'Join the Conversation' - The Mantra of Social Anything

Things can bother me for a while until I tease out exactly what it is that is bothering me. Until I do tease it out, it will plague me without a clear reason why. Almost from the beginning of the social media and social networking trend the phrase 'join the conversation' has been one of those things. Don't get me wrong, I even use it. On the surface I 'get' what the phrase means. In regards to CRM, I've used it primarily as a warning to organizations that they need to partake in the conversations that their customers are having online; primarily in social networks and communities. If they don't, they'll be missing out on valuable input, feedback, or worse - potential damage to their brand or better - plaudits from you about their brand.

After months and months of cogitation, I've finally figured out what has been bothering me about the 'join the conversation' phrase. It implies that if you show up your work is done. We all know from high school just showing up doesn't get you anything more than a check for attendance. When organizations 'show up' for a conversation with a customer there needs to be more than that. As more and more of these 'conversations' are happening digitally we collectively need to relearn the skills of having a conversation and what it means in a digital environment.

I recently stumbled upon a book (yes, a book, in a library, printed on paper, remember?) that put it all in perspective for me. It's called The Art of Conversation by Catherine Blyth. The book focuses on what the nature of a conversation actually is. We all learned how to talk as children. We learned how to exchange information with other people. Have you ever thought about the true nature of a conversation? You do it all the time; the give and take, the sizing up of the other participant, the visual cues etc. We all know that first impressions last a life time. As we moved online we learned more social mores related to conversations. We've all experienced the miscommunication from the unintended interpretation of an email. Don't use all caps or people will think you are shouting.

Although much of Ms. Blyth's book addresses how to reclaim our ability to converse in person, I think that our conversational skills online are also lacking and her 'Concise Manifesto' needs to be applied to our digital experience. As the analyst following CRM and researching the use of Twitter and Facebook, Ms. Blyth's description of what a conversation is spoke to me. In her words, conversation is "mutual appreciation, cooperation and spontaneous." Taken backwards, spontaneous is precisely what social-based commentary is at its heart; appreciation communicates respect; and cooperation means working together.

I contend that when it comes to using social media and social networking to connect to customers we have not yet learned how to actually "join the conversation" as equals as the above suggests. Much of what has been going on from organizations reaching out through social media channels is more of the same command and control model. Much remains within the realm of trouble-shooting or reactive instances such as customer service issues. Even when it comes to marketing where there is no issue to be dealt with, there is a lot of outbound campaigning and there isn't anything new and different about it from direct mail. It's just a new channel through which to execute on the same old thing.

Picture an in person meeting. As Ms. Blyth observes, "rather than assume intimacy through blunt language, small talk creates it by pumping out friendly vibes and establishing connections between speakers who meet as equals." There is a bit of handshake, verbal or physical, that occurs in an in person engagement that sets the tone and begins the dialogue. If our goal in social media is to participate in a conversation then unrequested assaults of outbound marketing are not appropriate.

There are two problems with trying to "join the conversation" through social media. The first part is how to create a meaningful conversation through the short, social posts of Twitter and Facebook. The short social commentary requires a more artful approach to conversation. It is a quick engagement and in many cases without background information for context.

The second problem is how to create ongoing meaningful dialogues within customer communities. With customer communities, there is more latitude for engagement. Those that elect to participate in some manner, which may range from simply registering to actually engaging in discussion forums, create an opportunity for ongoing dialogue. Starting the conversation is not necessarily difficult, but maintaining the conversation is tricky. This second situation is challenging but there is more latitude for creating and sustaining a conversation.

Creating context for the first instance is where the social inspired CRM platforms can shine and is necessary to have something upon which to start the conversation. These platforms help bring context to the conversation by combining Tweets, Facebook profiles and CRM data if that person is known. If that person if not known, then perhaps context can be found through that person's network. Nimble, a social CRM product currently in private beta, is one such product. Nimble's design, brought to you by the original creator of Goldmine, combines communications (email) with CRM contact information and social conversation in one location.

However, product's such as Nimble only get us part of the way there. The next step is to actually analyze the content of the customer engagement. Socialytics is a set of cross-discipline solutions that are used to analyze social media and social networking data derived through socially-based interactions. Socialytics is a term coined by IDC to include tools and applications that are either purpose built to analyze social content or may act on social data in a more generalized fashion as another form of data input. Social interactions may occur within employee, customer, or partner-based communities as well as within public social networking environments and forums.

Joining the conversation is just the beginning of customer engagement and Social CRM and Socialytics are just two of the new waves of applications and technologies that are emerging to help organizations to engage in the social craze. Social CRM is helping to manage the connections and Socialytics will analyze the behavior but nothing short of changes in business approach and philosophy will drive the change in the nature of the customer relationships that the social world is bringing to the doorsteps of business. We have yet to reach the next level of engagement. The tools are in place but the philosophy and the content within the conversation also have to evolve. Perhaps an old discipline from the call center world, scripting, needs to be brushed off, updated and combined with analytics and the latest social engagement channels to coach employees in the new art of online conversations.

What are your thoughts on how to harness this new communication platform to create compelling conversations?