High Road Communications

The reason we have two ears and one mouth is because we are supposed to listen more than talk, or so the old saying goes. 

The same applies online. You walk before you run, and you should read before you write. 

With such an abundance of communication channels, each with their own unique characteristics, listening is key to understanding the plethora of conversations that are occurring online. These conversations are taking place across blogs, Twitter, chat rooms flickr, forums and more. 

Many people find it difficult to try and be everywhere and read everything. I say, you need to work smarter, not harder. Make the power of RSS work for you and slide all of your favourite blogs into a feed reader. Monitor mentions of your brand on Twitter using any number of applications. I personally prefer Summize. If you want to see what is happening in the forums, you can try BoardTracker or BoardReader. Use AideRSS to quickly put a blog into perspective. Already using RSS but find it’s getting unwieldy? Show that feed who’s boss by filtering it so only content with the keywords you want gets through. Try Feed Rinse or Filter My RSS. 

Just as you have two ears and one mouth, there are as many ways to listen online than there are ways to speak. Funny, those old sayings.