MARKETING OPPORTUNITIES WITHIN CONVERSATIONAL MEDIA

With experience from past projects and points taken from Joseph Jaffe's new book, Join the Conversation, I've broken down the marketing opportunities within conversational media into the following:

1. Low Engagement: Advertise in the Conversation (Banner Ads)
2. Medium Engagement: Catalyze the Conversation (Sponsorships, Product Pages, Contests)
3. High Engagement: Start the Conversation (Community-Extended Content, Community-Created Content)

Conversations are brilliantly more complex than this. This breakdown, however, should make a good starting point for new marketers who have just begun to experiment with social media as well as to encourage current marketers to see the engagement benefits of thinking outside-the-banner.

For campaigns with the right resources and timing, an integrated plan might include low engagement banners advertising a medium engagement point-of-influence which prompts a high engagement response.

COMSCORE INTRODUCES CONVERSATIONAL MEDIA REPORTS

Last September, comScore added Conversational Media as a new category in its digital measurement suite. This category focuses specifically on blogs and social networking sites (but unfortunately, leaves out video sharing sites). Casey Jones, VP Marketing at Dell is quoted in comScore's press release:

"The most insightful marketers in the world have always recognized that building a great brand starts with a conversation and succeeds based on the quality of that conversation -- conversations with customers, potential customers, influencers, the press, and the supply and demand chain. Everyone. It’s only now, in this time, that technology has enabled our marketing ears to become finely tuned. We hear things that were never audible to us. Our customers hear us, even our whispers, in high-fidelity surround sound. It is time for new tools that allow all of us to measure and understand the value and the impact of those conversations."

As the familiarity of online social networks and interactions begin to hit critical mass, even the most conservative marketers are asking the right questions -- but are they ready to practice the best answers?