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Forget the Lawyers, Learn to Join the Conversation

The BlogOn Social Media Summit ended yesterday with mixed reviews in the blogosphere, primarily because of the poor WiFi connections.  As an exhibitor, Cymfony was fortunate not to have any problems and we were thrilled to be selected as one of the 6 companies to conduct a live on-stage demonstration.  Julie Woods opened the show with the first demo of Orchestra, Cymfony's new product that integrates mainstream and consumer generated media in one converged web-based platform.  Unfortunately, I didn't make it to the show but Steve Hall over at Adrants did a bang up job in summarizing the event.  Steve suggests that there were four key messages to come out of two day event:

  • LISTEN to the ongoing conversation, enabled by blogs, chat rooms, forums, IM, Wikis, podcasting, social networks and innumerable other methods with which consumers can achieve a voice as powerful and widespread as marketers
  • JOIN the conversation by participating in these new media
  • Do not attempt to CONTROL the conversation with bullhorn marketing communications methods of old
  • No LAWYERS.  If a marketer has an issue with a person denigrating the brand, speak with that person like a normal human being and find out why that person is saying what he is saying. Don't slap a ceases and desist on his ass because all he'll do is post that cease and desist on his blog making the brand look even more stupid, idiotic and out of touch with reality.

No surprises here. Just look at a recent public case study Cymfony put together regarding FedEx vs. fedexfurniture.com incident.  You can read about it here.  Besides FedEx not LISTENING to the conversation they also never chose to JOIN while also trying to CONTROL content by bringing in the big dog LAWYERS to stop it.  How's that for hitting the nail on the head?

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Posted by Cymfony on October 19, 2005 at 09:23 PM | Email this post Permalink

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