It’s been said that Listening, or monitoring online conversations, is to social media what the Roland 404 is to hip-hop; you can try without it, but it’s just not going to fill the floor. I like to describe Listening as access to constant global real-time focus group without the Hawthorne effect.

For the past couple of months I’ve been talking to the people across the Ogilvy Group who are involved in Listening and understanding the different reasons and ways that they do it.

The upshot is that every one of the ten agencies is doing it, but for all kinds of reasons which can largely be put into two buckets;

1. One-off snapshots used ahead of planning to gain insights, identify topics of conversation and to identify key influencers in conversations. Each agency uses this information in different ways specific to their needs; from placement of in-bound links for SEO to determining content strategies around topics and audiences through to deriving audience insights for offline marketing.

2. On-going monitoring to observe changes in the conversation to

• Track the impact of marketing, both online and offline
• Track brand reputation by levels of conversation and the sentiment of those conversations
• Monitor and manage crises
• Manage conversations with influencers and communities

So on Monday we’re getting the 30-something planners and analysts who are actively engaged in Listening at Ogilvy along with a fair selection of the business partners who access it and holding an internal conference; “Listening@Ogilvy”.

I need to be a little coy about some of what we’re discussing, but here’s a few publicly acceptable items from the agenda;

Nick Brackenbury: Introduction to the 360 DI Listening Centre; The Wall of Ears

Irfan Kamal: case studies from the 360 DI Team in Washington DC

Kohlben Vodden: Ogilvy One: Listening for Clues

Matt Gierhart: Ogilvy Action: Listening for Insight

Michael Darragh: Ogilvy PR 360 DI: Listening for Crisis

At the end of the afternoon we’re going to open the floor and get into where all of this is heading: Listening 2.0 (c’mon - I hadda)

We’ll be tweeting out on #Listening@Ogilvy and the lovely Jez Kay from NowHouse will be capturing it all on video so we”ll stick some highlights up on the Ogilvy Vids channel.