I dialed into a WebEx (I still hate WebEx--how they've been around this long and still not figured out how to make logging into one of their presentations dead simple is just....*tisk*) on Tuesday to hear John Battelle talk about "Conversational Marketing." Mr. Battelle's a guy I respect and have been following for a number of years; first for my job, but now because he makes sense in a space filled with a lot who dont.
The moderated Q&A-type session covered a lot of ground and I wish I had the ability to take really detailed notes, but I didn't. It was in the middle of the day--what can you do? I was struck at one point in the discussion by a seemingly obvious point John made which I'm sure many of us miss: if the now famous "markets are conversations" mantra is true, then companies participating in those marketplaces need to have good conversationalists (not a direct quote, but close enough). Makes sense, right?
The most obvious examples of this include (and were cited by John) Robert Scoble, when he was still with Microsoft and Jeremy Zawodny, of Yahoo! Both of these guys became their respective company's conversationalist with the public. And both of them took this responsibility very seriously. They gained the market's 'trust' by being fair and transparent. If (and frequently when) someone commented about MSFT doing something particularly odious, Scoble would either agree or not, depending on how he saw it, rather than defending MSFT out of hand without researching whether or not the commentor had a point. And if Scoble didn't know the answer, he'd go find out and report back.
So good conversationalists have good listening skills, too. It's fair to say if a company is going to be a healthy participant in a marketplace, it needs skilled conversationalists who are equally skilled at listening, as well as commenting.
Some other good points which came up during the WebEx:
Conversational Marketing should embrace PR, but PR has to get used to the fact that once in a while it has to step out of the way once the conversation starts. I liked this--PR folks should be facilitators, not hurdles to good conversations. Be more proactive, not reactive. If there's a crisis (and the term crisis can mean anything negative) then embrace that situation as an opportunity to engage and rectify. John had a good anecdote at the ready to explain: he was giving this presentation from a hotel room in NY. He didn't mention the name of the hotel but he said he'd had a bad experience when he first checked in. He called down to the front desk to get it resolved and the hotel did very little to help. His point of contact was also rude.
John said he'd now give the hotel a D grade. But, if the hotel had done something proactive to help John's situation, then comped him a night *or* sent up something to say they were sorry for the inconvenience, that would have changed John's perception of the hotel's brand. Handled proactively, John would have divorced the experience from the brand itself and still left with a positive brand perception.
PR should look for people who are out there being vocal about their brand experiences. If negative, look for the opportunities to make them right. If positive, do what's necessary to keep those positive vibes flowing. These market conversations are happening all around and positive engagements will create many more brand embassadores than any amount of advertising could ever buy. That last part's my add, by the way. John didn't go down the advertising road.
Measurement - This is still a gray area. The positive thing about online marketing is that it's easy to tell when traffic spikes to a site created specifically for a particular initiative, or counting the number of inbound links ("gestures," or indications of people's attention online), but a universal standard of conversational marketing measurement is still needed. The old models of "reach" and "frequency" are still relevant, but they're being rationalized and scrutinized harder than before. This is particularly true in the search advertising space, where advertisers are starting to demand more transparency from ad networks.
On sites like Myspace and Facebook - they're tremendous potential vehicles for marketers, but still "a mess." But a good mess; marketers have opportunities here but finding them is an ongoing puzzle.
Those are the salient points. None of the above are direct quotes unless I stuck "" around them. John, if you read this and I've missed something or gone off course stick in a comment and I'll get it changed asap.
Next one of these John does is worth an hour of your time.