I was getting back from lunch with a colleague, and a thought hit me. We monitor online conversations of people when they talk about us, and talk to us. Do you sit at a dinner party, and only listen to people when they talk to you, or about you? Don’t you learn about people when you listen to them when they talk to others? Being a good listener is taking cues when it’s appropriate to respond. It’s all about timing. We want to be better at timing. You can’t have good timing when you’re not listening correctly.

So, let me illustrate how it works today. Bob says something bad about Product X on his blog. Product X’s team has listening tools, and are alerted to Bob’s post. Product X’s team, posts an appropriate response on Bob’s blog comments. Makes complete sense, right? Bob has a problem, and Product X tries to alleviate that problem. Problem solved. Product X, then swoops away in the middle of the night until the next comment is made referring to them. That sounds like a pretty weak way to build a relationship. It’s a start, but we can do better.

What if we listen to fewer people. The people who are interested more in us. We listen even when they’re not talking about us. If they’re having a bad day, we reach out, and do what we can. Is this possible? Can we measure how it affects them in the minutes, hours, days, and weeks afterward? Remember, we’re talking about people, and people have emotions. We’re building connections and relationships, one person at a time.

Today online marketers can tell a lot more about you from your Twitter feed, than from the information on a traditional website “contact us” form. Could this be the future of website forms, or at least the next step?