One of the most important
things to do for an enterprise organization or an interest association is to
facilitate the dialog with their costumers and make them interact on their behalf
and be the facilitator for the dialog. What is important for an organization or
an association is to make the communication interactive among their costumers or
members to make them share information and create many-to-many conversations.
These conversations can be applied in the enterprise organizations production
or in the interest association member creation structure, generating mutual
ideas creating new products or services with a new revenue for the
organizations.
How you should NOT communicate with your members or customers
An example of what you
should not do when you want to create a many-to-many conversation among your
members/costumers is what the Danish Diabetes Association did to a member with
a good idea.
A member of the
association has created a blog: http://newwithdiabetes.blogspot.com/ for new members with diabetes.
The blog is a virtual tool
box for new discovered diabetes type 1 members, who need to be properly
regulated in their blood glucose level. The interest for this topic creates a
lot of frustrations and anxiety for the ones who need to be properly regulated.
This makes the blog a super tool of content which should be distributed to
newly discovered members of diabetes 1 by the Diabetes Association.
What is in it for the association/enterprise?
The Diabetes Association
has an interest in helping their members in this topic and generating more
members in this category of members to expand the association. Apparently the
Danish Diabetes Association’s communication department did not grab the dialog
and did not want to facilitate this dialog. The Danish Diabetes Association
used the first escape road – “we don’t refer to blogs but we do find your
content interesting”. This escape will over time be costly and less rewarding
to the Danish Diabetes Association. The
value creation from the Diabetes Association is to secure that members of the
association will continue to get information and discuss this information among
the members to have the conversation. The problem for the association is
that they will not create a dialog among their members and herby loose the grip
of the members interest over time. In our Social world discussions many-to-many
generates advantages and also disadvantages for enterprise companies and
interest associations.
Advantages and disadvantages of social dialog
An advantage is that the
associations and enterprises can generate new ideas and concepts by just
listening and facilitating the dialog and herby benefit from the outcome. Most
of the content developers will be proud and happy to create this content which
can be used to help others and will not notice that an enterprise or an
association can benefit economically on their idea.
The disadvantage for the
enterprise or the association is if they reject the content from the costumer
or member and then force them to create their own communication strategy towards
the members or costumers the association or enterprise will not know what their
members or costumers discusses and that could be fatal. When an association
denies their members to have a dialog between each other by using a social
blog, the association has created a negative dialog with their own members who
will spoil the confidence in the association or enterprise product or cause.
The outcome from such a decision can have fatal consequences for the association.
One consequence could be lack of interest from the members in the associations
dialog and events; another could be simple member getaway as the member community will be watched by the association rather than being facilitated. The importance of the many-to-many communication
has to be recognized by enterprise and associations to get a sustainable
success ahead.
