Conversation is the ThingTips for Engaging in the Market Conversation

An eBooklet

© Idiom Strategies LLC 2009

Part 1

A Successful Market ConversationalistThere are tons of books, blogs, therapists and support groups that can help you learn to become more comfortable with social interaction. Just check out Amazon.com and you’ll find books and videos categorized as Self-help, Psychology, Counseling, Relationships, Personal Health and Mental Health. But this guide isn’t about getting you a date, making friends or talking to your kids.

Regardless of your personality type, relationship status or inter-personal skill level, this guide can still help you become a more successful market conversationalist.

The Story…You’ve just bought a house (“In this economy?” Just pretend.) and you throw a BBQ to get to know your neighbors. It’s a very 1950’s, Beaver Cleaver neighborhood, so you aren’t surprised when Bob and Carol show up and Carol hands you a beautiful cake and a plant to welcome you to the ‘hood. Jim and Cindy arrive with a plume of cigarette smoke following Cindy.

Bob asks if you have enough beer—he’s got a case in the garage he can bring over if needed. After thanking him for the offer and assuring him you have enough beverages, he offers to help tend the BBQ while you greet your other guests.

Jim asks what time the burgers will be ready.

While Bob’s at the BBQ, you have a chance to chat with Jim and Cindy, or rather, you have a chance to listen to Jim. He’s a car salesman, has lived in the neighborhood for 7 years, he doesn’t vote because he believes the government is too screwed up and he used to attend church but he thinks the minister just wants to “hear himself talk.” Jim loves fishing and goes on 20 trips a year. He invites you to join so you can see his great fly-casting skills. In those long 15 minutes you also have the opportunity to learn about all the sports teams he follows, the entire plot to the last movie he saw and Jim’s opinion as to the downfall of the American auto industry.

Cindy is almost done with her pack of cigarettes.

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Over a burger, while talking to Bob and Carol, you learn that they’ve been in the neighborhood about 8 years and they’re very involved in the community watch and block party committees. They ask if you’d like to attend one of the meetings to get to know more people. Carol asks if you’ve enrolled the kids in school yet—she offers to help get them settled since she volunteers at the school. Bob asks what type of work you do and when he finds out you’re the CEO of a startup developing mobile technologies he’s intrigued and asks about the types of products. You comment that their yard is landscaped beautifully and Carol shares her passion for the gardening arts. After 30 minutes you decide you really should tear yourself away to attend to your other guests.

Bob sees that the ice chest is getting low and goes to fill it up and Carol walks off with a plastic bag picking up plates and cups before the mess gets out of hand.

The ExperienceWithout even reading any further you already know which couple you plan to have dinner parties with in the future. The business world is not all that different from a backyard barbecue. Whether you’re trying to become the leading provider of enterprise security software or it’s your job to figure out how to solve load-balancing problems due to too much web traffic, you’re still an individual person who will respond better to a 2-way dialogue than being talked at with flashy marketing speak.

In Part 2, we’ll cover the Requirements for a Market Conversation. Once you understand the elements of the conversation—the who, what, where and how—you’ll find it easier to draw value from the Conversation Interaction Tips in Part 3.

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Part 2

Requirements For a Market ConversationThere are certain factors that must exist or a conversation isn’t able to take place.

More than one personYou need 2 to tango—Err converse.In the market conversation there are three types of people:

Influencers

People and organizations that most commonly raise new conversation topics. They can be press, business executives, bloggers, trade groups, conferences, vendors, customers, regulatory bodies, analysts and many others. Their influence is determined by:

Their Audience Reach—how many people listen to them.•

The Quality of Content they create—how pertinent the •topics they raise and information they share is to the market conversation.

The Frequency of Participation—how often they raise new topics •or drive older topics forward with new thoughts and ideas

The Level of Audience Involvement—how much they inspire •participation in the discussions.

Participants

Conversation Participants are the people who most commonly comment, raise questions and share experiences relevant to conversation topics. These individuals could be your customers, prospects, industry experts, competitors or anyone else with an interest in your industry.

Listeners

This group includes the vast majority of all people. Listeners are the individuals who look to the market conversation content created by Influencers and Participants to help them make purchase decisions.

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2-way dialogueSpeaking and listening.Joining the market conversation is more than just spreading your marketing messages around in social media. To be part of the conversation you need to:

• Listen to current customers, prospects, industry experts and other Influencers and Participants and internalize their feedback to improve your business.

• Speak to the overall market conversation with quality, non-marketing-speak content that people want to respond to, inquire about and pass on to others.

• Build relationships with Influencers, Participants and Listeners based on the mutual interest of the consumer needs and wants that may be solved with product innovation.

