The point Jaffe made so well is that in today’s world, perception is reality. Conversation marketing re-introduces the opportunity to make a personal connection with customers and start building sincere relationships that last.
So, how do companies go about joining the conversation?
Jaffe gave several tips on how businesses can start to participate:
Listen – make contribution to the conversation real, not just hype
Respond – even if you are approached negatively, respond
Join – position yourself to be invited to join the conversation
Catalyze – empower customers to demonstrate your brand on your behalf
Start – be a conversation conduit and start a conversation
One thing to keep in mind is that it is important that companies are transparent and honest with the communities they are interacting with. The objective of a conversation is not to trick customers into performing some task or marketing outcome, but to be actively involved with the community as a participant: listening, sharing and interacting.
In order to be effective at “joining the conversation”, Jaffe listed some things a company shouldn’t be:
Fake – be transparent in your communications
Manipulative – be open, don’t try to fool other participants
Controlling – understand that you can’t control everything all of the time
Dominating – the world doesn’t operate solely on your terms, allow others room to talk
Avoiding – marketing is no longer a spectator sport, you must be active and participate
