Social Listening: New rules connect dots

Did you hear anything I just said? Genuine listening has become a rare gift in an era where we screen calls to avoid robots and script-reading advocates.

Information overload, short attention spans and the splintering of mass media have made social listening and true customer support (the foundation of social selling) the ultimate advantage for brands like Caterpiller and Comcast.

We crave a genuine human being who can listen like a true friend.

But most organizations (and many young people who’ve grown up staring at screens) live by the Steve Covey adage: “Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.’’

One of my mentors, Craig Ruff, now senior education adviser to Gov. Rick Snyder, required his University of Michigan grad students to read and learn from the classic, “How to Win Friends and Influence People.’’ Such basic social skills, he knew, were rapidly being forgotten or ignored in the digital era.

Anyone can paint but that doesn’t make you a painter

Social media, social listening and even most communications tasks are like painting: numerous business people assume a low-level employee can handle them. But knowing the basics (like knowing how to paint) doesn’t make you a painter, artist or expert.