A little while ago, I attended a webinar with The Customer Collective, on “social selling” (Selling with Web 2.0). In it, the presenters, all marketing experts, agreed that good content is absolutely essential, but it’s no longer enough on its own.
(Oh. And here I thought I was finally starting to catch up.)
Instead of a “create it, produce it, publish it, and move on” mentality, I need to think of that process as just the beginning and no longer an end in and of itself. Good content is one way to initiate conversation
(Mark Woollen, of Oracle Corporation).
From that point and going forward, building a community requires four pillars:
1. Who’s in it
2. Who’s with/connected to whom
3. Who’s posting
4. What are they posting?
(Christopher Carfi, author of The Social Customer Manifesto blog, and co-principal of Cerado, Inc.)
If I translate this into “real life,” I find it easier to grasp. Which do I find more engaging? Sitting and listening to a lecture from someone who has requested “no questions;” or sitting in on a conversation with knowledgeable people and drinking in the discussion/debate, posing questions, sharing insights, and making friends?
In other words, content is very important, but so are the conversations that flow out of that content.
ea/
QUESTION:
Is content king? Or do we really need content plus community? Does this mean every website should have a blog with comments, or maybe even a forum? Do you ever get more out of the comments than you did the original post?
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