For years now I’ve scratched my head at why so many corporate marketers don’t “get it.” Social media has seemed like such a no-brainer. When you sit down with marketing managers and CMO’s and talk to them *like consumers* about how annoying and intrusive traditional marketing is they all agree and talk about what a life saver their TiVo is.

Switch the conversation around about how to do non-intrusive marketing and you are often met with wrinkled brows and scowls. So what gives? Are all CMO’s Dr Jeckle and Mr Hyde?

The truth, is that traditional marketing is easy. Spend X dollars for X number of months running the latest creative. Ad agencies and media outlets have made it drop dead easy. Todays marketers are busy and that isn’t going to change as companies brace for a *possible* recession. Can anyone say “reallocating resources”?

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In my social media blog, I wrote about a personal experience I had with Twitter and the Geek Squad.  To make a long story extremely short, I twittered about the fact that the Geek Squad could not retrieve the data on my hard drive after it crashed; and that they weren’t really geeks after all.  About an hour later, I get an email from the founder, Stephen Roberts asking if he can help in any way. I gave him the details and he emailed me back a few hours later confirming that they didn’t have the right software in the store to help me; and that they would have to send my laptop to their tech center in Kentucky to retrieve the data (costing anywhere between $400 - $1200).  I saw the string of emails that he sent to the actual technician that I spoke with a few days earlier.  I decided against it and took the laptop to a local computer geek.  Three hours later and $250 out of pocket, I got my data.

Mike Arrington also experienced a similar situation with Twitter and Comcast. After several failed attempts to get his internet connection fixed, he “lost his cool” and ripped Comcast a new one on Twitter.  Within 20 minutes of his first tweet, he got a call from a Comcast executive who wanted to know how he could help.  The exec told Mike that he monitors Twitter and blogs to get a better understanding of what people are saying about Comcast. As a previous employee of Comcast, I am sure he is very busy reading, and reading, and reading.

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This is the first inaugural post of Conversations Matter. We are a group of in-house marketers from well known companies such as Intel, Hewlett Packard, Cisco, Yahoo, Yum Brands and Cadence Designs Systems. It is our passion to share our personal experiences with our readers and to provide a unique point of view of social media; one that I believe is not well represented on the internet today. 

So, why Conversations Matter? And, where is the gap in Social Media?

In my experience of trial and error in this space, I believe that conversations are the core of social media; and that companies (or brands) should participate in all ways possible in the conversations that are happening online.  Not doing so is like being on trial for a serious crime without representation from a defense lawyer. 

In this blog, you will not learn how to get your content on the home page of Digg. You will not learn about linkbait or link building in general.  You will not learn how to game the Digg algorithm or how to become a power user in these respective communities.  You will not learn about seeding your own content in social bookmarking sites. You will not learn about social media from an acquisition or conversion point of view.  There are a plenty of resources online to help you learn about these techniques. And, while these different elements are extremely important in customer acquisition, SEO and web traffic; I believe that conversations matter in defining a complete social media strategy; and that the conversational element is the key to success in such campaigns. 

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