TopicsPoints to discuss.Every industry is built around providing products and services that fulfill people’s needs or wants. As the saying goes, there’s more than one-way to skin a cat (an awful saying, but you get the point.) There can be many ways to fulfill almost any need or want. Market conversations begin with a need or want and grow out of discussing ways to fulfill them, as well as the triumphs and challenges encountered with each new solution option.

LocationA “place” to converse.Practically impossible to imagine now, but there was a time when people had to be physically in the same place to chat. Since Alexander Graham Bell first said the infamous words, “Mr. Watson—come here—I want to see you,” conversations haven’t needed a single physical location to take place.

Conversation locations are both the physical and virtual places where Influencers, Participants and Listeners are gathering to speak and listen. These can include, but are in no way limited to:

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•SocialMediaNetworks,Blogs&OtherOutlets

•Forums&Chatrooms

•Conferences,Tradeshows&SponsoredEvents

•UserGroups

•TradeOrganizations

•Panels&DiscussionGroups

•WebCommunities

Broadcasting ToolsMeans to make your “voice” heard.Same concept as conversation Locations—there was a time when the only way to be heard was to speak or play charades. But then people learned to read and write and Wow! did possibilities open up.

To join in the market conversation there are many different tools to publish content or “air” your voice. Equally as awesome are the options bywhichyoucanchoosetoreceivemarketconversationcontent.Newtools are coming out all the time. Current favorites include:

•SocialMedia:Blogs,Wikis&NetworkingSites

•NewsAggregators,RSSFeeds,Alerts&TrackingSystems

•Podcast,Webcast&WebinarTechnologies

•LiveSpeeches&Presentations

•AnalystReports

•Email&Snailmail

•On&OfflinePublications

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Part 3

Conversation Interaction TipsYou probably never thought of a conversation as having so many requirements. In fact, you probably never thought much of it at all, you just did it. Like riding a bike, once you learn how to keep it from falling over, you don’t need to think about the what is required to keep it from falling over: steering straight, continuing to pedal, avoiding hitting things, etc., but if you did think more about it perhaps you could be the next Lance Armstrong.

Now that you’ve taken a step back to reacquaint yourself with therequirements for a conversation you’ll see how these tips can help you be a successful market conversationalist.

Tip 1Interact with Influencers and Conversation Participants in the Locations Where They are ConversingDo a bit of research to figure out who is driving your marketconversation.

What does that mean? Review what you know about your market audience, but go beyond demographics. What do your products or services fulfill in terms of needs or wants? What types of experts, publications, organizations, communities or specialists do people generally consult to figure out the best ways to fulfill their needs and wants? Keywords will start to pop up for you—they may be many of the keywords you used for creating marketing messages, but you’ll undoubtedly find more with this new way of thinking.

With these new terms to search on you’ll notice individuals, organizations and events come up over and over again—these are potential Influencers to target. Make a list and then go back and review them to see if you can determine their Market Conversation Reach, Quality of Content, Frequency of Participation and Level of Audience Involvement. This will help you narrow down your list to a manageable number.

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Next,makenoteofthewaysinwhichtheirinfluencemanifestsitself:Aretheyreporters?Dotheyhaveawidelyreadblog?Dotheyspeakatconferences?Aretheyhiredasconsultantsfortheirexpertise?Dotheyhave a big Twitter following? In doing this you’ll be able to determine the Locations where they converse and the Tools they use to publish content. You’ll probably also be able to figure out the Tools they prefer for receiving information or responses.

Tip 2 Assign the Right Person to Build a Relationship with Each Influencer Influencers, Participants and Listeners are as diverse as, well, the entire world’s population, and most likely, the majority of them don’t want to converse with the CMO.

What does that mean?Consider what role each of your Influencers plays in the market conversation. Technically-minded Influencers won’t be interested in chatting with business operations executives, but a reporter might love to talk with a CEO. A venture capitalist won’t need the granular perspective of a software engineer, but they’ll love to hear from the VPofProductDevelopmentabouttheproductroadmap.Usergroupswon’t be interested in having the VP of Sales participate in an end-user discussion group, but they’d love to have that engineer that the VC dissed come by.

See where this is going? Just because it’s called a “market” conversation doesn’t mean that a marketing professional has to be in control of every Influencer relationship. Consider assigning an appropriate team member to each Influencer.

Tip 3 Show the Market Conversation Ecosystem Who You Are Now that you know the Locations where your Influencers areconversing, the Tools they like to use and you’ve assigned an appropriate team member to each Influencer, let them know who you are.

What does that mean?You want Influencers and ultimately Participants and Listeners to know

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who you are. Market conversation Locations don’t always afford you the opportunity of handing someone a business card so use appropriate Tools to build a profile—each team member assigned to Influencers should do this. If you comment on a blog post and someone finds your comment valuable, they’ll want to know who you are and you’ll want them to be able to find you and your company.

