Conversations Matter: a Collaborative Social Media Blog
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.
And … the gap?
I believe there are two gaps. The first is that there is lack of representation (or voice) on the Internet from in-house marketers that manage social media. For marketers new to social media, it’s important to provide several points of view to help educate and inform these individuals about the challenges, opportunities, learnings and failures of managing social media in-house. In many cases – and without sharing anything confidential – we will share strategy insights, execution challenges and post mortem learning from previous campaigns that we have managed from beginning to end.
This is not to take anything away from the other social media blogs that exist today. Take a look at our blogroll that we title “conversationalists”; these people are visionaries when it comes to social media and we read their blogs daily. We just want to provide a different point of view.
I also think that there’s a slight disconnect between agencies (not all) and corporate/product marketing; which is the second gap. Ever since my days at HP, I have received several pitches from agencies who claim to have strong understanding of social media. The problem is that many of these agencies think of social media ONLY as an acquisition channel; and fail to provide insight to increase engagement, usage of products and conversational marketing.
Tags: social media, conversational marketing
|
Email This Page
Did you enjoy this post? If so, please subscribe to our RSS feed
Michael,
I think this is a great idea and I’m excited to be contributing. I agree with your assessment of the social media gap.
Too often the only resources an internal practitioner has is to read blog posts by “consultants” who are writing pure theory because they’ve never done any of the stuff they write about. They don’t understand the challenges of keeping the trains run on time while trying to add social media to their workload.
Yes it would be ideal if every company hired chief bloggers and a team of social media practitioners, but none of us work in ideal situations. There needs to be a place where internal practitioners can learn with their peers. Hopefully this will be that place.
Great idea…a little like the community of PR and media professionals we started called PitchEngine. I’d love to collaborate with you and maybe offer up some posts from our perspective of utilizing social media PR tools in our in-house and agency PR efforts.
Thanks for flying the Social Media flag!
Best,
Jason
@Jason - thanks for stopping by. Let’s collaborate…there is definitely an opportunity to leverage each other’s collective knowledge of social media. Let’s stay in touch.
- Michael
Congrats on launching this. I really like what you’re going after here. The title Conversations Matter is suitably provocative and timely, but it seems like what you’re really getting at is that *relationships* matter though, no? =)
And I personally hate the term “conversational marketing”… it sounds like something marketers want to latch onto as the next trendy thing in marketing, when the marketing part of that is almost a misnomer. Marketing is almost, to me at least, antithetical to the concept of having a conversation. (Like people who keep thinking about what they’re going to say next while the other person is talking, rather than listening). But what is it then? Brand engagement? Trust building? What are we really after?
Look forward to reading more of this blog.
mmp
As the principal of an agency specializing in Social Media, it’s def interesting to get the in-house perspective and also hopefully agencies can offer contrasting opinions about the struggles to push through social media at big corps. Where blogging could launch with a personality or program, it takes much more than a maven to engage in social media.
We often see buzzwords, platforms, and the flavor of the month strategies contrasted by budgets, staffing, and actually producing the content. That’s the challenge or the gap I see. There’s also often a tendency for marketers talk to themselves, recalling the Kum Ba Yah days of business blogging.
For example, who’d predict Twitter would disrupt so much 2 years ago at SXSW? Well, I called it the marginalia of the blogosphere and now it’s changed how bloggers are communicating. And what’s even more interesting than microblogging your day, is opening up Twitter as a communication hub for an organization.
Michael,
I enjoyed your inaugural post of Conversations Matter, and love the idea of hearing from in-house marketers working in social media about the obstacles and opportunities they face within the walls of the company.
For years I’ve told the story about working in a large company’s marketing department ( in the mid-to-late 90’s) and as a low on the totem pole manager having to advocate for a funded, staffed, paid attention to corporate website. Senior management did not embrace the idea and instead were busy planning and implementing large advertising campaigns.
At the time, it wasn’t about substituting one for the other, there was the opportunity for integrating the old with the new–but it took a long time before it became a corporate priority.
I’m looking forward to hearing about the in-house marketer’s viewpoint. Good luck with the blog.
Best,
Debbie Hemley
http://www.impressionsthroughmedia.com