(Side Note: If you are a communications professional using social media or are responsible for developing a company’s strategic social media plan, I highly recommend this unconference series which occurs each Tuesday at 9:00 am Pacific Time.)

During the discussion, Ken raised several questions, and made several points, about how it’s important to understand who influences your audience and how and why they influence them. To this, I responded: It’s vital for a company to know how an Influencer’s influence manifests itself in the market conversation and engage with them appropriately to ultimately reach the Influencers’ audiences. (Of course this was stated in 140 characters.) Marc Meyer, one of my most favorite people to follow on Twitter, responded saying, “There’s a nice hidden question in there: How does influence manifest itself in market conversations?”

First, as a marketing/communications professional you want to identify the influencers in your market space. That’s another topic for another blog post, but I will say that in your research to identify the influencers you’ll essentially be viewing how their influence manifests itself! To answer Marc’s question, I’ll go ahead and use him as our Influencer—hope you don’t mind, Marc!

With Marc as our Influencer, how does Marc’s influence manifest itself in the greater marketing industry’s market conversation?

1. Twitter: @marc_meyer
2. Marc’s Blog: Direct Marketing Observations
3. Marc’s Consulting Services Company: Digital Response Marketing Group
4. SocialMediaToday.com: Contributed Articles
5. Team member: hashtagsocialmedia.com unconference
6. Marc is ranked on multiple Top-Blog lists including, Best of Alltop, Junta42 Top Blogs, AdAge Power150, PostRank
7. Marc’s Presentations: SlideShare
8. LinkedIn Profile: Connections and Group Membership
9. Marc often speaks at industry events on marketing and social media topics, is a marketing and social media consultant and is often interviewed and quoted on his knowledge of these topics. He is asked to be a guest writer on other blogs and publications and is a member/participant of social media, marketing and technology groups.

These are great to know if you’re a company who considers Marc to be an Influencer to your target audience (maybe you’re a social media monitoring company, for example). You’d want to read his blog and comment with quality information. You might want to hire him as a consultant or ask him to speak at an event. You may wish to invite him to be on a panel with your VP of Social Media. You’d certainly want to have the appropriate person follow him on Twitter and participate in his online unconference discussions.

Marc’s influence does not manifest itself in any published books (as near as I could tell) or marketing industry research reports. Other ways an individual’s influence may manifest itself is by having a highly recognizable position or they are an event host/organizer. A traditional journalist’s influence is manifested through their print column or TV segment, but may also come out through their blog.

It’s important to identify individuals who are influential in your market space and then drill down into how their influence manifests itself and how you can engage with them through those avenues to build a relationship and thus get in front of their audiences.

Thanks, Marc, for raising the question and being my test subject!

To truly participate in the market conversation, companies need to actually care about helping their customers and prospects fulfill their wants and needs. People don’t buy a product because it’s there, they buy because they have a need or want that has to be fulfilled–understanding this and acting on it can create a lot of Whuffie (See Tara Hunt’s The Whuffie Factor) for companies and help them retain customers, sell more and generate positive word of mouth. Of course companies also need to care about what is being said about their products, company, competitors and industry.

What Does it Mean to Care? How Do I Show that?

1. Monitor: Set up searches/alerts to monitor what is being said online, especially on social media networks and publishing. Watch for your company’s name, name of your products, competitors’ company names and products. You’ll also want to watch for mentions of keywords that are applicable to the type of product/service you offer and your specific industry/industry niche, but it’s more important to go beyond that. Define key words that are focused on the need/want that your product fulfills. Joe needs a more efficient way of tracking his customers and their orders and what stage of the sales pipeline they are in for his small business than doing it manually on spreadsheets. He doesn’t need a CRM system. He may ask people in online communities what the best way to track customers and their orders is without ever saying “What’s the best CRM system?” He doesn’t care about CRM systems, he cares about fulfilling the need of more efficient tracking.
2. Respond: When you see a mention of your company or product find ways to respond. Sometimes that might be directly to the person, sometimes that will be responding to their blog post for public view. If it’s a negative mention, you want to stop it from proliferating by reaching out to that person to find out what went wrong and how you can help them have a better product experience. If it’s a positive mention, thank them. Show you appreciate that they’ve shared their positive thoughts. If it’s a mention of a something someone needs or wants, like in the case of Joe above, consider what would be appropriate. Don’t just try to sell at them, but find a way to help them fulfill their need or want. For Joe’s comment, you could reply with a vendor neutral link to information about CRM systems to show him how they can help him. Then tell him that you’re with a company that offers a CRM sollution and you’d be happy to talk with him if he’s interested. Make sure your online persona is clearly visible so he can see what company you’re with, but don’t try to cram your product down his throat. Just be openly helpful
3. Participate: Jump into the communities that are specific to people who have a need/want for your offerings, but don’t just advertise there. Offer supporting and helpful information on how people can fulfill their needs or wants. Point them to additional information like industry reports, expert blogs, or case studies. Create content that is about the needs or wants that people have that your company can help them fulfill. Content doesn’t always have to be a “brochure” tooting your own horn.

