Social conversations are the new case study

The creamy nougat center of social media is social conversations. People love to talk and social media empowers and enables social conversations. If you’re not actively participating in social media, the conversation is about you. If you actively participate, the conversation is with you. By ignoring social conversations, the conversation still exists—you just don’t get to participate. To ignore social conversations is to ignore what the community is saying about you–good and bad! One of the strengths of social media for your business is that it allows you to make the bad news good and the good news known.

Overheard on a plane

Imagine that you are in the restaurant business in San Antonio. You’re in the aisle seat on a flight from San Antonio to Indianapolis. Shortly after the flight levels off you overhear the two passengers to your left, who are not traveling together, start to chat. One of the two lives in Indianapolis, the other lives in San Antonio. The conversation turns to fine dining in Indianapolis. Lots of recommendations are made—with plenty of genuine user experiences shared. Not all of the recommendations are positive: some restaurants are praised, others scorned. The new visitor to Indianapolis is getting great inside information, without an agenda, about fine dining in Indianapolis. This inside info adds great value to her visit to Indianapolis.

The conversation then turns to the two passengers’ dining experiences while in San Antonio. Until now, you’ve been eavesdropping without much investment in the conversation. (You’ve been flipping through a magazine giving it 50% of your attention, but you’ve had the other 50% tuned to the conversation next to you. After all, you find the restaurant business more interesting that who Jon and Kate are dating now.).

The conversation turns to dining recommendations and experiences in San Antonio. All of a sudden, you hear your restaurant’s name mentioned. That magazine you’re holding just lost all of your attention. While the previous conversation was moderately interesting, it just turned downright compelling. Now you start to internally debate getting involved in the conversation. One thing is for sure: regardless of your involvement this conversation will continue!

Make the bad good

What if you overheard a negative comment about your restaurant? Without your input, it’s unlikely that anything good is going to be said about your establishment. You have the opportunity to lean in and say, “Pardon me, I couldn’t help but overhear what you just said. I am the manager at…” You could then engage the two passengers in a meaningful conversation to help learn about the situation. Not only will you glean valuable information to help keep the situation from recurring for another diner, but you also have the opportunity to turn this negative situation into an opportunity. With your active participation in the conversation, you have the chance to transform the unhappy customer’s opinion of your restaurant. Without your participation, the customer remains unhappy and relays her unhappy experience to countless others.

Make the good known

What if you overheard a positive comment? Would you just sit back and smile, comfortable knowing that you and your staff had done a good job? Or, would it occur to you that this success story might be worth retelling? Prospects love to read stories about happy customers. If you thought the possibility existed to turn this conversation into a very positive case study, into a way to get your good story out, would you lean to your left and introduce yourself

Social conversations are the new case study

Case studies are a keystone of successful marketing plans. Traditionally, case studies have been very formal documents that are expensive and time consuming to prepare and distribute. With a social conversation you can turn a pleasant customer experience into a very effective case study for a fraction of the cost of a traditional case study. This “case study” may not look and feel like case studies of the old days; it’s not typeset with fancy images. But the exponential power of a positive social conversation about your business is at least as powerful, and probably more so, than that of a traditional case study.

With either a negative or positive situation, your company’s active participation in social conversations helps you shape and direct the conversation. In either case you win. Social conversations are the new case study. They are how people learn about things, they are how people share experiences. This new case study model is different from the old model in many ways, but perhaps it’s most different in that both positive and negative case studies are available (I’ll bet that you never posted a negative case study on your Web site!).

Without your participation in the social conversation you lose. Period. Social media is out there. It’s happening right now and it’s happening about you. To avoid it is to keep your head in the sand. By participating in social conversations you’ll ensure that your customers and prospects are talking with you, not about you!