematically watching the social web for a combination of source-based, validated, popular, and keyword-laden conversations, we discover all kinds of opportunities.

5. How is social intelligence related to content marketing?

Social intelligence surfaces opportunities to curate content and build relationships upstream and downstream.  It surfaces inspiration of topics, trends, keywords, and collaborators for all kinds of content marketing efforts.

6. What is the best way to reach/follow you? (Twitter handle, email, etc)

@Marshallk, marshall@getlittlebird.com and 1-503-703-1815

How’s that look to you? Disagree with any of the above? Thanks for stopping by!