“People talk to each other. In open, straightforward conversations. Inside and outside organisations. The inside and outside conversations are connecting. We have no choice but to participate in them.”
- Rick Levine, The Cluetrain Manifesto
It may sound a bit trivial, but if two people talk about your company or your products, they have power. They can influence if the other person will think good or bad about you moving forward. If both go on to tell what they’ve learnt to other people, their power grows. From conversation to conversation it gets exponentially stronger and stronger, until your company actually feels it – through more or less products sold, or a better or worse reputation. People trust people, not companies. That’s why conversations are key.
Traditional marketing and corporate communications are excluded from these conversations from person to person. Here’s why: They talk only in one direction and use an overly formal and ‘whitewashed’ language that people immediately recognise as false and not trustworthy.
Among each other, their language is real, authentic and genuine. Normal people talk to each other like normal people. Very simple. That creates trust and credibility.
The Social Web is a catalyst for conversations
The new, “social” possibilities of the Internet, such as user forums, customer rating portals, blogs, social networks, video and photo communities, microblogs and so on make conversations from person to person easier than ever before. Everyone can reach out to hundreds or thousands of other people within a few seconds – and influence them.
Companies that ignore these conversation catalysts do not only run the risk of missing out on critical developments. They also miss the best opportunity they can get to actively shape and protect their reputation. When a company seeks the discourse with the participants in these Web conversations, and allows its employees to do so in an open and authentic way, it has already made the first step. And that’s just because another person has joined the conversation, and not an anonymous organisation.
Employees are customers are employees
The traditional distinction between the inside and the outside of an organisation in marketing and corporate communications is arbitrary. It contradicts the fact that every employee is a customer elsewhere, and customers usually are employees in other companies. Conversations within companies, consequently, take place under the same conditions and circumstances as anywhere else. Here, too, authenticity, transparency and the consistency of talk and action are key.
The technologies that have made the Social Web so dynamic and that enable the creation of such enormous amounts of content and expert knowledge in a very short period of time, can also be used within companies. They can support a corporate culture of openness in which collaboration becomes the governing principle of success and in which shared knowledge creates more value than the siloed knowledge of a small elite.
Public Relations taken literally
PR as a strategic communications disciple have more to offer than the big story in the business section of a national daily or the product mention in a TV report. They build and maintain sustainable relationships (!) with editors under the same conditions as their readers and viewers do amongst each other: openly, in a partnering spirit and transparent with regards to interests and goals. The most important method: conversations!
These are the fundamental considerations that form the philosophy of Oseon Conversations. We are a consultancy for conversations. We listen carefully, for example in the Social Web, we initiate conversations, with journalists for example, and we help the people in your company to talk on your behalf just as they would on their own.
Now, we’d be happy to speak with you!
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