Everywhere you look, its web 2.0, and even 3.0 with the central theme being interactive communication, user engagement, and the democratization of content. But are we really interacting, or just blasting messages into the ether? Christopher Carfi’s recent post highlights a gem of a quote - Leave it to the Amish to distill the essence of the shortcomings of much modern communication.
With so many channels for communication, it seems customers should be more engaged than ever. Are yours? If not, or if not enough, take a look at how much time you (and your marketing organization as a whole) spend on outbound marketing and messages, and how much on creating and participating in conversations with customers.
Your customers are participating in social networking and contributing to social media. MyBlogLog, a site that attempts to consolidate data across multiple communities, lists 55 social media services. LinkedIn, Twitter, Technorati, Digg, Plaxo, a sea of blogging platforms… And new ones pop up almost daily.
The good news is that there really isn’t hope or reason to maintain ubiquitous presence. Instead, find out which ones your customers frequent, and design a process for participating in those.
Even better news: You don’t need to jump on every social media and networking tool in order to have conversations. You can make traditional marketing methods more interactive too. Next time: Some ideas of how to do that.
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