Customer listening sounds intrusive yet is a powerful tool to gauge customers’ insights when performed ethically. It involves monitoring discussion forums, collecting data about own firm, scouring followers for their key influencers and analyzing conversations in areas of interest among target audience. There are some strategies for effective customer listening. Social listening is one such where mention of brand or firm can be tracked. Online surveys are always useful though more for quantitative rather than qualitative research. There is also the concept of list building which works best with Twitter where lists can be built about organizations and news stories to follow. A core list for key demographics needs to be built to monitor what topics are trending for the firm’s target audience.