Conversations Incorporated

“When people turn to a company, they want to know the problems the company chooses to solve, and its approaches to solve them.”
 — Sam Palmisano, former Chairman, IBM

One day, a businessman happened to visit a pet store. He saw a parrot there that knew five global languages: English, Spanish, German, French, and Chinese. He was very much impressed. He bought the bird paying through his nose and arranged it to be delivered to his residence, as he had some work at office. 
Hours later, he went to home. As soon as he entered, he called his wife, “Honey, have they delivered the parrot to you?” The wife responded, “Yes dear. And I must tell you it tastes so good”, while pointing to a roast, and a bowl of soup on the table. 
The businessman got furious, “Madam, do you know that the parrot was not an ordinary bird. He knew five global languages. The bird cost me a fortune…” 
The wife shot back, “Mister, how do I know? When I was preparing, your bird did not speak even a single word.”

The moral of the story is that if you do not speak, you will be in a soup. It is ‘publish or perish’ situation for business. Marketing has become ‘content marketing’. Surveys continuously cite that “creating original, engaging content is the number one challenge for brands” engaged in social / digital marketing.

But it is not about content — it is about ‘conversations’. In my workshops on social media marketing, I get the participants to come up with Conversations Worth Having, a list of topics based the following three broad themes: 1) problems (the brand tries to address), 2) solutions (its approach to solve problems), and 3) values (things the brand is passionate about).

I suggest them (social media teams) to find ways to create conversations around the topics first among their employees. It could be some kind of structured meetings or discussions. This forces people to think and share their observations; what they have read or seen, and so on. These internal conversations can happen online, if the team is geographically distributed. Or they can happen in an office room.

This exercise can be an excellent knowledge management opportunity. It can also help social media team get content ideas for social channels. They can make content out of internal meetings, publish them in suitable digital/social platforms, and host external conversations. This approach of ‘socializing strategic conversations’ can be a great way to create true ‘social brands’.