But Where’s the Conversation?

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:

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…

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.