First let’s remember that a conversation occurs between two or more people and is a balance between listening and sharing. If you just listen or just share, you are not a part of a conversation. Here is a great explanation of a conversation from our dear old friend, Mr Wikipedia:
“Those engaging in conversation naturally relate the other speaker’s statements to themselves, and insert themselves (or some degree of relation to themselves, ranging from the replier’s opinions or points to actual stories about themselves) into their replies. For a successful conversation, the partners must achieve a workable balance of contributions. A successful conversation includes mutually interesting connections between the speakers or things that the speakers know. For this to happen, those engaging in conversation must find a topic on which they both can relate to in some sense.”
I think we are a bit too used to conversations, we expect them to happen and we expect to be a part of them. Companies expect conversations to happen around their brand and they expect that users are going to want to engage with them. Why?
Let me ask you this, what do you think would happen if conversations stopped? We can look at this from many angles but I want to tackle it from the corporate standpoint. Let’s say your company is Dell or Apple. You know that there are people out there talking about your brand day and night from around the world. What if the conversations all stopped? Do you think you would have a business? Do you think anybody would buy your product?
If conversations about a company or a brand stopped do you think anybody would really ask about the ROI from social media? Or would they just say “please make them talk about us again, please, please!” Conversation is an art not a technique, we shouldn’t expect them to happen we should encourage them to happen. We shouldn’t expect that users are going to want to engage with us, we should ask them to.
Comments