Conversational Marketing, How do you Feel?

How do you guys feel about conversational marketing? Are you equally confused as I am? On one hand as a Marketer, I believe that conversational Marketing is a new, revolutionary way for companies to establish and maintain two-way communication between themselves and their consumers. This two-way communication can lead to long lasting relationships that companies have been striving for many years to maintain. What more could a Marketer ask for right?

On the other, hand as a customer I find the whole conversational marketing thing kind of creepy. From the consumer’s perspective, conversational Marketing is can be quite the invasion of privacy. I’m not sure how many people will feel comfortable with Fandango posting on its consumer’s Facebook pages what movie they are planning on seeing this evening. In my experience, customer’s value their privacy and tend to resist when they feel companies are invading on that privacy. It should be interesting to see where Conversational Marketing will go in the future. I doubt that companies will willingly stop using such a great marketing tool. On the other hand, it’s hard to believe that consumers will willingly allow for these companies to invade what little privacy they still have.

Cheap Labor?

I don’t get the whole idea behind crowdsourcing. I know how the process works. A company or person poises a question or problem and then people provide what they believe would be the best solution. But I still don’t get it. Is it me or is this new way to get cheap labor? Crowdsourcing really is just a term that companies use to justify that they are tapping into the minds of really innovative individuals for little to no money.

I used to think that the “crowd” was crazy for providing major companies with valuable innovative information for free. To be honest, I still kind of do. What kind of person sits around all day thinking of solutions for a company that may pay them pennies for all of their hard work? If you are that smart then at least make them hire you and pay you a couple of thousand of dollars for your innovative thinking. Now, I kind of feel sorry for these people. These people are being exploited by companies that take their ideas and use them to make their company better in some way.

The article The Myth of Crowdsourcing explains how the word “crowd” implies to people that as a team we are coming up with a better solution to the problem. In reality it is a bunch of people that provide useless information and one really intelligent, innovative individual who provides the solution. I believe the word crowd allows these companies to divert the attention away from the fact that they are really tapping into one individual’s intelligence not a crowd of people that are bouncing ideas off of each other. Call me crazy but I believe that inventors should be rewarded fairly for their hard work.

Social Networking: A Better Understanding of the World?

Wow, can you believe that Facebook has only been around for 6 years? Sure there were similar sites before Facebook but I don’t believe that any of its predecessors has had the impact that Facebook has on social networking. Everyone has a Facebook page and after reading Mark Zuckerberg’s blog I believe that Facebook will become a more vital part of our lives for years to come. Mark’s blog describes some of the improvements that Facebook has made within the past year. Their hope is that these changes will encourage more participation from its users and ultimately lead to the world becoming more open and result in people having a better understanding of everything that is going on around them.

Although I believe that Facebook is a great way to keep in contact with old friends, making the leap from being a fun networking site to website that will lead to a better understanding of the world is a stretch to say the least. Will the constant updates from my friends announcing what they are having for lunch or how hammered they are lead to a better understanding of the world? I doubt it.

I actually believe that our increased reliance on social networking sites, such as Facebook, will lead to a decreased understanding of the World around us. I mean, how many times have you seen people so glued to their cell phones or computer screens that they are completely oblivious to what’s going on around them? And don’t even get me started on the effect that it is having on personal relationships and privacy.

nandfajaks

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Hey all! My name is Shannon and I have created this blog for my ITEC course at American University.



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