Do You Really Understand Social Media?
By Alina Popescu on Apr 10, 2008 in Blog Marketing, Blogging Tips, PR & Marketing
To my mind, one of the greatest parts of social media, starting from blogging and going through twitter, social bookmarking and social news is the ongoing conversation. The opportunity to share thoughts, ideas and comments with other people with common interests from around the world. You can practically reach everybody!
Conversation is important for a many reasons: instant feedback on your views, different approaches, new ideas, new developments of mere drafts, building really interesting relationships and being able to find people like you whom you’d otherwise never be able to meet, even if you spent your lifetime travelling around the world.
So how can an PR specialists state they understand the importance on new/social media in the overall PR strategy and know how to get their message through if they run a blog with disabled comments? Where is the social part if a dialog is crippled and reduced to the same old monologue? I’m not arguing that there are no other means of communication, such as emails or trackbacks with comments. But why would you give up such an important part of the blogosphere and make it harder for yourself and others to have meaningful debates? Especially when you state you know your way around the Web 2.0 
Would you hire someone like that? I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Popularity: 3% [?]
whilst there’s no problem with the increased and intensified communication means at our disposal, i suspect that people are “spreading themselves a little thin” in the social arena… one has only a limited amount of attention available and for my part i’m wondering if it’s not a little more relevant to be more attentive to my immediate surrounding, the people in real life who also need comfort, sympathy, encouragement and a good face-to-face cheering up…
just something that’s been bothering me recently… hope this helps…
bart treuren | Apr 10, 2008 | Reply
Hi Bart! I agree we should never let online engagement take over us completely and ignore our loved ones and their needs. Yet personal lives are one things, the services we sell are others. And when it’s a company blog we’re talking about which is supposed to talk about us and about what we think and know, the story is a bit different.
Alina Popescu | Apr 11, 2008 | Reply
Hi Alina,
you’re on the spot I think.
Another approach that I really like is Seth Godin’s trackback policy.
He does not allow comments but only trackbacks. I do not perceive it as a conversation cut. On the other hand, the message I get is: Everyone has got a blog today, if you really want to start a conversation (and not promote your website) blog about my post and maybe I will reply.
This extremely engages the reader in committing to the comment which otherwise would be superficial.
Given that most of the readers of blogs are bloggers themselves and that in my experience 70% of comments are spam, I think I’d have to agree with Seth.
Julius
BTW I love the new design
Julius | Apr 11, 2008 | Reply
Well, Julius, that is why Akismet was invented, to take care of spam. If you are famous enough, maybe you can believe people will stop blogging on topics they wanted to cover and post an entire reply to your post.
Besides, if you get 100 comments for a post, maybe you’ll reply to them all on your blog. But if you get 100 trackbacks, do you think you will actually follow 100 sites, read 100 posts and decide which of them is worth a reply?
I trust my readers enough to believe they can engage in meaningful conversation over here. They can also start conversation on a different topic over at their blog. Conversation, to my mind, should be easy.
Alina Popescu | Apr 11, 2008 | Reply
True.
I see your point and agree that good conversations can happen anywhere.
I also think that spammers are becoming very subtle and that is why I have moderation on. I also tend not to allow comments such as “Great Post” or “Thanks” as they do not really add much to the conversation.
I think that every blog has its levels and areas of conversation, maybe what works for a high traffic blog does not work for an average one. I also love bloggers that interact on Twitter and leave comments closed.
cheers
Julius
Julius | Apr 11, 2008 | Reply
I agree with this point: that what works for high traffic blogs doesn’t for average ones! The one I was referring to wasn’t all that popular or well ranked/trafficked.
I still believe tight comment policies are a lot better than closed comments. Delete all you want, but treasure the meaningful comments
Alina Popescu | Apr 11, 2008 | Reply
Alina, I was going to say the only marketing guru I’d hire who had comments switched off is Seth Godin!
I admire his approach. He doesn’t have time to comment to everyone so he doesn’t invite comments. He allows trackbacks as Julius mentions and I believe he replies to all his e-mail, which must be *huge*
The blogs that drive me totally nuts are those that appear to invite comments, even draw you into the conversation and then don’t reply. It makes me feeling hurt, angry, neglected and very mad. Why not switch comments off if you’re not going to reply? I just don’t get it.
Anyway, I love comments and in my experience they’re 95% genuine (sp*m goes to its own sweet hell hole). Even people who start off just saying ‘I enjoyed that’ can be nurtured into folk who share more of themselves, who get to know you, who connect with you over time.
Joanna
Joanna Young | Apr 11, 2008 | Reply
That is so true Joanna! It’s really frustrating to read a post that triggers you and makes you want to add your thoughts, and then there either are no comments allowed, or you have to create a nice little account first
Alina Popescu | Apr 13, 2008 | Reply
i’d agree with joanna’s last paragraph here too… i’ve been trying a different approach recently and try got get some sort of conversation going through my comments section, it works in a way but the dialogue falls flat after one or two exchanges so I’m wondering what it is that makes such a difference between face-to-face interactions and blog exchanges…
bart treuren | Apr 13, 2008 | Reply
Bart, it is true, sometimes it stops after a few comment exchanges. Maybe it is because there are also emails or IM one can send to continue the conversation, maybe because some think it’s better to put larger comments into a post on their own blog, or because some are shy and prefer to lurk and enjoy posts in silence. Also, it might be because people can loose track of where they commented and it takes longer for them to add a new reply.
It takes time, but starting and maintaining rich conversation is so rewarding!
Alina Popescu | Apr 14, 2008 | Reply