Iceberg . . . Dead Ahead: Mining the Conversation

9 INCH AXIOM – Listening

‘God gave us two ears and one mouth.  Social media allows brands to tap into the conversation.  Before jumping in it’s important to first listen with both ears.’

Last Tuesday I had the opportunity to attend a panel discussion on developing an Advanced Social Media strategy. One of companies represented was Graco.  Graco is a leading manufacturer of baby products. Graco mentioned that they enlisted Converseon to assist with developing their social media strategy.  The first thing Converseon did was to listen via a proprietary tool called the Conversation Miner.  It jogged my memory of a graphic I had seen in a presentation last year from Converseon’s Rob Key:

[Graphic modified from Converseon's website.  I added the 'real' iceberg and some comments]

I can remember being blown away when I saw the iceberg graphic.  It broke down the types of online content into 3 buckets and segmented them by the degree they can be controlled.  It further referenced the power of search as a determining factor with regard to what becomes visible.  

Iceberg . . . Dead Ahead.  90% of an iceberg is unseen below the waterline.  This is what you need to tap into when setting up your listening post.

 Today’s Lagniappe  (a little something extra) -  A piece of trivia and a great link:

Trivia – The most infamous ship in the White Star Line was the Titanic.  The Titanic had two sister ships.  What were their names?

Link – Here is a great list of social media listening tools compiled by Clay McDaniel on the MarketingProfs site.

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Answer to the Trivia question:  Titanic’s sister ships were the Olympic and the Brittanic (originally named the Gigantic).  Here is the backstory.