You’ll probably want to build some policies or guidelines for employees to use in creating their profile so that it is easily understood that they are a representative for your company. Risks of encouraging employees to participate in the market conversation is another discussion—a worthwhile one for sure, but too much to add in here.

Tip 4 Build RelationshipsJoining in the market conversation is great, but the brass ring is to build lasting relationships with the entire market conversation ecosystem.

What does that mean?Wouldn’t it be great if the Influencers you identify came out and said that your products were the greatest things since sliced bread? Chances are that isn’t going to happen, but you will receive benefits from building a relationship with the Influencers and their audiences. By participating in the market conversation topics raised by the Influencers and responding to Participants’ comments the Influencers will benefit from your expansion of the market conversation content for their audience.

Influencers are likely never going to be prospective buyers of your products or services, but they will have a stake in the market conversation. With that in mind, outreach to Influencers will help them perceive you and your company as caring about the needs and wants of consumers. They’ll respect you and your company for displaying interest in the market space above just your company’s bottom-line.

Influencers don’t get into the position of having influence in the market space for no reason. They are also looking to improve their reputation and spread their ideas further. By helping them reach their goals, they’ll be more likely to help you reach yours. They’ll want to be your friend if you’re promoting their speaking engagements, inviting them to participate in industry events, providing them inside information on

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product developments, etc.

Just as reciprocity has a big impact on personal friendships, the relationships you build with Influencers by helping them reach their goals will keep you in their thoughts when someone asks for a product recommendation or they need a quote for an article or they’re looking for someone to be a keynote speaker. Think of it like this, if you’re looking for someone to help you move to a new house who is more likely to agree to help? A stranger or the friend whose dog you watched while he was on vacation.

Tip 5Don’t Just Talk—ListenYou can’t just jump in and start talking and expect people to be drawn to you. You need to start by listening and internalizing what is being said in the market conversation.

What does that mean?Before jumping into the conversation, you’ll want to know what to listen for so that you’ll know where and when to interject. A great place to start is with those shiny marketing bullet points you already created for your website. Remove all of the vendor/product-specific language andditchthefluffyadjectives.Distillthemdowntohowyourcompanyviews the market space. What is at the heart of your company’s approach to solving the needs and wants of your customers? Review your mission and vision statements—what do they really mean about how your company wants to be perceived? This helps you determine what will be relevant to you within the greater market conversation topics.

Then, set up monitoring alerts for Influencers and keywords that address your market space, as well as regularly interact with the Influencers and Participants in their conversation Locations. Once you know what to look for in the conversation and you’re actively watching for it, you’ll better understand the trends of discussions and be able to figure out how they pertain to your company.

Tip 6Say Something Helpful, Not Just Self-ServingThe market conversation is not a living brochure! You can’t just rely on

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a set of marketing messages that cover only your company’s offerings. Learn to address the market conversation according to what you hear.

What does that mean?Once you have your conversation monitoring tools and processes established, and you’ve altered your marketing bullet points to reflect how your company feels about the market space, then you’re ready to jump in. Keep in mind, however, that people really don’t care about products or brands. Really, they don’t. What they do care about is their needs and wants.

People turn to Influencers and the conversation Locations to find helpful information on how to fulfill their needs and wants. In providing quality content that addresses these, and not a product pitch, people will naturally respect you and your opinions.

It’s ok to mention your company or product name, but do so sparingly. Consider the context of the discussion in the market conversation before responding. Is the conversation Participant reaching out to the market conversation for specific advice on what product to purchase? Or are they really just asking for advice on how to fulfill their needs and wants? Feel free to mention what company you’re from and certainly make your online profile transparent as to your company and your role there, but don’t make your participation in the conversation all about you. Consider how you can reply to questions or comment on articles and posts in ways that provide conversation Listeners with:

A better understanding of their need or want.1.

Where to find more information about their situation. 2.

Other Influencers to consult.3.

Websites or stores that might carry products to fulfill their need 4. or want.

Communities, forums or groups that may have relevant 5. experience to share.

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Part 4

Applying These Tips: A StoryJoeisthenewITDirectorat2MuchNoise,astartupofferingsoftware-as-a-service for monitoring market conversations on social media platforms and across the web. So far he likes the company (except for thatoneguy,Dennis),buthewonderswhatthehelltheywerethinkingwhen they chose not to do anything about their insufficient systems until the damn things were about to blow up.

The company is growing like crazy, and Joe has convinced the powers-that-be that they need to invest some cash before their systems melt down completely. Joe is sure the entire infrastructure can be better managed to increase productivity and be more flexible. This is critical as2MuchNoiseindexesthousandsofsourcesofdatafromacrosstheInternet, refreshing their information hourly, and they’re averaging 200 users a day requesting that the system analyze and report on indexed data. The systems are severely over taxed and they expect to double their customers within the year.