• Listening to current customers, prospects, industry experts and other influencers in the market space and internalizing what you hear to improve your business.
• Speaking to the overall market conversation with quality, supportive and helpful content that people want to respond to, inquire about and pass on to others.
• Caring about what is being said about your products, your company, your competitors and your industry, but even more important, care about helping your customers and prospects fulfill their wants and needs..
• Sharing your experiences—positive and negative—and your insights as you grow your company and evolve your product lines.
• Building relationships with market conversation Influencers, Participants and Listeners based on the mutual interest of the consumer problems that need to be solved with product innovation.

I had a meeting with a client today who had never thought of marketing in this context before, so I thought it was a good time to reiterate it here.

There is endless advice on how to engage with customers, how to build relationships with influencers and how to use social media for marketing. These bits of advice and best practices are usually written for a general audience of marketing or business professionals and is intended as general knowledge, not as specific suggested courses of action for your business.

The amount of each participation element your company should engage in to meet your goals will be specific to your company, taking into account your industry, your goals, your resources, your product roadmap, your current customer base, your brand personality and corporate culture, etc.

Not every company needs to put the same amount of focus on each participation element, nor is there a set percentage that is standard best practice for the amount of resources to devote to each element. Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be doing a series of blog posts to cover each element that should help give you guidance on determining how much your company should be devoting to Listening, Speaking, Caring, Sharing and Building Relationships.

Yes. Smart marketers will find a way. It’s not a matter of jumping on the bandwagon with the unknown destination…it’s a matter of using conversation marketing with existing content to increase your page rankings, improve your SEO, or better target your leads…which conversation marketing done the right way does.

So yes, Mrs. CMO — you do have to include Conversation Marketing in your marketing strategies…well, if you want to increase your SEO and rankings, yes you do.

How do you fund conversation marketing or social media initiatives?

We think there is a paradigm shift  happening in marketing’s market conversation–a change from the concepts of just social media marketing to conversation marketing–strategic and tactical ways in which a company chooses to participate/engage/interact in the market conversation. As opposed to the typical definition of Social Media Marketing, Conversation Marketing focuses on 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 proof points and to counter sales objections; and internalizing the market conversation for business growth.

We hope to have the rest of the series out soon. Enjoy!

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.

The benefits to joining the conversation are many. Some of the best sales tools and product features ideas can come from participants who take the time to offer feedback. This provides valuable user generated content to help drive your business and most important, been able to extract content to offset sales objection. However, the prevalent benefit I see is that providing a platform for your customers and prospects, and leveraging that feedback in the form of actionable insight for product, marketing and sales strategy on an ongoing basis. Remember, this does not give companies a license to plastering their marketing messages in the different social media locations. Your customers and prospects are looking to fulfill their wants and needs, provide relevant information, NOT your products and services marketing pitch.

More importantly, companies will find that they become an increasingly important player in their industry, an influencer themselves when they become a trusted advisor. They will find that surprising and disruptive opportunities materialize that would never have been there if they hadn’t been engaged in the market conversation.

To actively participate in the conversation require an ongoing investment of employee time and effort, but the benefits can be tremendous:
• Build relationships with influencers
• Raise meaningful industry topics
• Increase brand visibility
• Increase direct inquires that are also more qualified leads
• Increase sales
• Increase sales win ratios
• Increase customer retention
• Reduce impact from negative user-generated content
• Decrease market research costs
• Increase equity of your created content

Join this conversation and share with us on why B2B companies should participate in the market conversation. I will share the “how” in my next blog post.

Why Social Media Fails–and How to Fix It was a panel that included Peter Kim of the Dachis Corporation, Charlene Li of The Altimeter Group and Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research. The audio from the session can be heard here. They covered issues that most marketers are trying to determine how to address when it comes to instituting social media programs:

1. How can I get my culture to adapt?
2. How can I make my campaigns work?
3. What am I supposed to measure?
4. Does social media even matter?

