Conversation Starters

Great marketing communications is really pretty simple if you stop and think about it. Develop a conversation-starting piece of media that convinces someone to take action and wham … you're finished. Clock out and take the kids for a bike ride through the zoo. Repeat as necessary.

Problem is that there's no universal standard for creating stellar conversations today. We do know one thing for certain, word of mouth product, service or political perspective recommendations score higher than anything else in the marcom practitioner's tool bag. With a host of new social media options evolving on almost a daily basis, new conversation starters would seem to be a no-brainer. But that's not what I've found.

As director of programs for IABC Chicago, I opened a luncheon session the other day to 75 Fortune 150 communicators by asking how many were involved in emerging media - blogging, Twitter or podcasting - on some regular basis. Only a few hands went up. I should have been shocked, but I wasn't because I'd heard almost the same answer in the graduate IMC class I teach at Northwestern when I asked 23 new students the same question.

If conversations about products and services are so effective at changing behavior - and I believe they are - why do so many communicators still understand so very little about the value of social media?

One reason is that no one is quite sure where social media fits in the traditional corporate structure. Should the brand manager be Tweeting or is that the role of corporate communications or marketing? Or should they all be blogging too? And how do you control the conversations with a variety of departments chiming in?

The big guys upstairs are also afraid of social media simply because it is so well … social. They're afraid that dipping their toes in the social media stream means opening themselves up to critical feedback - it does - when all they want to really do is sell products. To them, the best solution is to do nothing right now.

Here's why I think that's rather short sighted. People chatting all over the place - as in all over the globe - about a product or service is much more likely to result in a positive conversation than a negative one. The most important element corporate communicators and marketing folks miss, however, is that these conversations don't need us to happen. They're taking place right now with no input from any of the company people.

Sure there's a good chance someone might rather buy a BMW than a Ford, but Ford on Twitter participating in the conversation anyway. They understand that taking part, as risky as that might seem to some traditional marketing folks, is a far better alternative than standing on the sidelines hoping conversations convince people to buy.

Finally, it's work to stay on top of the new media game.

You need to be open-minded about the possibility of new ideas and new methods of convincing people that your product or service should be the choice right now. That means reading, quite a bit in fact, to learn more and develop new strategies. It means subscribing to blogs and reading them to better understand where they might fit into your business. But you don't need to participate in blogs, Twitter or any of these in order to watch and listen.

There is much to distract a business from social networking right now. But the poor economy won't be a great excuse a year from now. The smart communicators are learning the skills and developing strategies now that will help pull their companies out of the slime as the recession ends.

So can you afford to ignore social networking as a marketer? Only at your peril.

--Guest Contributor: Robert Mark
Robert Mark is an adjunct lecturer at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and CEO of Evanston-based CommAvia. He's is the past-president of the Chicago chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators and publisher of the Webbie-award winning aviation blog Jetwhine.com.