Unless you’re living under a rock, I’m sure it comes as no surprise to hear that Matthew McConaughey continues to sweep at award ceremonies. In the last few years, he’s won (or been a favorite to win) just about every professional version of the “Most Likely To Succeed” and “Best Man On Campus” titles of college days. But have you given any thought to what he had to do to get where he is now? How he went from some low-key surfer dude to the Academy darling he is today?
Sure, you could chalk it up to years of romantic comedies that somehow taught him the ropes for his drastically different roles in Interstellar and The Wolf of Wall Street. Or you might say that the only reason he’s on top of his game was because of the drastic changes he had to undergo to suddenly bring his Magic Mike physique to a half-dead cowboy in Dallas Buyer’s Club. We all know the Academy likes that sort of thing when considering who to award next. But as with some of his recent characters, there’s more to this story than meets the eye.
One day, McConaughey simply decided that he wanted to do something greater with his acting. He made the choice and went about it. And the particular way he went about it was what drastically changed the course of his career.
He started by taking stock and analyzing some of his early failures to launch. He considered the scripts he had chosen in the past. He tediously flipped through his journals to see what kind of person he was before taking on previous roles. Was it the attitude he had about the film? Had he been looking at his career all wrong?
What happened next is not often talked about, but it’s an incredibly valuable step in the world of branding—whether you’re branding yourself or your company:
McConaughey started talking to his fans. Or, perhaps more importantly, he started listening.
After all his personal research and navel-gazing, McConaughey was left with more unanswered questions about his own self-improvement. And that’s the point where—rather than tweeting out his latest selfie or jumping on board with the latest social media hot topic—McConaughey used social media platforms like Twitter to download a wide-spread collection of feedback from friends and followers.
He curated mass amounts of information from blog posts and articles that gave bad reviews of the movies he had previously done. With the help of his media assistants, he was able to spend valuable time reading through an array of criticisms to determine what common factors each comment and post had. It’s not always easy to read through bad reviews—nobody likes to see their name dragged through the mud—but McConaughey did it anyway.
This hard-pressed self-review led to more awards than he knows what to do with at this point in his life. And those awards led to more great movie contracts and more entertainment for the rest of us as his fans.
But what does all this have to do with you and your company?
Just Listen
It doesn’t take a true detective to realize that curating feedback through active listening on social media holds award-winning importance for brands of all kinds. Ask the same questions of your business that you would ask of yourself—after all, effective branding draws attention to a business by giving it a relatable and realistic personality. Who are you as a company? Where is it that you see your company going, and what is it you ultimately want to achieve?
Once you know the answers to these questions, you’ll know what it is you’re looking for as you take to the vast seas of the Internet in search of your hidden treasures.
As you search and research your own business online, you may find that you didn’t have to set up an official business account with Yelp or Google+ for the most critical, negative feedback to find its way to the public eye. In some cases, people will create your account for you just so they have an easier time of creating Internet vengeance. People will talk, whether you’re curating their conversations or not.
However, not all of your customers are that motivated to find proper avenues for telling the world how they feel about your company. If you dig a little deeper, you might start to find mentions of your business throughout Twitter or within a seemingly unknown sub-Reddit. Sometimes the most likely places for that kind of honesty are the places where the poster is least likely to encounter an argument.
We all know that negative feedback isn’t the easiest to get through, but keep McConaughey in mind here—if you want a renaissance to parallel his, you’ve got to really listen to all the feedback.
Be There
As a company, keeping tabs on what is being said about you can be as simple as creating a Google notification for any news about or mention of your brand. Back that up with an active social listening tool like HootSuite or Sprout Social, and you’ll catch most of what’s being said about you.
But if these tools fall silent, and you’re not getting any feedback, that could mean a couple of things. Either you’re putting the cart before the horse and need to first invest in some business promotion and online marketing, or your feedback is hiding beyond the social media surface. Before you get too far into asking for honest feedback, make sure your customers can find you for more than just the common complaint. Be at their fingertips when they want to tell you you’ve done a fantastic job.
To do this, confirm that your company is set up properly on social media. Your Facebook page should have an address, allowing your Facebook fans to review your business directly on Facebook. Similarly, your company should be listed on Google Maps, which in turn means your company will have a local Google+ page complete with contact information. This will allow anyone searching Google for your business (or business services) to easily find you to make a purchase or leave a quick review letting you know how they felt about the services they received. 
You should also include links to your review sites on your website, and follow up with recent customers by encouraging them to leave their feedback online. Send them an email. Drop them a postcard. Encourage them to share their experience with you and others. The easier you make it for your customers, the more feedback you’ll get.
As a bonus, establishing yourself through well-known sites and channels will give you a bit more authority. As McConaughey discovered, the more you’re willing to put into cultivating your persona, the more you’ll be recognized for it. People know the difference between fool’s gold and the real thing.
Respond
In the same vein, your company should realize the importance social media has in providing customer service. Today, you’ll find that the majority of your customers will search for your company directly on Facebook or click into your social media profiles after searching for you via Google or Bing. Customers know they won’t have a difficult time finding your contact information and reaching out to you via your social media pages. Everything is all out in the open on social media, and it’s easier for them to send you a quick message to ask a question or make a comment about your product or service.
The less available you are, the more open you are to receiving a plethora of negative reviews. Sometimes posting your email address and a phone number just isn’t enough when a dazed and confused customer needs an immediate answer. Twitter is always right there, hovering at the fingertips of all mobile users, just begging for them to tell the world what has dissatisfied them today. It may seem that no one is really listening and that one angry customer won’t have that great of an impact on your business overall, but that’s not how the Internet works.
Sure, your current customers may not care or even know that someone has lodged an Internet complaint against you, but you’ll never be able to measure the number of potential clients lost due to negative reviews and feedback about your business online. The split-second decision that consumers make today comes down to just one or two minutes of searching the Internet for what it is they need. Maybe you’re the top result on Google, but do you know what Google says when someone then specifically searches “reviews” in conjunction with your company name?
Don’t forget that as powerful as Google is, search engines aren’t where the buck stops. YouTube, Twitter, and Reddit are among the least likely sources any business would think of to use as a resource to research themselves. But these are among the most popular places for Internet users to leave feedback of all kinds in regard to your business. So get out there, be available, and do the work it takes to know you’re not just a one trick pony. Alright alright alright.
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