I just watched the movie Fight Club (again) and it inspired me to adapt Tyler Durden’s ‘8 Rules of Fight Club’ and create the ‘8 Rules of Conversation Marketing’. If you haven’t seen the movie or read the book, I highly recommend you do. So here we go…  

#1 The first rule of Fight Club is, you do not talk about Fight Club.

#1 – The first rule of Conversation Marketing, is you do not market AT people.

Forget what you learned in Marketing 101.

Times have changed. People are no longer sitting back and having their wants and needs dictated to them. They are now speaking up and telling you. Listen to them.

Believe it or not, there are people out there that have a better understanding than you of how to improve your product/business/service, and also very willing to share it with you. Learn from them.

Your customers are also now closer to you than ever before. This creates an incredible opportunity to establish trust and create relationships with them. Be authentic in your communication. Fewer scripted emails. Quicker response times. Ask them questions. Share with them your process. Interact with them.

Conversation marketing practices provide for a two-way dialogue, where traditional marketing practices are one-directional, only sending information out. When a company opens itself up to having a two-way conversation—listening, speaking and sharing—with all audience members—Influencers, Participants and Listeners—the benefits are beyond what traditional approaches can provide.

#2 The second rule of Fight Club is, you DO NOT talk about Fight Club.

#2 – The second rule of Conversation Marketing, is you DO NOT market AT people.

This bears repeating. You must participate in the conversation with content that enhances the Influencers’ conversation topics, motivates Participants, and addresses the Listeners’ needs. If you just simply blast out your marketing messages via social media tools, you will be viewed as a SMAMer (Social Media Spammer) – losing the attention and loyalty of your audience. Be sure to interact with, not market at your audience.

#3 – If someone says stop, goes limp, taps out, the fight is over.

#3 – If someone says something, pay attention.

Here’s a great quote I came across:

“In the old days, brands wanted everybody to pay attention to them. Now, brands need to pay attention to everyone else.” – Anonymous

Listen to what is being said before joining the conversation. Find out what people are talking about, what they like/dislike and what’s being said about your company, your competitors and the overall industry. Learn from what you gather and participate in a way that addresses the current market conversation.

Be sure to also identify who are the ‘influencers’ behind those conversations. Understand where they converse (blog, twitter, conferences, etc.) and what their views are. At a point where you can actually add value to the conversation, participate.

#4 – Two guys to a fight.

#4 – Two or more people are needed to have a conversation.

Conversation Marketing is not one-directional. It’s about the dialogue. Many companies take the first step of posting, sharing, uploading, tweeting, etc. – but jump to the next initiative without paying attention to the conversations that emerge. If you ‘say something’ – be committed to listening and responding to others.

#5 – One fight at a time.

#5 – Participate where it makes sense, not just because it’s available.

Being everywhere can be dangerous as it can spread your resources thin. Remember, it’s about quality versus quantity. Sometimes it will make sense to get involved, other times it won’t. Have a clear understanding of why you would participate and the resources needed to do so. Have a strategy.

#6 – No shirts, no shoes.

#6 – Be transparent, be authentic.

Don’t be afraid to share your experiences—positive and negative—and your insights as you grow your company and evolve your product lines. It’s also OK to make mistakes as long as you explain/apologize/learn from them and communicate that. People appreciate transparency and authenticity. This type of interaction will add a personal touch to your brand that is greatly lost through mass-marketing.

#7 – Fights will go on as long as they have to.

#7 – Conversations will go on as long as they have to – monitor them.

Just because you’ve moved on to other things, doesn’t mean people have. Use monitoring tools to keep up-to-date on new developments of old topics/conversations you’ve had, as well as current topics. There are plenty of free and paid tools to help you monitor the conversations that take place.

#8 – If this is your first night at Fight Club, you have to fight.

#8 – If you join the conversation, you must be committed to follow through.

Even if you don’t choose to get involved, the conversations about your product/service/industry will go on with or without you. Pretending they don’t is dangerous.

