Conversations About Social Media Marketing

Every time I speak, write or chat about Social Media Marketing, one thing becomes very apparent – the total surprise on my business owners faces when I tell them they will have to socialise, create and have conversations and even relationships with their marketing audience. I even hesitate at using the word audience as that seems to imply a static listener rather than a partneror participant in a two way social engagement.
I guess the best way to reframe the word audience is to call them participants because that is what they are and this is what you are setting out to do, create a participatory conversation with you listening at least as much if not more than you are talking. Listening is key, yes key to social media marketing for it is here that this kind of marketing really differentiates itself from old marketing and advertising where the business was speaking and hoping to be heard.

Social Media Marketing is about engagement and one of the best ways to engage others in conversation is to listen to them. When your participants can see you are listening to them and responding to what they are saying you will hold them in the palm of your hands.

One way to get into the right frame of mind from the beginning is to decide that you are about to start and enter conversations rather than with the idea of marketing. Log on to your social sites with this frame of mind, “Today I am going to see how many productive conversations I can have with others, how many problems I can solve, how many people I can help and how much happiness I can spread.”

Just so that we understand what we are talking about when we talk about having conversations let’s make a list of meanings and explanations so as to fully understand the conversation we are having right now:

• The purpose of conversation is to create and improve understanding, not for one party to ‘deliver a message’ to another.
• There is no audience in a conversation, rather participants which requires that each party have a say and each party listen.
• People in a productive conversation don’t repeat what the’re saying over and over, they learn from eachother and move topics forward.
• Conversations are about talking, not making announcements. They’re about listening, not researching and about paying attention, rather than getting attention.
• Conversation is live and alive, it constantly moves and changes, flowing where the interests and ideas of the participants take it. Even when the conversation is held via text and time, it continues to flow.

“Remember, Fractal Magic MarketingTM is all about authenticity, please avoid hype altogether. What you can do however is be sure to tell your story, if you are excited tell them you are, if you are needing advice tell that story. Good marketing is all about engaging your audience through the power of story telling, stories speak to the unconscious, they involve the reader in what’s happening, and they engage the emotions of the reader and all of those are great marketing practice. So become a story teller and weave a story around each event or happening, I guarantee you here and now that if you do this well your marketing will fractalize exponentially outward as your audience become wrapped up in the story you’re telling and pass it on to their audience. This is the beauty of fractals!

The conversations created by you and your audience around your stories, their stories and the blending of those stories is really how our world works. Listen in to any coffee shop conversation, you will hear the fractalisation of people’s stories going on all around you every day.” a quote from my new eBook “Fractal Magic MarketingTM- an introduction.

Social Media Marketing is also known as relationship marketing, conversational marketing and I tend to combine it with authentic marketing and value based marketing just for good value. What this means for brands using social media is that they too must be living things, with living conversations going on all around them. Those that succeed in this will be in the flow, responsive, transparent and participatory and these are a few of the values that will be a part of a new paradigm in marketing.

Live brands are those who participate in conversations in a manner that is:

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