How to Be Heard When Everyone's Talking?

Imagine, if you will, that you are a job seeker invited to a large cocktail party that you know will be attended by two or three people looking to hire someone with exactly your background and skill set. But you don't know their names or what they look like. Amid the music and motion, and the buzz and hum of dozens of simultaneous conversations, how do you get yourself noticed by those two or three people?

That scenario approximates the challenge marketers face in a Twittering, blogging world. "How do you get any attention from anybody if everybody's talking?" is how Ann Handley, chief content officer for MarketingProfs, characterizes the issue in her interview (video below) with Scott Rosenberg, author of Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It's Becoming, and Why It Matters.

Scott, a founding editor of Salon.com and its first designated blogger, suggests reframing the problem. Don't focus on being heard, he says. Instead, focus on listening.

"People were always talking about your products," he says. With blogs and Facebook and other social media, "now you have the opportunity to listen in" on conversations, identify potential customers, and engage with them by offering something of real value—for instance, a product that solves their problems.

Other ground covered by the interview is what motivated Scott to write the book and why he believes the history of blogging is so important for everyone—marketers most definitely included—who wants to understand the future of social media.