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You are here: Home / Social Media for Business / But Where’s the Conversation?

But Where’s the Conversation?

October 21, 2009 •

The hype around social media as con­ver­sa­tion has become deaf­en­ing.

Much of the hyper­bole comes from agen­cies and con­sul­tants who have seized upon social media as the next wave; their moti­va­tion is self-serv­ing, of course. Pro­mot­ing their cre­den­tials as social media experts enables them to attract clients, launch new projects and grow rev­enues. Still more hyper­bole comes from pun­dits seek­ing to grow their audi­ence for blogs, speak­ing engage­ments, books they’ve authored, pod­casts, etc. (You know who I mean.) These are all clas­sic exam­ples of early hype cycles.

So much of the ratio­nale on why this mat­ters still comes back to audi­ence size (expressed in terms of new social media met­rics that replace the old-fash­ioned “eye­balls” and page views of the early Inter­net days). Here’s a great exam­ple of this argu­ment:

Social Media, Social Influ­ence Mar­ket­ing and Super Peers
View more pre­sen­ta­tions from Mark Walm­s­ley.

But all this atten­tion on num­bers makes it all too seduc­tive for mar­keters to do the same old things in a new way. Where’s the con­ver­sa­tion?

I Love the Concept – Now Engage in Conversation

Don’t get me wrong: I love the idea of con­ver­sa­tional mar­ket­ing between brands and cus­tomers – I just haven’t seen much evi­dence of it.

Out­side of email or phone, I’ve not yet had a sin­gle “dig­i­tal con­ver­sa­tion” with any ser­vice provider to my busi­ness or any brand whose prod­ucts I buy. Most of what I receive from ven­dors is pre­dom­i­nantly email mar­ket­ing (this is true in both my per­sonal and busi­ness life).

Most of the activ­ity I observe in the social media world today is the result of peo­ple who earn their liv­ing via social media and who actively pro­mote it as the next new plat­form for mar­ket­ing or com­pany-cus­tomer-brand inter­ac­tion.

Today’s Practice Is Rarely Conversational, With a Few Exceptions

In the B2B world webi­nars are often effec­tive con­ver­sa­tion starters. The Q&A that fol­lows webi­nars is a good exam­ple of con­ver­sa­tion, one that’s trig­gered by a dig­i­tally hosted event that’s hap­pen­ing in real time. But these con­ver­sa­tions are heav­ily depen­dent on human voices engag­ing in dia­log.

I see lots of exam­ples on Twit­ter of employ­ees talk­ing up their company’s prod­ucts or ser­vices – espe­cially when some­thing new is being launched. For exam­ple: You should have seen the noise in the Seat­tle area as the Win­dows 7 launch neared! It was obvi­ous Microsoft’s PR team had ini­ti­ated a con­certed effort to gal­va­nize the employ­ees to talk up the launch. Local tweet-ups abounded…

Twit­ter as van­ity press

But on a day-to-day basis Twit­ter is loaded with exam­ples of self-pro­mo­tional mes­sages or per­sonal brand build­ing. (I have engaged in this myself.) Who really cares what I’m cook­ing for din­ner, or that my high-tech cats know how to turn on my Mac?

When I’ve found tweets to be most use­ful is when some­one points out a help­ful resource they’ve found on Slideshare or someone’s web­site. This is what I call the “sign­post” form of tweet… It’s rarely con­ver­sa­tion.

The Medium Limits the Message

As for con­ver­sa­tion, the 140-char­ac­ter con­straint on tweets means that at best each mes­sage is a quip or a retort. Maybe it serves as a con­ver­sa­tion starter, but I’m still look­ing for evi­dence of real con­ver­sa­tion hap­pen­ing in the Twit­ter world.

There are a few highly tal­ented peo­ple who’ve mas­tered this medium, but in gen­eral what you see on your Tweet­deck sounds more like cacoph­ony.

Blogs Still Rule

The best exam­ples of online con­ver­sa­tion take place in good-old-fash­ioned blogs: when some­one writes a provoca­tive post, and lots of peo­ple respond with inter­est­ing com­men­tary or alter­na­tive points of view.

Con­ver­sa­tion occurs when some­one speaks, peo­ple lis­ten, the speaker responds, and mul­ti­ple par­ties engage. Yes, con­ver­sa­tion of a sort takes place when lots of peo­ple speak all at once, but it’s inef­fec­tive if no one is lis­ten­ing. Or if so many peo­ple are talk­ing that they drown out each other’s voice.

Blogs are the best online vehi­cle I’ve seen for asyn­chro­nous online con­ver­sa­tions. They also offer the ben­e­fit of allow­ing late arrivers to ben­e­fit from the con­ver­sa­tion after it has taken place.

Late arrivers’ role is gen­er­ally lim­ited to lis­ten­ing because the active con­ver­sa­tion­al­ists have moved on… Archived webi­nars can per­form a sim­i­lar func­tion, but are often closed to the gen­eral pub­lic or to non­pay­ing sub­scribers.

Social Networks?

I also see occa­sional signs of con­ver­sa­tion within LinkedIn’s net­work, some­times sparked via Q&A; more often by the con­ver­sa­tions that take place pri­vately when LinkedIn enables for­mer col­leagues to find each other and recon­nect over email and then phone.

Plaxo seems less effec­tive at this – per­haps because of its hybrid mis­sion as address book updater and per­sonal news flash pub­lisher. (I’m find­ing Plaxo more and more annoy­ing, and have had to turn it off because it causes  Out­look to crash on a daily basis.)

Face­book fans rave about the con­ver­sa­tions they have there. Due to social media fatigue and too many other demands on my time, I haven’t yet found the time to invest in build­ing a Face­book pres­ence. So I don’t have enough per­sonal expe­ri­ence with Face­book to com­ment.

Conversations with the People Who Matter

Per­haps due to our New Eng­land upbring­ing, my fam­ily has found more value in a “gated com­mu­nity” we’ve estab­lished for pri­vate con­ver­sa­tions and mem­ory shar­ing using 37Signals’ Base­camp. It has proven to be a won­der­ful  plat­form for re-unit­ing a dis­trib­uted fam­ily and enabling very thought­ful or even tear­ful con­ver­sa­tions. This has been a true cross-gen­er­a­tional con­ver­sa­tion – but it’s not con­ver­sa­tional mar­ket­ing, as no brands are involved. There’s no oppor­tu­nity for any­one to mon­e­tize what’s tak­ing place.

And as for my real friends: we talk in per­son or by phone; occa­sion­ally by email, but always as a pre­lude to a real-world con­ver­sa­tion or get-together.

So, yes, call me a Baby Boomer. Even though I’ve been using com­put­ers and email for lit­er­ally decades, my con­ver­sa­tions still tend to take place “off the grid” and face to face.

But I’ll be happy to engage in a dia­log with my favorite brands, once they have mas­tered the art of con­ver­sa­tion.

Trackbacks

  1. Digital Biographer™ » Posts about Personal Branding as of October 23, 2009 says:
    October 23, 2009 at 4:16 am

    […] that my reck­less charm would cat­a­pult me to inter­net star­dom. Well, it never really got me there. But Where’s the Con­ver­sa­tion? — blog​-christinethomp​son​.com 10/21/2009 The hype around social media as con­ver­sa­tion has become […]

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Learn­ing how to recover from the loss of a beloved spouse, and then to find a trans­for­ma­tive path for­ward.

About Me

Semi-retired marketing exec, transitioning from a career in high tech. Now "managed" by two Tonkinese cats. Missing travel and friends on the West Coast. Avid reader and foodie. Staying active with long walks, biking, kayaking and yoga.

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