No! Seriously! You can learn a lot by being a ‘lurker’ on the social media platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Lurkers, just to calm everyone’s fears is someone that is passively sitting on the sidelines just listening to the conversations that are going on. By being a lurker you can gain a lot of insights as to what people are thinking, online.
Now apply this concept to finding information that would benefit your company. What if you were a ‘lurker’ to the conversations that were taking place in the social media channel that are related to your company or your product or the products that you carry? Could you use that information to provide better customer service? Could you use this information to gain a leg up on your competition? Sure you could. Anytime you can gather valuable unbiased information from people about your company, products/services, or your competition you will benefit from that information.
So how to you start down the path to being a ‘lurker’?
- Setup searches on Twitter for your company name or your product names
- Try variations on the spelling for your company or your product names
- Join groups that you typical customer would probably be a member of
