The document discusses how to drive good conversations through social media marketing. It recommends taking lessons from John James Sainsbury, the founder of Sainsbury's supermarket, on how to have relevant, contextual, and empathetic conversations. Specifically, it advises starting conversations that are interesting to the other person's situation, fitting conversations to appropriate platforms and social contexts, and treating others as you would face-to-face by responding helpfully and avoiding deletion of unwanted comments. It also stresses the importance of scale and kickstarting conversations around compelling topics to maximize impact.

1. GETTING GOOD CHAT

2. So we’ve established that marketing using social means is about conversations. Today
I’m going to share my thoughts on how to go about driving good conversations.

3. In principal, it’s quite simple... you just behave like a shop keeper - a real person, having
face-to-face conversations with potential customers.
Let’s take John James Sainsbury, the founder of the Sainsbury’s supermarket chain, for
example. He started his career with a grocery store at 173 Drury Lane in 1869.

4. John’s guide to good conversations
Here’s three lessons you can learn, from John, about how to start good conversations.

5. Relevance
Number one is called relevance.
Let’s imagine John James Sainsbury is sat in this cafe opposite these two, who are
clearly on a date. John overhears him invite her to come home with him for some dinner.
At the till, ‘date guy’ bumps into John. This is John’s opportunity to start a conversation.
Does he start telling the guy about the new check-outs he’s installed at the store? No.
That would just be weird. Instead, John slides a napkin over to ‘date guy’ with John’s all
time winning recipe for impressing a ‘lady friend’. The guy takes a look, thanks John and
leaves the cafe with confidence.

6. “YOU’RE
INTERRUPTING. THIS
BETTER BE
INTERESTING”
We’ve learnt to put some effort into the chat that you put out there.
In social spaces, people are not sitting back waiting for marketing messages, they’re
going about their social lives. Brands are interrupting. So if you’re going to interrupt, you
better have something good to say, or you’ll just get ignored, or worst still, rejected in the
long term for being annoying.

7. Here’s an example to make it more tangible: We were asked, by Barclaycard, to start
conversations about PayTag. Instead of directly approaching people with product details,
we started a conversation by asking people if we could buy them lunch? And guess
what? Lots of them didn’t mind this interruption to their social lives and were willing to
have a conversation about getting something for nothing.

8. he conversation started in advance of the ‘Lunch on Us’ day, when we talked about what
we had planned, were asked where people could find us. Chatter exploded on the day
and continued days afterwards as potential customers talked to friends about how they
got a free lunch paid for with the new product.

9. Context
Back to John. His next lesson about good conversation is about context. Let’s imagine
that a new super club has opened around the corner from his Drury Lane store. Does he
rush down there on opening night to tell all the cool kids about his cheese counter?
Nope. Again, weird.

10. DON’T FORCE A
CONVERSATION
John creates conversations only where those conversation make sense. So you
shouldn’t ask a brand to create a strategy for Pinterest, unless you have a conversation
you want to start that naturally fits there. Perhaps John might look at the super-club and
decide to start selling kebabs in his store, after hours. But for the time being, the
conversations that he wants to start don’t fit naturally there, so he’s not going to force it.

11. An example where a brand has gone about this in the right order (conversation, then
platform) is Guess. They wanted to start a conversation about their new denim spring
colour range. They decided to make it about their customers – ask for their point of view
on each colour. What’s your favourite and show us what this colour inspires within you.

12. In this case, Pinterest was a perfect place to have this conversation as the social
atmosphere is all about expressing creativity and sharing your findings. So they asked
people to create a board of at least 5 items that inspire the colour and fashion bloggers
chose what they felt were the best expressions.

13. Empathy
The final lesson from John is about empathy. Do you think that John has one of these
under his shop counter to ‘take-out’ anyone who tries to start a conversation he doesn’t
like? No, that would also be weird. And illegal.

14. IMAGINE THEY’RE
STOOD IN FRONT OF
YOU
We should behave in the same way online. Just because there are keys and wires
between you, rather than a counter, does not make the merchant-consumer scenario
any different to a face-to-face conversation. Deleting their comments on your Facebook
page because you don’t like them creates a scene that other people may find distasteful.

15. Remembering that ‘the customer is always right’ , is a much more sensible way to
behave. That way, it’s not even ‘bad conversation’ as you look helpful, responsive and
compassionate – which can’t be bad for the brand.

16. ...thanks, John

17. But before I go. Just one last thing. It’s quite important. This is about impact. It’s tricky to
make an impact without much scale. Let’s imagine this guy is the best speaker the world
has ever known. Even if these 5 in the audience are really influential within their own
networks, it’s going to take much longer for his amazing words to spread than if he’d had
a hundred influential people turn up. I guess the learning here is that, if you want to drive
good conversations, it’s worth thinking about what you want these conversations to be
about right from the minute you start investing in marketing, as this is the quickest way
to kick start a conversation.

18. It’s about thinking about whether your marketing ideas are a conversation starter or not.
Cadbury have been doing it since the 80’s, before the guys that created the big blue
network were even born, with their ‘how do you eat yours?’ campaign.

19. Now we have tools at our disposable to guide people towards a natural (online) place to
have a conversation (like the hashtag)... And, remember, not all conversation starters
need to be a question. This campaign for Nike implicitly stimulates people to share
conversation about their new year’s fitness resolution without explicitly asking them.