Empathy Expansion Kit: Listening Louder and with Empathy to Your Social Media Engagement

**SPEAKER_1** (0:03)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Stephen Sakach** (0:17)
Hello, and welcome back to our Bistyle's Empathy Expansion Kit episode today. We're focusing on Listening Louder, Empathy in Social Media Engagement.
I'm Stephen Sakach here with Tullio Siragusa.

**Tullio Siragusa** (0:30)
Hello, everybody.

**Stephen Sakach** (0:31)
Tullio, we want to build trust, loyalty, and a positive brand image in social media. Why does listening empathetically matter on social media?

**Tullio Siragusa** (0:44)
I think about it this way. Back in the old days in the village where everybody just knew the shop owner and the shop owner knew everyone and everybody knew each other, the way you learned about your product or services if there was a problem or if people were delighted with it was through people, right? They just talked to each other and you got the feedback. Sometimes you didn't get the feedback and suddenly you're like, oh, why did my sales drop? Or suddenly you got more increase in demand for your product or services and you had no idea because the conversation happened out there and you weren't privy to it.
So social media just democratizes all that. It's like both you as the company has the ability to listen in to what the village is saying about you, good or bad, right? And you can participate. So you can empathetically take those insights you're learning to either make adjustments or to address concerns.
And the way you do it is not through like in the past where a lot of PR firms like let's do damage control. Someone said something negative, right?
No, you actually respond empathetically to the problem and try to really be curious about what it is that the person is saying and individualize it. So it's not like just listening and then doing broad general statements is actually engaging. So think of it as like the opportunity to recreate that intimate feeling of living in a village where everybody knows each other except now the villages is global, right? So you have the ability to build that one on one personalized relationship with a customer. And that's the gift that keeps on giving with social media when you are engaged, listening intently, curious about what they're saying, intentionally trying to connect where appropriate if there's criticism, empathetically taking that in, humbly responding and showing care, using that as a platform to see where you need to show care.

**Stephen Sakach** (2:51)
Yeah, I think that village example is a really good one because back in that time period, when you had an issue, they were right there. So you'd be giving that timely sort of feedback, timely engagement. It wouldn't be like right now where you just ignore it and come back in a week later. So easy to do that online and social media, but you're right there. If someone's in your store, someone's in your face about something, you've got to deal with it in a timely fashion.
So social media, carry that same thing through. Make sure you're timely on it. Someone's up in your business about something. You want to make sure it's not just lingering and building resentment and causing more problems and they're feeling ignored.
So yeah, I think that's key. And then you mentioned personalize, like in the village. So Tullio comes to my store and hey, Tullio, what's going on? Tell me about the problem. Okay, I'm going to fix it just for you, Tullio.

**Tullio Siragusa** (3:49)
I mean, I grew up in a small town, very small town. So everybody knew each other. The pharmacist knew you by name, the shopkeeper knew you. Everybody just knew each other.
So that also kept everybody a little more honest because reputation can go up and smoke very quickly, right?
But there's an intimacy about it. So I'd be curious, you've been doing digital media most of your life. I'd be curious, what are some of the strategies for empathetic social media engagement? What have you seen work?

**Stephen Sakach** (4:20)
Yeah, I think first thing, I think you just sort of hit on that too, is that showing you genuinely care. I mean, I think that's just key. If you're an authentic business, you operate authentically, you need to have genuine care and express that.
You can't just go through the motions on something. You got to be empathic. You got to feel that pain.
Understanding fully what's going on there. I think too, you don't have to have this conversation fully publicly. It can start publicly, but then it'll be like, hey, let's switch to so I can get your email and all that stuff and not have to deal with any of your public information. Now we can bring that privately and then go through whatever back and forth we need to there, so that it's not exposed as much if you've got that issue. But typically we aren't having that problem with what we're doing because we go back to just being genuine and caring and listening, making sure someone's feeling heard and then addressing the issue. I think that's what people are really looking for, you know, more than 9% of the time.