Just as bad is initially getting involved, but not following through. I’ve seen plenty of companies jump onto the hot new trend (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), but after some time, fail to be active (or even reactive). To the audience, it’s as though you’ve set up a store, with the front door open, but no one is working inside.

This is why it is essential to have a strategy. Social media is not a strategy; social media are tools and locations where communication takes place and where you can interact with your audience. Social media should also not be looked at like a campaign.

Conversation Marketing identifies the people behind the market conversation, locations where they interact (online and offline), and how businesses can become qualified participants and influencers in that conversation. Creating a conversation marketing strategy is a holistic way to align your marketing efforts and be sure they support your business goals.

As Tyler once said, “Look, the people you are after are the people you depend on.”  So listen to them, learn from them, and get to know them. Otherwise, you may get knocked out… 

My Idiom Strategies partners and I have been working our way through the long list of social media monitoring tools that have suddenly emerged–many of which are mentioned in a Social Media Today posting. So far we’ve either been seriously under-impressed by features or overly-impressed by functionality, but at an unrealistic price. (We hope to get around to summarizing our impressions in a later blog post.)

Today, I’d like to share an experience I had yesterday with someone from one of these companies reaching out to me because of a comment I made on Twitter. For full disclosure I’ll explain that I made 2 tweets yesterday–feel free to see the original tweets http://twitter.com/chrissfife and follow future flubs… I mean comments

Tweet 1:

Bad demo by Reputrack. Service sounds good,  sales guy couldn’t sell water to dehydrated camel. Maybe I’ll find a senior person, maybe not.

Tweet 2:

Demoing thru list of monitoring tools http://bit.ly/BO3zY Definite no to Converseon Too $ for monitoring brand & sounds like they smam

My Apologies:

I sincerely extend my apologies to both companies and encourage anyone interested in these types of monitoring tools to request a demo. Just because they weren’t going to work for what we are looking for, does not give me cause to be rude. Honestly, I have no excuse. I was in a bad mood and made flubs. I don’t apologize for having an opinion about their offerings, but simple that I wasn’t being polite in my comments about them.

1) Reputrack. The monitoring tool actually sounded very interesting and could possibly have worked for monitoring the market conversation (different than just monitoring social media for brand mentions). My comment about the sales person was totally uncalled for. It was based on my opinion that I didn’t feel the company/sales person showed any interest in feedback on how the service could be used in a context they hadn’t thought of and showed no interest in exploring anything if we didn’t want the out of the box option–in such an emerging market space I consider this a major missed opportunity for their company or any company who takes an approach like this. Regardless, I could have tweeted something that addressed that rather than the rude comment about the salesman.

2) Converseon. This one is a far more interesting a case. Though my tweet was in no way personal I did make a very blatant claim that they smam without qualifying that the demo sounded like there product could be “used” for smam. I stand by my opinion that they are too expensive and that the demo I was given made it sound like there tool can be used for smam (social media spam–pasting marketing bullet points and product pitches in social media outlets similar to posting banner ads on websites), but in hindsight it would have been more polite to be more objective.

So, in participating in the market conversation after such flubs, I chose to face it head on. I sent an apology tweet. I will be emailing each company with an apology and a link to this post and I raised the question of “How do you correct conversation flubs?” in the Idiomatic: Conversation Marketing group on LinkedIn, in which I again apologized and shared what had happened and how I was going to address it.

Now the interesting stuff… I received an email from Converseon:

Hi Christine — we haven’t met yet, but i saw your tweet today regarding Converseon following a discussion our team had with you.

For Conversation Mining, as im sure you’re finding, there’s a wide range of solutions and quality of solutions.  It ranges from the most basic “clipping type” service to deep levels of sentiment analysis for insights.  We tend to play on the higher end and find that the mantra — you get what you pay for — tends to be a truism in the space.   I hope you find the right fit for your organization.

