Types of Conversation in Social Media

Engaging the public in conversation through social media outlets.

The volume and repetitiveness of the message is proportionate to the relevance of the positioning. This means that more people will hopefully engage in conversation with your brand.

The larger the conversation the more relevant the subject matter the larger the field interested in your brand. The main concern is not steering the conversation however, but ensuring the brand positioning is repeated.

Its a position repeated  in new origination's equals understanding . Understanding equals your brands positioning communicated. This increases the interest in the brand and further engages conversation.

Objectives

Most conversations may be classified by their goal. Coversational ends may, however, shift over the life of the conversation.

Functional conversation is designed to convey information in order to help achieve an individual or group goal. And may include:

Teaching where conversant's assume the roles of teacher and student, where one desires to learn from  the other, usually where the student assumes that the position of the teacher is correct. The instructional blog or YouTube video is a great conversation starter.

 Discussion where conversants compare, contrast and evaluate the conversants' respective ideas, without an opinion or position as to the correctness of any idea. This is ideally done through the help forum and or outside forums relevant to your brand. Commenting original content relevant to the brand.

 Debate where conversants' objectives are to convince others of one's position, usually where the debator assumes that the position of his opponent is incorrect. This is critical in crisis PR management. You need vigilantly search key terms relevant to your position to fill the vacuum, in the absence of your true data the public will in-fact make up data to fill the void..

Small talk is a type of conversation where the topic is less important than the social purpose of achieving bonding between people or managing personal distance. This done when friend ststus is obtained. This is very important to establish the line of communication as a friend. Sports family events etc all fall in this category. What do you say to a friend?  In brand awareness this is critical.

Banter is non-serious conversation, usually between friends, which may rely on humor or in-jokes at the expense of those taking part. The purpose of banter may at first appear to be an offensive affront to the other person's face. However, people engaging in such a conversation are often signaling that they are comfortable enough in each others' company to be able to say such things without causing offense.

There are many types of conversation relevant to your brand and these are a few that will help you develop a sound Social Media Protocol.