Today, it was made very clear, again, the importance of “conversation”. On one of the social sites, which features blogging, I frequent now and then a post was made regarding the “relevancy” of web conversations. The writer used several corporate luminaries to make the point that corporations should engage their audiences in an ongoing conversation, to which I whole heartily agree. He went on to describe a conversation that he was having with a “$60 Billion” global company which wanted assistance with education and related issues.

“The executives were surprised (that their Alexa score was lower than the social site that the post was made on) and indicated they needed to work on Search Engine Optimization to increase the traffic to their web site, so the blogger wrote. The blogger in question then responded “no, you need to learn how to have meaningful conversations and create relevant content that appeals to your customers, suppliers and employees.”

What makes this so serendipitous for me is that I recently read C.K. Prahalad and Venkat Ramaswamy’s “The Future of Competition: Co-Creating Unique Value with Customers”. Their book’s purpose is to establish a “…guide [for] business leaders in their search for new strategic capital, helping them to break out of their old entrenched ways and discover new ones” through conversations with the same audience the blogger in question suggest.

In addition, I am in the process of writing on the subject of how authentic leaders should establish both a comfort in social media conversations personally (which might include blogging or might not, but surely includes joining or even forming social networks that they participate in fully) and a framework for them to adopt. Therefore, this opportunity regarding conversations is a perfect topic for me to posit some of my ideas for testing.

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