(What follows is the outline I wrote in advance of recording the video. They’re my talking points. Not a regular post or article. Just an outline.)
Here’s Tony’s question…
“The company I work for is fairly small, but has adopted a rather formal and stiff tone of voice when communicating with our customers and prospects. If I want to change this – I work in marketing, and started there recently – and want to follow your conversational approach, would it make sense to start with our social media channels?”
Tony, I think there are a couple of places to start that make sense.
One is the Q&A approach I talked about in an earlier video.
By inviting questions you get to know what’s important to your audience, and you get a feel for the language they are using. I love Q&A and have used this approach a lot myself over the years.
The second is social media.
So yes, absolutely.
A lot of companies – even small ones – use social media as one more broadcast advertising medium. Which is crazy.
But smart companies, of all sizes, actually use them to be social.
That means interacting with your audience… answering questions, acknowledging comments and contributions… solving problems… and so on.
And as soon as you are actually social with social media, you enter into conversations with your friends and followers.
So yes… social media is a great place to start… because it’s the medium that actually demands you be conversational.
After the first 20, 50 or 100 interactions, you’ll be getting the same value you get from Q&A.
You’ll learn what’s really important to your customers and prospects.
And you’ll get a really good feel for the language they like to use.
Use that knowledge to improve all your conversations through social media.
And then take those lessons and begin to apply them elsewhere, across other marketing channels.
Thanks for the question!
Do you have a question for me? If so, add it in the comment box below.
NOTE: I have an entire course devoted to the craft of Conversational Copywriting.
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