Conversational Media Marketing

Joe Pulizzi, founder of Junta42, quite literally wrote the book on content marketing. Some time back I asked him to write a guest post explaining the difference between conversational marketing and content marketing. He was gracious to oblige and here's what he had to say...

Over the past year, I've had more than a few requests to define the difference between conversation marketing and content marketing. It's an important question, since most people consider them the same thing. It's also not easy, since the two are very closely related and sometimes can be confused for one another. First, let's look at the definitions.

Conversation Marketing

According to Wikipedia, Conversation Marketing is defined as "the engagement of social media by a corporation to promote their product or brand. It differs from traditional forms of 'customer touch' because the company may enter into an online dialogue which is stored publicly in a forum or blog. The company may also take the conversation offline."

Conversation marketing is an activity, or even marketing tactic. It's customer service through Twitter. It's creating loyal fans via Facebook. It's building a customer dialogue via blogs and forums. It's setting up listening posts to better understand customer behavior.

Conversation marketing is about employing and leveraging new technologies to develop and further relationships, which will then (hopefully) lead to off-line conversations and business transactions.

Content Marketing

Also according to Wikipedia, Content Marketing "subscribes to the notion that delivering high-quality, relevant and valuable information to prospects and customers drives profitable consumer action…products frequently take the form of custom magazines, print or online newsletters, digital content, websites or microsites, white papers, webcasts/webinars, podcasts, video portals or series, in-person roadshows, roundtables, interactive online, , events." Distribution of content should also include social media channels as well and wherever/however customer and prospects want/need to consume your information.

The way I see content marketing and conversation marketing intertwining is this: If a company creates a solid content marketing strategy, this should lead to successful conversational marketing tactics.

Whenever I explain social media during my speaking engagements, I refer to it in this manner: Don't get bogged down with a big term like "social media". It's really quite simple. If you are having a conversation with another person and you have something of value to contribute to that conversation, both sides benefit and the relationship will most likely continue. If you are talking to someone else, but are pitching your products or just talking about yourself and how great you are, why in the world would someone want to continue the conversation? The relationship most likely ends there.

Now take that scenario online. If you (as a person or company) are continually creating valuable, relevant and compelling content, targeted to your customers and prospects, they will want to have a conversation with you. Successful conversation marketing is predicated on a sound content marketing strategy. If you don't have the valuable content to share in the first place, your conversational marketing tactics just won't work.

So, content marketing comes first. It's all about understanding the informational needs and pain points of your target audience, and then creating information that solves their pain points. That means valuable and compelling "storytelling" as part of your website, white papers, blogs, eNewsletters, eBooks and so on, which then leads to social media distribution.

The sharing of that "story" creates the opportunity to communicate with customers and prospects and does one very important thing. It generates trust. You become a trusted content provider, which in my opinion, is THE single most important thing you can do for your business today. Once someone trusts you and wants to have a relationship with you because of that trust, business transactions soon follow.

Joe Pulizzi is an author, speaker and evangelist for content marketing. Joe founded Junta42 Matchhttp://blog.junta42.com. Contact Joe at joe[at]junta42.com or check out his content marketing book, Get Content. Get Customers.