2MuchNoise uses a conversationmarketing strategy and engages inthe market conversation to promote their company, which is working fabulously, so the CEO recommends to Joe that he look to his own IT influencers to find system solutions.

Joe regularly follows a number of tech gurus so he knows exactly which people and organizations to trust for advice. He’s usually impressed bywhat the authors of theVirtualDataCenter blog have to say, sohe comments on an applicable post mentioning that he’s looking to improve his data center and states the technologies he’s currently running and what he’s hoping to get out of improvements.

Now Joe’s pants are down, so to speak. He’s put himself out in thepublic eye and knows that he is bound to get inundated with calls from sales people, but he figures it’s a small price to pay to get help from the global tech community he trusts. So, Joe turns off the ringer on his phone and waits for responses to pop up on the blog.

Cynthia “Cyn” works for VMWare. She’s not a stereo-typical sales person, she actually likes some of the people in the marketing department (and they give her added attention for being nice!)

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Recently, Cyn worked closely with marketing to implement a conversation marketing program. While working her third 10-hour day in a row—she’s aiming for a promotion and refuses to loose out to Lewis!—she sees that Grant, one of the engineers assigned to engage in theVirtualDataCenterblog, theauthorsbeingon thecompany’sInfluencer list, emailed her about Joe’s comment.

Grant has been actively participating in the discussions on the Virtual DataCenterblogsohe’sbeengettingsomegreatinsightonwhattheirtarget audience is looking for and he’s been able to pass on several direct inquires and potential targets to sales.

Cyn knows that VMware’s vCenter solutions could easily do what Joe needs. In the past, Cyn has experienced following up on many leads who were IT directors, or rather she’s been hung up on and ignored by many IT directors. She’s sure that Joe is unlikely to be thrilled if she suddenly contacts him with a sales pitch, so she takes a conversation approach and drafts a response to his comment:

“Joe, an engineer co-worker of mine pointed out your blog comment to me. I think I can help you. There are a lot of new offerings that have come out in the last few years that can help you get what you need from your data center. There are also many independent IT consultants in your area who would be able to advise you on specific technologies—I’ll list a few below that I know have great reputations.

I’m with VMware so I spend much of my time following the market conversation about data center virtualization and I’ve found a number of other blogs and forums to be excellent resources for additional information. I’ll add them to the list below.

If you have time to join, there is a free webinar on Internal and External Virtualized Infrastructures being held next week. It’s sponsored by VMWare, but the information should be helpful to you regardless of which solution you ultimately choose.”

Cyn is also able to track down Joe’s email address (ah the wonders of search engines!), so in addition to posting her response on the blog she decides to send him a quick email. In the email she explain that she just postedaresponseforhimontheVirtualDataCenterblogbutwantedtomake sure he got the list ofwebsites, blogs and forums.Nothinglong, just a short note. She pastes the list of resources in the email and

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wishes him well.

At just about the same time, on the other side of the country, a sales guy, Sam, from a rival company also sees Joe’s comment. Sam likes to troll some of the bigger industry blogs and forums for leads. He’s hoping to contact (i.e. bug) as many people as he can in one day, so he opts not to respond within the market conversation. Instead, Sam looks up which form response email message most closely addresses what Joe was asking about and emails it off to Joe. To make sure Joe has all the info he needs, Sam attaches his company’s white paper, a brochure, 2 case studies and 6 links to pages on their website (it was easy since he has those links and documents ready to go for every email he sends.) The email asks for Joe to reply with times when he might be available for a phone conversation.

Sam has been in the sales biz for years and he knows how to play the game. He clicks through his CRM system to add Joe’s info and set a reminder to follow up the next day. Like clock-work, the reminder “dings” the next day and Sam grabs for the phone. He’s aware that stats show that more sales deals go through if a prospect answers a follow up call than if you leave a message. But after reaching Joe’s voicemail four times, Sam decides to leave a message.

The ExperienceHow do you think the story ends? Which approach do you think is more likely to impress Joe? With Cyn’s approach, Joe not only got some quality advice and other resources to check out, but the rest of the blog’s audience also benefited from the suggestions.

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Idiom Strategies LLCwww.idiomstrategies.comwww.conversationmarketingblog.com© Idiom Strategies LLC 2009

About UsIdiom Strategies LLC is a conversation marketing agency building strategic and tactical plans for clients to interact with the ecosystem of influencers, participants and listeners in their market conversation through social media, in-person events, one-on-one relationships and other on and offline channels.

Our Mission is to provide businesses the insights and customized plans for where, when and how to build relationships and participate with the influencers, participants and listeners in their market conversation.