Interaction Builds Business Communities

As I discussed in The Future of Public Relations, blogs, social networking, and podcasts have changed the way people get ideas, share information, communicate, and respond. The web’s interactive communication style has changed how people want to learn, connect, and build relationships. Conversations are crucial to growth and the development of innovative ideas.

There are a couple of easy ways you can provide interaction on your website without having to invest in, build and maintain a forum or membership site.

Create and Maintain a Blog

Blogging forces you to analyze and organize your ideas, beliefs, and opinions, and how they are relevant to your business and market. Researching topics and developing relevant posts gives you the opportunity to evaluate current trends and design solutions for your customers.

Hosting a blog allows clients to pose questions about business topics, provide input on developing issues and engage others in conversation. Clients and prospects have the opportunity to hear new ideas not only from you, but also from others who are involved in the blogging community.

Comment sections are critical to a blog’s success and are a feature that not only allows, but encourages people to post their own ideas and replies. If you reply to everyone who comments, visitors will be more likely to leave new comments or continue the conversation. Analyze your most popular topics and pay attention to statistics that show you where people are coming from, and factor all of it into your marketing planning.

It can be hard to sustain a conversation, especially on a blog, when you don’t have anything interesting to say. If you find you are getting stuck and are groping for something to write, it may be a signal that you need to draw ideas from other industries, or ask others to post their own ideas to your blog. Consider asking some of your clients to post their own topics. Not only will this give them some free publicity, but it may entice their own readers to visit your blog as well.

Develop Free Teleseminars or Webinars

If you don’t have the desire to post regularly to a company blog, you may want to consider hosting remote seminars.

Organizing and running regular interactive seminars for clients and prospects enables you to learn what is on your clients’ minds and demonstrate that you are concerned about recent industry issues. You can host and direct each session yourself, or you can invite other  industry experts and speakers to come and discuss important issues that will add value for your clients.

You can start the sessions by posing what-if questions that challenge people’s assumptions, and let the conversation develop and take on their own direction. To promote real discussions, use themes that center around “Why?” and “Why Not?” questions. Encourage debates centered around new ways of understanding client issues.

Wrap up by asking your clients if they think you should spend time developing one or more of the ideas that emerged from the session. Ask whether that would be of value to them. Consider recording each session and offering the audio files as an incentive for joining your community.

If your participants know that they are involved in developing solutions they are more likely to become loyal members of your community.

The Point: Add More Value

Nothing builds relationships better than regular, meaningful conversations. Initiating and deepening relationships is more important than conventional marketing’s goals of pushing “awareness” and generating “sales leads.”

To have these interesting, meaningful conversations, you must have something to say. Develop fresh points of view and create new metaphors and language to express them. The message itself is only the beginning. Its value exists only if you dedicate yourself to initiating conversations with clients and prospects.

Related posts:

1. The Future of Public Relations?
2. What Twitter Has Given Me
3. We Should Always Market Like There’s a Recession
4. Start-up Business Advice from ‘Knocked-Up’