Conversational Marketing

Brand mangers face a big challenge with social marketing because it requires a willingness to engage in a two-way conversation with customers. What if they are unhappy with your product or service?

Someone asked me last week about the best way to communicate with your target audience once you had identified their neighborhoods. I was catching up on some blog posts over the weekend when I saw this great post by John Cass on conversational blogging.

If you take John’s post and replace the world blogging with social marketing you have the framework for conversational social marketing:

“Effective blogging [social marketing] is about joining an existing conversation, rather than interrupting your audiences’ conversation. What that means in practicality is that a corporate blogger [social marketer] does not pitch their articles to other bloggers, or ask for links directly. Rather a blogger [social marketer] should look for opportunities to join in an existing conversation. Make comments with relevant statements on another blog or write a follow up post on your own blog.”

There are a lot of similarities between effective blogging and effective marketing on a social media site like MySpace. As John pointed out, the key is joining an existing conversation rather than interrupting it with off-topic messaging that your audience could view as spam. Bide your time and over the long-run you will find that a open, conversational approach to social marketing is the most effective way to get your message across.

Filed under Social Media Optimization : Comments (5) : Sep 20th, 2006

5 Responses to “Conversational Marketing”

  1. Amy Gahran Says:
    September 20th, 2006 at 2:38 pm

    Thanks, David, for bringing John’s brilliant post to my attention.

    I did a short followup on the Capture the Conversation blog today.

    Keep it up!

    - Amy Gahran

  2. Social Media Optimization » List of Social Networking Sites Says:
    September 20th, 2006 at 5:51 pm

    [...] Either list is a good starting point if you are researching social networking sites that are in your vertical market. Before jumping in, I would recommend observing the conversation first to make sure that it is a neighborhood that you want to be in and then join in the conversation. [...]

  3. John Cass Says:
    September 26th, 2006 at 8:44 pm

    Thanks for the mention David, I could not aggree more.

  4. David Wilson Says:
    September 27th, 2006 at 3:24 pm

    Your welcome John. I think there is a lot of overlap between effective blogging and effective social media optimization. I am looking forward to reading more about it in your book.

  5. John Cass Says:
    September 28th, 2006 at 3:34 am

    thanks David, I am curious, what inspired you to start blogging?

Leave a Reply