A couple of conversations happened in the last day or so which became, for me, illustrations of a good social media approach. The general lesson: don’t let the one (marketing) message be your only message. Participate in the flow of conversation, contribute in other ways that don’t necessarily help yourself, and you will build the credibility you need to get people to at least listen when you talk about a client in social media contexts such as blogs, Facebook, or Twitter.

Two of these conversations happened, tellingly, face-to-face. The other, in responding to a blog post from a competing agency (hey, we’re all in this together, except when we’re not).

1. My son really, really, really, wanted a video game. Backyard Football, kind of a neat game for kids. He didn’t really need it, and he wouldn’t shut up about it. Finally, I told him, stop talking about it, tell me about your day, about your baseball team, about your drums, about your friends. Let’s get through a whole day talking about, well, everything, and when the time to talk about video games comes up, then we can talk about it. It worked, so I am either a genius or a sucker because I ended up ordering the game.
2. A co-worker told me about her friend that repairs cars. She said one time she called him and apologized because it seems every time she calls it’s about fixing her car. He countered that no, that wasn’t the case. These two are friends and from what I heard it’s not just a one-sided relationship of an auto mechanic giving favors, but a well-rounded relationship where there is giving on both sides.
3. Last, a comment on a blog post by Todd Defren. Essentially, he was giving a f’rinstance on conducting outreach via Twitter. You can read it here. What I found lacking was the concept of interaction and participation. Just like in the above conversations, you can’t have a one-way dialogue, because there’s no such thing. A relationship consists of more than pushing information, as helpful or relevant as it may be. On Twitter, on blogs, and elsewhere, you need to be going in when you are not marketing, participating in the daily flow of conversation.

This last point is a ton of work. You a re not always going to be that deep into a community before you have to go in and pitch them. However, that’s how it works best. It’s a daily grind to comment on blogs, post to Twitter, maintain relationships in Facebook, Twitter, forums and elsewhere, but if you build it up you are an at an advantage when the people who trust you don’t mind you bouncing an appropriate, target, client message off them.

Coda: I often go on about the fact that social media PR, rather than being a new bag of techniques, is actually showing us how we were supposed to be relating to the media all along. We should remember to have these kinds of conversations with all media, all the time. The best of us do this all the time.

Barely-relevant addendum: anecdote that an estranged son preferred an iPhone to a relationship. What does that say about Apple?