Web 2.0 Mar­ket­ing Tip #26: The Need for Conversations

Web 2.0 mar­ket­ing is very dif­fer­ent from tra­di­tional marketing

In tra­di­tional mar­ket­ing, what sim­ply hap­pens is that you’ll cre­ate an ad, pur­chase ad space some­where, and then wait for the buy­ers to come in. They might come, or they might not.

It’s quite the op­po­site with so­cial net­work­ing sites.

In Face­book, Twit­ter, or other so­cial sites, you can’t just cre­ate a pro­file, add some in­for­ma­tion, and then wait for peo­ple to show up and buy. You have to take the ini­tia­tive: you have to take action!

Web 2.0 is All about Conversations

If you are go­ing to use so­cial net­works for mar­ket­ing, then you have to know that you are ex­pected to so­cial­ize and to talk. A lot.

Look at Twit­ter for example.

You’ll see that the ma­jor­ity of the posts are from peo­ple en­gaged in com­mu­ni­cat­ing, re­act­ing to each oth­er’s posts. Some of the tweets will be:

  • A di­rectly re­sponse to what some­one else has posted. This starts a nice, long conversation.
  • Re-post of their friends’ mes­sage, so that more peo­ple can read it. This is com­monly called retweeting.
  • Sug­ges­tion of spe­cific pro­files to friends and followers.
  • Rec­om­men­da­tion of links to other peo­ple’s web sites. The owner of the web­sites can be friends or followers.

To get some­thing from Web 2.0 mar­ket­ing there’s no doubt you need to start sim­i­lar con­ver­sa­tions, too. By en­gag­ing with peo­ple on your net­work, you’ll get more at­ten­tion and you will get con­nec­tions to real peo­ple, both cus­tomer and pro­fes­sion­als. Start con­ver­sa­tions to­day; oth­er­wise, you will find your­self los­ing more than you are gaining.

Why Start Conversations?

„So, I might get losses in­stead of gains if I don’t start con­ver­sa­tion. How­ever, if my prod­ucts and ser­vices are good, and if am cour­te­ous and ap­proach­able, should­n’t that be enough?” Well, that is true. How­ever, you must know that the more you en­gage in con­ver­sa­tions with your friends or fol­low­ers, the greater your base of peo­ple will become.

At some point, it’ll be­come self-per­pet­u­at­ing, so that your friends bring in new friends on a reg­u­lar ba­sis. How­ever, if you can’t main­tain good con­ver­sa­tions, your ef­forts might be in vain. Here are some ways to start and main­tain conversation:

  • Start re­spond­ing to your friend’s posts.
  • Keep up the con­ver­sa­tion when some else sends a re­sponse to you or when a fol­lower rec­om­mends or retweets your post.
  • Ac­tively recommend/retweet other peo­ple’s posts if they are use­ful and you think your friends will be in­ter­ested in them.
  • Rec­om­mend links to in­ter­est­ing web sites.

This strat­egy, of course, is not only true for Twit­ter but for all Web 2.0 sites, re­gard­less if it is Face­book, My­Space, or a blog that you are us­ing. As long as you are us­ing a medium where peo­ple might en­gage in con­ver­sa­tion through com­ment­ing or track­backs, you should al­ways to take the ini­tia­tive, start con­ver­sa­tions, and keep them alive.

On a fi­nal note, I sug­gest not to do Web 2.0 con­ver­sa­tions ran­domly. Also think about fo­cus­ing only on a cou­ple of sites at a time. This way, you can guar­an­tee that you will have enough time to en­gage in con­ver­sa­tions through each of your se­lected medium and build strong re­la­tion­ships with the peo­ple who fol­low you on those Web 2.0 sites.

If you re­ally want to use sev­eral so­cial net­works at a time, say, 6 or more, then here is what you have to do:

  • Choose 2 or 3 main sites where you will take the time to en­gage customers.
  • For the rest of the sites, choose to post and re­act only when you have spare time or when ab­solutely nec­es­sary such as in cases wherein some­one is post­ing bad things about you.

In the end, it’s more prof­itable, not to men­tion more fun to heav­ily en­gage in only 1,2, or 3 sites and ig­nore the rest.