As for the comment about “spamming,” im not sure what the basis of this was.   Converseon has been in business since 2001 – making us one of the oldest and most reputatble social media agencies — and hold ourselves to the highest ethical standards.   We are governing members of WOMMA and a member of the ethics committee.  Our work for leading brands has won numerous awards for their effectiveness, innovation  and ethical approach.    We hold our reputation in high regard.    I think it’s important if comments are made about us “spamming” that they are based on some level of factual basis.   Any type of spamming approach is diametrically opposed to all we stand for and do.

While we are not a good fit for partnership, I do hope that discussions regarding each others capabilities are based on fact and mutual respect for each others achievements in the industry.

I am, of course, available to discuss further directly with you if you’d like.

I wish your agency the best success in the marketplace.

My analysis of this conversation interaction.

1. They’re listening! That’s great. Companies should be listening to what is being said about them and that’s why these tools and services are emerging right now.
2. They faced negative user-generated content head on. Fantastic! They didn’t shy away, but sought me out and sent me a direct message that wasn’t canned or copy and pasted. This really shows they were listening closely.
3. They made a stand and shared their views. Super props for having conviction! In saying that they are opposed to spam and wanting me to know the activities they’re involved in to illustrate their convictions is commendable.
4. Missed Opportunity? Though the email is essentially polite and wishing us well at the end, I think they missed a great opportunity to accept feedback for future improvements, better understand their audience and share their companies true convictions.

In my first read through, I felt they were more concerned that I’m spreading false truths than in why I ended up with that impression after a demo. Hmmmmm? I would have felt better if they’d shown concern for why I ended up with that impression they don’t want consumers to have. Obviously my thoughts on the product weren’t fantastic, but I would have been very impressed if they had indicated they were sorry that I took that impression away from the demo as it isn’t what they are trying to do. And it would have made me feel important as a consumer if they’d have asked me for feedback on the demo so they can see if they need to make any messaging adjustments or refresh the sales team’s approach to ensure clearity of their services.  I would have happily replied to explain why I developed the impression I did. I would also have explained that I didn’t write “spam,” I wrote “smam” which I defined above and perhaps their views on that are just different than ours.

I do wish them all the best in their practice and I’m sure their clients receive great benefits from their work. I highly recommend that anyone looking at these tools contact both companies for a demo.

My 2-cents of advice for companies trying to engage in their market conversation: 1) try not to let a bad mood for the day make you bitchy in your participation; and 2) approach every negative comment about your company/product as an opportunity to improve, better understand your audience and share your companies true convictions.

To further our discussion on conversation marketing, we recently started a discussion group on LinkedIn called Idiomatic: Conversation Marketing (we hope you’ll all join the discussions). Today, we had our first smam post–Thanks Lilly, an Account Manager for an expense management software company.

Here is Lilly’s post:

Expense Management Software

Certify is the leading self-service, online expense management solution for small to mid size companies. www.Certify.com is an on-demand subscription that gets you up and running instantly, configured to your needs and your travel policies being fully enforced.
• Completely internet based – no software to install or maintain
• Easily capture and submit expenses with your cell phone,PC,or fax
• Outstanding business expense capture, tracking and reporting
• Award winning service and support
• Available for both Personal and Corporate use
• Get started with a free 30 day trial
For more information regarding go to www.Certify.com

It would seem that Lilly did not read the group profile description:

Conversation marketing is the practice of strategically interacting in the market conversation. This group focuses on the marketing industry’s market conversation for building mutually beneficial relationships with Influencers; responding to market conversation topics and initiating topics that do not include traditional marketing messages; extrapolating market conversation content to utilize as company/product proofpoints and counter sales objections; and internalizing the market conversation for business growth. All marketing, sales, communications and other business professionals are invited to join in by sharing their experiences and asking questions.

