Creating Sustainable Conversations Is the Key To Social Media Success

In this short article, Creating Sustainable Conversations Is the Key To Social Media Success, Freddie Laker has hit the nail on the head about the key to social media success. Turns out it's still the same thing that builds great brand awareness.

I probably spend way too much time on Twitter and Facebook these days and when I'm not actively engaged, I'm thinking about them and these apps' profound impact on millions of people.

Today's poster child for huge success is the Tony Hsieh, founder of Zappos who's not only built a hugely successful company with great employees (because the crappy employees are paid to leave, literally), but leveraged Twitter to make himself and his company uber-accessible and has a lot of fun along the way talking about whatever's on his mind at the moment, e.g. "Calling a children's word game "hangman" just seems plain wrong. They should invent a more humane game, like "lethal injection"." He made himself ultimately accessible, reflected the culture of the company he's building, and he's real.

And, in the best MasterCard tradition, Zappos is being bought by Amazon for a mix of cash and stock valued at $800,000,000.00 and management remains intact.

Tony and all of the Zappos team have created a sustainable conversation that has contributed to their success.

On the flip side are all those instant internet marketing gurus.... As far as creating a sustainable conversation that goes toward building something of consequence, I'd say they're a big FAIL.

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