Chapter 18. The Conversation Prism: How to Listen

Active listening and the resulting, informed engagement plants the seeds that flourish into meaningful conversations and relationships. Implementing engagement guidelines and best practices for personal and professional "brands" before and after any official social media program is introduced is a prerequisite for every business–that's the bottom line. But how do we know where to engage once these guidelines and directives are in place?

After all, we reviewed so many examples and will discuss many more over time, but how do we know what's right for us? Could practicing social media really be as easy as following the conversational template that seems so pervasive in marketing, communications, and customer service landscapes today?

While the tools businesses use may appear to weave a common thread, their implementation and, in turn, their usage are anything but ordinary.

Every company is responsible for charting its own course in the interactive Web and as such, each brand creates its own social DNA that's distinctive in personality and uniquely reflected in the conversations and people who define and populate our online and offline landscapes.

The process of charting engagement strategies and routing our navigation and bearing ensures that we stay on course now and in the time to come.

I'M YOUR CUSTOMER...REMEMBER ME?

Be careful. You just might reinvent the wheel.

The wheel, after all, is an almost perfect example for reducing friction ...

Get Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.