The comments by the panel and comments and questions from the audience were interesting. I agreed with some and didn’t agree with others. I urge you to listen and decide for yourself. In my humble opinion (ok, I’m not actually that humble), the answers to these questions are:

1. Business cultures probably don’t need too much adoption so long as you don’t approach the Head Hancho with a plan for “social media marketing.” Executives have always been open to “how to achieve the company goals.” Your plug for funding your programs would be better received if you highlight how “participating the market conversation” and “interacting with Influencers, Participants and Listeners” of the market conversation will achieve increased sales win ratios, more qualified direct leads, shorter sales cycles and reduced costs in consumer research.
2. You can’t make your social media campaigns work. As Charlene commented during the session, you need to stop considering these tactics as campaigns. What you can do to get quantitative results is to continually practice, as a company, active interaction with the market conversation ecosystem, whether through social media technologies or at a face-to-face meeting. Don’t forget, though, that ecosystem will turn you off if you come at them with the same old marketing bullet points and sales pitches. Don’t talk at people, have a conversation with them.
3. First and foremost, you need to measure what prompted a sale. No matter what, marketing can only be measured successfully if you know why your customers actually purchased. Brand building is very important, but not that measurable in statistics. What finally prompted a sale to happen is something you can easily ask your customer. Other than that, you want to measure the amount of interaction your company has with current and potential customers, the quality of the market conversation content (do they mention your company/product? Are your product offerings in line with what the market conversation says it wants/needs? Are you listening to the conversation to make sure your roadmap is going in the right direction? Are you addressing the market conversation with how to help fulfill their wants and needs or just with why your product should be what fulfills those wants/needs?
4. Absolutely. People are social. We build vast and complex networks of family, friends, co-workers, neighbors, community members, etc. With the new technologies now available these networks have become even larger and more complex. People want to know. They want to share. They’re looking for advice. No one is an expert on everything, and no matter who you are, there will be a time when you have a want or need to fulfill but you don’t want to make a decision without the knowledge of experts. You’ll hope to find someone who can share their experience on fulfilling the same need or want.

The Conversation is what businesses need to focus on and social media technologies are the crowning jewel of tools to achieve that.

Next on the agenda is a Web2Open unconference session to talk about engaging with the market conversation ecosystem to achieve business goal. And later, Tara Hunt’s session: The Whuffie Factor: The 5 Keys for Maxing Social Capital and Winning with Online Communities which will cover these five key points from her soon to be released new book The Whuffie Factor.

Yan, Tony and I will be blogging regularly about our thoughts, experiences and insights as conversation marketing professionals. You can read more about why we’ve started this blog on the About page or click on one of our names to learn more about us individually. In short, we are marketers who see that traditional marketing no longer works well and that companies can benefit by participating in the market conversation “with” Influencers and consumers rather than by talking “at” them with advertisements, sales pitches and press releases.

Social media and other online technologies have brought people together to share, compare, discuss and influence one another like no technology has before. But we also know that one-on-one conversations over the phone, via email and in person have not disappeared. A company’s specific market conversation is going on everywhere and by joining those conversations and participating with quality content that addresses the needs and wants of consumers, companies will:

• Increase brand visibility:
  If you’re participating with quality content rather than marketing bullet point messages more people will be noticing you rather than ignoring your ads.
• Decrease market research costs:
  You won’t need to spend as much on focus groups or market research because you’re paying attention to what the market needs.
• Reduce the impact from negative user-generated content:
  Not everyone in the world will love you and you will have some customers who are unhappy, but conversing with them both in public and private to resolve their issue deters them from telling everyone else that you’re a bad company.
• Increase the number of direct inquires and get more qualified leads:
  Potential customers will have a better understanding of who you are and what you offer before they contact you.
• Increase sales:
  When you actively interact with the entire conversation ecosystem you’ll expand your brand awareness and improve brand perception.
• Increase sales win ratios:
  Your sales team will be able to counter sales objections with relevant content from the market conversation.
• Increase customer retention:
  Actively communicating with your customers and the communities they’re involved with makes it less likely that they’ll leave.
• Increase equity of your created content:
  You’ll leverage activities in the market conversation to expand the reach of your created content.

As Yan, Tony and I continue to expand our thoughts on these topics, we hope you’ll join in with comments and share your experiences.