chrisbrogan.com - Latest Comments in Cafe-Shaped Conversations

Re: Cafe-Shaped Conversations

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Re: Cafe-Shaped Conversations

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Re: Cafe-Shaped Conversations

Novva66 — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 11:34:47 -0000

YES i agree with you >>>> "" enjoyed reading this piece and it gave a slightly different spin"

Re: Cafe-Shaped Conversations

lacoste polo — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 04:56:54 -0000

Cafe-Shaped OR Conversations
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Re: Cafe-Shaped Conversations

abercrombie tees — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 12:00:05 -0000

You have a very fluid and entertaining style, and I find your content relevant and interesting. As you stated, the big boys will probably not switch over to social media, but it is a great place for the rest of us to be able to reach out and touch someone without spending millions to do so.

Re: Cafe-Shaped Conversations

Viral Marketing — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 12:43:42 -0000

This takes me back to my memories of Paris. Sitting out in the sun looking up at the Eiffel Tower.

Re: Cafe-Shaped Conversations

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Re: Cafe-Shaped Conversations

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Re: Cafe-Shaped Conversations

FContos — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 01:00:53 -0000

Really enjoyed reading this piece and it gave a slightly different spin, I liked the likening to cafes, the mental imagery of French/ Parisian communities (particularly the baguette poking out the top of the grocery bag!) - looking forward to reading on :)

Re: Cafe-Shaped Conversations

stevenrdison — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 10:47:26 -0000

I really enjoyed reading your blog. You have a very fluid and entertaining style, and I find your content relevant and interesting. As you stated, the big boys will probably not switch over to social media, but it is a great place for the rest of us to be able to reach out and touch someone without spending millions to do so.

Re: Cafe-Shaped Conversations

Jason Finch — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 15:12:03 -0000

Social media is not only about marketing, it's not just another ink well in the marketing mix. Social media and Web 2.0 is nothing new: it's what marketers have labelled what internet geeks have been doing for, dare I say it, 2.0 decades.

In the mid-90s I despaired as Boards of Directors of brand names looked at the web as a marketing tool, or an IT tool, but never both and definitely never something that spanned their whole business.

Social media is about communication, and the web has been bringing people together away from the internet for at least 15 years: I can remember my own online social networks organising events in London for 500+ people way back in 1998 and attending other events organised through online web forums as far back as 1993. Why is it suddenly something new? Because marketers have just discovered it and marketers are driving much of the public discussion about it.

You're TOTALLY right, Chris, social media is not about big business - it's local and it's small, it's about bringing people together and big business does not work like that. Big business *cannot* benefit from true social media because the model is wrong, utterly wrong. Social media is about cafe-shaped businesses, as you say, about local communications... I think we'll see a rise of the independent stores, the small retailers, the local businesses because communication is going that way, social media are pushing it that way, but really it's about business and human communication... for sure, marketing is about communication too, but the change is far more fundamental than simply a marketing department issue.

Re: Cafe-Shaped Conversations

Taylor Anderson — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 19:01:57 -0000

This is a very clear and concise post. I truly enjoyed it and gathered inspiration from it. Let me ask you this. Is there a place for social media in the Church realm? Can it be used effectively and is it worth my time and effort to make it a reality for our church? I work their and truly believe it can be, but you know I have my doubts sometimes. Your thoughts?

Re: Cafe-Shaped Conversations

Jeff Klaubert — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 18:34:46 -0000

This is a very interesting post and it appears to approach the topic from a corporate marcom perspective, which is certainly a logic perspective but only one of several aspects.

I'm new to social networking and looking for ways to incorporate it into channel sales operations. The analogy of cafe-shaped conversation, addressing relatively small numbers with real conversation, seems a good fit.

Social media may be able to provide a channel for customer / purpose specific 1:1 communication that is not possible through conventional marcom activities or channel sales communication strategies.

