Why would you want the biggest set of ears on the planet? I have shared my thoughts on this in an earlier post here on Fill the Funnel.
In case you haven’t figured it out yet, LISTENING is the #1 benefit a business can receive from their engagement on the social web.
There are still those that are arguing the possibilities and benefits that the social web offers. There are those in every audience I speak at that still have the “Why do I care where you ate lunch?” question about Twitter. I used to attempt to answer that question, but that time has long passed. I am convinced that you and your business are at the final crossroad on this topic. You are either in or you will be irrelevant in the next few years. Just my opinion.
All organizations need to listen to their customers more effectively. Your customers are sharing like never before, so doesn’t it make sense to be using web tools that can help you listen? Workstreamer is one of those tools. Workstreamer is built from the ground up to serve as your single listening post. That was the easy part. Next they wanted to sort out “just the relevant information” from all that is being said. Relevant to you and your business so that you can stay on top of your company activity.
What Workstreamer has accomplished is one click business listening. One of their founders, Suaad Sait, said that they are able to “make the invisible visible”. He said that they are building the largest social footprint of companies in the world. Pretty ambitious stuff. Important point to note – Workstreamer is designed to listen to the social web to learn and report on ‘company’ activity, not individuals.
Once you have set up your Workstreamer account, you enter the company names that are significant to you. Who should you be listening to? Here are some of my recommendations: 
- Your company: Obvious choice
- Your customers: listen and win more business while keeping your competitors out.
- Your competitors: Listen and learn what they are saying and what others are saying about them. You might be surprised what you “hear”.
- Your vendors: This is an example of why web tools are not just for sales and marketing any more. You will learn more about your suppliers, their approach, promotions, strategy and reputations than you can imagine.
- Your industry analysts: use Workstreamer to listen to what the analysts are saying about business trends, acquisitions, innovations and overall business climate.
- Your supply chain: might be nice to hear what is happening to those that you count on to run your business.
- Your staffing firm(s): listening to what is happening in the job market, trends and any hiring, promotion and/or layoff buzz might be a big help to you in running your business.
- Your Bank: might be another of those obvious choices during these times
Who else should we be listening to?
Workstreamer Entry Page – Note the ability to select a company that you have elected to “listen” to as well as an ability to drill down into a specific area for more detail
Once you have selected the companies you want to listen to, you can drill down on each company and even each mention of interest.
The ability to listen in to what is important and relevant to you is a tremendous time saver. By utilizing what Workstreamer calls “Symantic Language Processing” your results will improve over time and consistently process and deliver information to you.
Pricing:
Workstreamer offers only their free service for now in it’s beta version and is expected to remain in beta for approximately another 30 days. There is a premium plan in the works. According to Amy Hawthorne from Workstreamer:
” Beta users will be grandfathered in and have special access to some if not all of our premium features for some period of time. BUT, its important to also point out that we will always maintain and update the Free version of our product.”
You will be hearing about Workstreamer quite a bit in the future. They have some very powerful technology that is only going to get better and better.
No business should be deaf to the market around them. Workstreamer offers a leading edge listening web tool for NO COST. Why would you not sign up for your own Workstreamer account? I’d love to hear your reasons.