photo by Steve Rhodes
When people suggest that you observe conversations happening online, how can you do that?
To see your company, brand or potential employees interact with customers and viewers online is imperative for future development, growth and expansion. But how is this done?
Besides joining Facebook or Twitter, there is one site that you can look over to learn to watch conversations.
A site
Brazen Careerist was created to focus on ideas and conversations. It’s goal is to display people’s thoughts, ideas and goals online. Somewhere where people can see and discuss projects, future goals and more.
When you visit Brazen online, you will see that it’s geared toward Gen Y. But what you won’t see is only that generation interacting. See, most people on there want to interact – and do, spanning across industries. You have entrepreneurs, corporate ladder workers, freelancers, bloggers, mothers, graduate students and more. This is a fantastic way to experience how to observe conversations.
How it can help
Brazen gives you a way to see how other companies are talking to potential employees, consumers and raving product fans. This kind of public interaction can help you see competition, or give you a way to mimic successful methods. You can also see how people respond to other people’s comments, ideas and projects. By observing these interactions you can learn how to make social media work better for you. These interactions can be documented and applied to your methods.
What you can do
Have someone sign up for an account. This way, they can get active in groups online and you could see how people interact. Why participate? Because if you don’t put yourself out there, you will never learn the lay of the land. Brazen has it set up so you can feed in your tweets and blog posts. Like I said before, it’s focused on ideas being your resume, and tweets and blogs are the social media platforms that just might gather ideas the best.
Comment
I can’t stress this enough. You can observe, but after a while you need to jump in and participate. When people are at a pool, and there is one person that comes in a swimsuit and just hangs out but never gets in, people are going to start to wonder. Jump in, the social media pool. You can tip your toe in by listening and mimicking what others are saying, but after a while you have to slip off the floaties and take some chances. Not everything will work the first, second or third time around, but you’ll learn what doesn’t work, and sometimes that’s worth the effort.
By commenting and participating you are creating a community. You don’t have to say massively profound things, just be honest. You can always just tell someone thanks for the post or you agree.
What sites do you go to when you want to ‘listen’ to a new or a specific demographic? Are you part of sites that give you access to see how people talk and discuss online?
Kristina is based in the Twin Cities and eats and breathes social media. Her love for technology’s influence on culture can be found here.