Re: Cafe-Shaped Conversations

Matthew Hunt — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 10:14:26 -0000

Chris,

I agree with you all the way on this one. I think it's really exciting. It is leveling off the playing field (for those that get this), especially for small business owners and artists. They are starting to be able to complete with these giant corp's simply because (as you said) " I think that your $15,000 an hour film crew can’t beat my Flip Mino and a personal touch." It doesn't matter how big your budget is anymore, everyone is starting to have equal opportunity to reach their niche communities. So if you are not getting involved in "Cafe-Shaped Conversations"... why not?!

Chris, thanks being so great at explaining social media in simple terms that people can easily understand.

Re: Cafe-Shaped Conversations

Nick Hetcher — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 11:28:36 -0000

Excellent view point, Chris. I absolutely think there is, and always will be a place for both styles of "marketing," and that the big corps will slowly conform and start spending more and more money on social media. in the not too distant future, I envision them hiring teams of people to "work" the social cafe's.

Re: Cafe-Shaped Conversations

Amy Lenzo — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 16:45:59 -0000

Another brilliant post, Chris. Thanks!

As Community Tech Steward of the World Café, I know that conversation about things that matter is not only good marketing strategy, but one of the keys to human survival. It is conversation (on a number of levels) that will in large part carry us through the formidable global challenges that stand before us now. And online communication tools like the ones you've mentioned will no doubt make a contribution.

How exciting it will be to have a President who really understands the power of the individual voice ... I can't wait to see how Obama's presidency will effect participatory citizenship and this whole area of online interaction as a cultural meme that goes beyond digital natives and "geeky types" like us.

But back to business, what we're calling Café Conversations (small intimate interactions that can connect with and feed into larger collective awareness) are important to large and small companies for reasons that go beyond product sales and marketing.

Conversation is now becoming recognized as a core business competency and World Cafés are hosted in corporations just as often as they are with health and educational institutions, government, neighborhood groups, and anywhere else that conversation can increase communication, address challenges or help build a sense of community. It's only a matter of time until more and more of these conversations are happening online.

You've probably noticed that more and more conferences are moving to an interactive model, based on Cafe Conversations. Increasingly, conference organizers are realizing that attendees are tired of "talking heads". There is so much more to be gained by an approach that calls on the collective intelligence gathered in the room, and engages in a conversation between the "experts" and those in the audience (who are often equally as knowledgeable).

So what I'm saying is that there's an analogy here that expands the power of conversation and online communications out beyond marketing and product sales, and it's still just in the beginning stages. I look forward to hearing more from you on where you think this is all going.

Amy

Re: Cafe-Shaped Conversations

Maria Reyes-McDavis — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 12:38:30 -0000

Excellent post and such insight into the nature of what's happening online ;-)

Re: Cafe-Shaped Conversations

@todd lucier — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 13:21:23 -0000

Can't believe the way your words mesh with the things I've been trying to do with the tourism industry and addressing the needs of climate change. These blogs were set up as cafés to have just the conversations you are writing about.
http://www.tourismcafe.ca
http://www.climatecafe.org

The social web isn't about creating the next big thing, it's about creating space for intimate conversations about things that matter.
It isn't about having 30,000 twitter followers or 100 comments on your friendfeed post, it's about having one or two conversations that matter.

Re: Cafe-Shaped Conversations

TimWalker — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 13:08:21 -0000

Good stuff, Chris. This meshes with thoughts I've been having about the social history of communications media. We've always had personal media (private conversations, personal letters, one-to-one phone calls, etc.), and we've always had narrowcast media (town criers, sermons, speeches, etc.). It's only in the past couple-hundred years or so that we've had appreciable mass media, and it was in the 20th century that Big Business learned to harness it.

Social media as we usually conceive of it lends itself to personal and narrowcast media -- your "cafe" conversations. I wonder how much it will evolve to achieve mass-media ends, and how much mass-media users (esp. Home Depot et al., as you say) will evolve to use it at the personal & narrowcast levels.

It's worth thinking about one more element: how Big Business can already tap or enable or promote *many* personal or narrowcast conversations around its offerings, thus achieving scale without trying to force the social media to perform like mass media. (At this point, cue standard references to the Fiskateers program and so on.)

