Listening to the Cloud

April 24, 2009 by Steve Schultz @GeniusbyOsmosis · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Campaign Technology, Social Media

I’m sure you’ve all heard of the cloud at some point during your online explorations. Well what is the cloud? What does it mean to listen to the cloud? How can the cloud help you? The cloud is aggregated content from websites, blogs, rss feeds, and anything online. Cloud computing software enables individuals to scan the content from the world wide web and use it to their advantage.

PR companies have been investing heavily in service clouds. These are programs and tools used to scan the internet to listen to what people are saying. I’m sure you all heard about the disastorously disgusting Dominos Pizza YouTube video that came out last week with two employees doing “weird” things to the pizza. ABC news did a piece on it two nights ago showing how Dominos reacted. During this video they met with PR Consultant John Bell (I think that’s his name) and showed exactly what listening to the cloud can do for you. Check out the video here and skip ahead to -1:06 in the video and see the analysis at work.

Listening to the cloud, or just listening online, is vital for your success as a politician. You need to know what people are saying, who’s saying it, where they are saying it, and how people are responding to it. If there not saying anything at all don’t think you’re safe, it just means you’ve failed because noone is talking about you. There are a number tools out there you can use to listen to your online brand, some are done manaully through searches, others are done automatically through alerts, and others are comprehensive aggregators.

If you’re still pretty new to this stuff just start out subscribing to Google alerts and blogs in your Google Reader or any other RSS reader you use. You can even do it through your Microsoft Outlook. This will take a little time to set up, but it does automate the process for you. You can even look at doing it manually with searches at places like search.twitter.com or socialmention.com.

There will be more on this inside the ORS zone. Subscribe now!

Here is a podcast from ORS’s Doug Mitchell @ ManageingTheEdge.com from 4/24 about listening on the web.

Managing the Edge – Listening on the Web