If she had, she would hopefully have thought twice before posting this in the group. I have kept the post up, but did comment that it was a prime example of a sales or marketing person not understanding that by posting their “ad” in the group, they are spamming the group and will eventually be banned from the group and people will think less of the company/product they’re pitching.

I hope Lilly won’t be too mad at me, but I decided to send an email to her company. Unfortunately, the company is of the old-school of thought that they should not publicly post the email or phone numbers of any staff. The only addresses to be found were sales@ and support@ and info@ etc. I did find the PR person’s email on their press release so I sent the message to her and to sales@

I specifically said that I was writing in good faith and hoping they as a company would find it thought provoking and an opportunity to take a look at their sales and marketing practices. Here’s a bit of what I wrote:

Here is a great article about why social media is failing to help sales people. http://tinyurl.com/dkxnd4 The reason sales people are not having more success with social media is because they are using these online tools to do exactly what Lilly has done.
1) Because of the profile of this discussion group this is not the right place for a sales person to find leads
2) If Lilly were to find groups and communities that discuss business management practices, startup companies, accounting practices, etc. then she would have something valid to contribute to the conversation because those topics are in line with what your company offers.
3) Today, people have spam filters and they can turn off popup ads and they can ignore google Adwords results and they can trash their junk mail and get on the do not call list, etc. An online community post that reads just like a marketing brochure will not be looked at favorably by the group. Marketing messages have their place, but participating in the actual market conversation that is centered around fulfilling the business and accounting needs of companies will get a sales person much farther.

Again, thank you to Lilly. Hope you don’t mind being our example of what not to do.

Cheers

I’ve been following Andy Sernovitz for quite some time now. Andy is an 18 year veteran of interactive marketing, created the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, authored a book, and participates in a wide variety of activities.

Andy recently wrote a blog post about blog etiquette and what he considers SPAM to be when it comes to commenting on posts. Comment SPAM includes:

• Repeating your website address inside a comment instead of in the website address box
• Posting a comment that has nothing to do with the post, like “Nice post! Thanks!”
• Using an email address that does not match your name

I don’t mean to be rude, but if your comment looks spammy, I’ll delete it or edit out the selfish bits. If you do it a lot, I’ll report you as a spammer (which means your IP address will be blocked from most blogs).

These days, people who use a bullhorn approach to get their message out – without contributing in some way, shape or form to the conversation – will soon lose their voice.

The market is a conversation. Conversation Marketing focuses a company’s resources on participating in the conversations with content that addresses the Listeners needs, motivates Participants and enhances the Influencers conversation topics. Add value to the conversation and you’ll drive your business further. Fail to add value and there are serious risks.

Be sure to listen to what is being said. Share your opinions. Build relationships. Participate in the dialogue.

If you don’t, you may soon find yourself speechless…

I posed the question in two groups: 1) Technology Marketing Community and 2) On Startups (I was hoping to find recommendations on some startup companies.) Here is what I received in response from these community groups:

• A total of 9 comments posted: 8 were NOT recommendations, they were all sales pitches directly from providers and 1 was a “recommendation” but from someone who has a vested interest in the company they recommended.
• 10 inmail messages directly to me: All 10 were sales pitches
• 7 phone calls: They tracked down my business number and, you guessed it, all were sales pitches.

My first reaction is to ignore them all, but I am looking for someone to do this work. I’m quite bummed that not one of my marketing peers looked to help me out with a recommendation, but perhaps my interests would be best served to go find reviews of companies instead of seeking advice from peers who are busy trying to find recommendations for their work.

What’s your opinion on the sales pitches? Is it detremental to the group if sales people are trolling for prospects this way and they all pounce when they see a chance? If I had turned to a web development community group and asked the question there I would expect that the members of that group would come back saying they offer that type of work. But I went to a marketing and a startup business group to ask for recommendations, not sales pitches.

I enjoy participating and listening to the groups I’m a member of, but this type of experience reduces my enthusiasm.

What do you think? Is it a positive marketing or sales approach to troll for leads this way?