Big questions worth pursuing -- good on yer for continuing to raise them.

Re: Cafe-Shaped Conversations

Shannon Ehlers — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 09:38:55 -0000

I just keep reading this post and the comments, over and over.

I posted a quickly drafted response at my own little piece of cyber real estate (I don't know why it didn't show up here as a trackback/pingback, but you can click my name and look for "Baguettes") but the more I think about this, well, the more I think about it. I'm going to need to do a follow up!

One interesting comparison that I can make from personal experience is that in the uber-small company (9 employees) that I work for now, we WANT to use social media but we have a hard time finding the budget and personnel to allow the time (although we did create a blog, a DIGG account for sharing news, a Feedburner account for promotion/tracking, etc). At the company that I used to work for, a fairly small (6000 employees worldwide) company but a huge player (45% market share or better) in their field, I was refused a LinkedIn recommendation by my friend and former boss based on "company policy". This company clearly has the budget available, but lacks the understanding.

Re: Cafe-Shaped Conversations

Betsy Wuebker — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 16:08:26 -0000

Admittedly, I just scanned all the comments, so if someone has already said this, sorry, but the reason the cafe concept works is because it's small. I blogged about it a month ago here: http://passingthru.com/2008...

Small is important because people need to feel they matter. The commenter who talked about tweeting with Best Buy's marketing guy gets it. BB's Marketing Boy doesn't. As long as marketers don't get that people crave feeling like they're worth something to somebody, they may sell product, but the impersonal transaction is all they're going to get. Big companies do well to rely upon individual salespeople who have the wherewithal and the empowerment to interact in a stand-up way with their sub-tribe of customers. Imagine if Best Buy's marketing guy started treating the Blue Shirts as adults, empowering them within their bailiwick to run a micro-business that is housed under BB's roof?

Sub-tribes always form within larger tribes once critical mass is reached. I'm betting we're going to see a host of new companies form who are more than content to stay small and connected. Howard Lindzon talks about being "too small to fail."

Re: Cafe-Shaped Conversations

CoryOBrien — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 02:41:41 -0000

What's interesting about social media is that while conversations are going on at (digital) cafes all around the world, companies can 'listen' to most, if not all of those conversations (with the proper tools in place of course) and then jump in at the right time with relevant and useful information.

It's like if you sat down with a friend at a cafe, and then when one of you said 'Coke should make a mango flavored soda', a Coke rep showed up and said 'We tried that and it tasted horrible!' or 'What a great idea. We'll give it a shot and blog about it when we do.' and then stuck around just long enough to see if you wanted to keep talking about Coke or if you were ready to move on to another topic.

As with anything, this could obviously get taken too far to the point where it becomes annoying and invasive, but hopefully companies will realize that there are times and places when and where people want to be approached, and times and places when and where they do not, and will act accordingly.

Re: Cafe-Shaped Conversations

jon burg — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 23:55:39 -0000

There is a strong gray area between the cafe and the megamall. While Digital Nomads has driven mass attention in a social (cafe) type platform, there is something to be said for many-to-many conversations parcelled out by unique voice.

In today's social world, it would be a sound investment for brand to embed their employees as personalities in social marketing. Trained, outward facing enthusiasts can easily become credible voices in their respective target communities. For example, moms with motrin could have created a credible presence long ago, one that would have softened the impact of motrinmoms. And sure, Motrin has other target segments, but those could easily be addressed in much the same manner.

Intimate scalability may seem an oxymoron, but can strategically implimented with strong leadership.

Re: Cafe-Shaped Conversations

timbrauhn — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 22:09:22 -0000

What does it mean that when I'm sitting in a cafe, speaking softly with my friends about what I ought to eat, I'm still frantically scanning the menu looking at all the options?

My guess is that (for the big guys) it might be pretty hard to scale DOWN. But even if they do, I'm still going to lean over to the next table and ask someone sitting there what they're having and why.

Hodson is right when he talks about Tinker Toys: Maybe big business will just have to concentrate on the hubs and completely ignore the bigger picture.