It has been famously said that “every good conversation starts with good listening,” and this truism is the foundation for any successful, ongoing social media publishing plan.

Unlike virtually any form of marketing or mass communication, social media offers a unique advantage to its corporate users: the ability to interact in almost real time with your consumer base. It is not enough to simply establish a new Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and/or Google+ page, post your latest update, and assume all is well.

If you’re not taking time to “listen” to how your audience digests and responds to your social media publishing, then, as Victoria Edwards points out in her commentary on SearchEngineWatch.com, you’re missing out on a golden opportunity “to increase your sales and ROI, or to increase media value, awareness and virility.”

Properly utilized, social listening will help you:

  • Better develop your content (what and when you should publish);
  • Determine key channels (what social networks should you use); and
  • Identify brand supporters.

To achieve these goals, you have to first have a strong social listening strategy. This plan requires a multifaceted approach that includes identifying the following key elements:

  • Target Audience
  • Influencers
  • Keywords and Trends
  • Social Media Strategy

There’s a lot of social media noise and data online. And without a strong social listening component to a brand’s social media publishing, it can quickly become overwhelmed by this noise and its publishing efforts rendered ineffective. Social media listening can help cut through the clutter and ensure a successful social media publishing strategy.

As Sandy Carter once observed in a column on Social Media Examiner, “The future is all about hearing what your business ecosystem (customers, business partners, constituencies, employees, etc.) has to say and collaborating internally and externally to meet their expectations.”

In short: listen before you speak.