Social Media Marketing in 2009 and Beyond

I just started reading a book called "Join The Conversation" by Joseph Jaffe. According to the front cover, the book is about "how to engage marketing-weary consumers with the power of community, dialogue, and partnership". The book inspired me to post here.

Part of "joining the conversation" means being transparent. I heard a perfect example of the power of transparency marketing last Friday.

My friend and I were talking about the value of transparency on retail website blogs and he told me about his experience shopping online for a hiking shoe. The company that he buys hiking shoes from allows consumers to post their opinions about the shoes they sell. One of the posts for a shoe my friend was considering buying read something like, "I don't think this shoe is very good because it slips easily on granite." My friend told me that since the company didn't remove that post, he trusted the site even more. My friend has trust in the company and is likely to buy his next pair of hiking shoes from that company because they are willing to showcase both the strengths and weaknesses of their product online from their customers' point of view. Guess what, since my friend shared that with me, I am interested in checking out that shoe company too!

I like this idea of transparency in marketing and hope it continues to take off.