The company is the conversation

I remember back in the Stone Ages (about 5 years ago) when the concept of a company also being a content creator seemed perverse, unholy and even worse, a waste of time and money. Now, company-as-content indeed is not only mainstream, it is recommended!

With good reason, too. If the notion of the media becoming fragmented by millions of voices online is now conventional wisdom, so too should be the notion that a company must be one of those voices.

I know that outside the tech market, there is still hesitation to adopt social networking tools as part of an overall, integrated marketing campaign. These tools are a fad, a waste of time. But when was communicating directly to your customers a waste of time?

Probably the most insightful phase I’ve heard to describe capitalism is the Cluetrain Manifesto’s “markets are a conversation” (or something like that).

Creating company content isn’t an academic activity, it is a commercial one. It demonstrates that the company not only has something to sell, but it also has something to say.

Being part of a market’s conversation is critical in the age when a the quality of a company’s reputation is almost as important as the quality of it’s products.