When you’re marketing online, intimacy=relationships.

We’ve all been so prejudiced by certain early pioneers of the Internet: when you see the word intimacy mentioned in conjunction with the Web, many peoples’ minds go in a less than businesslike direction.

Flush the thought out of your head (online porn represents anti-intimacy, actually, if you think about it).  What we’re mulling today is the intimacy that’s crucial to the selling process – the sense of personal contact and trustworthiness that helps convert any prospect.  If I don’t trust the person across the conference table, I’m not gonna buy their widgetry, regardless of how their product fits my need.  So I use a whole host of filters to discriminate who I like and trust from who I don’t – body language, eye contact, what they say and how they say it, depth of their answers, quickness and salience of their responses.

There are online analogues to all of these we need to keep in mind.  Remember one key point: online is breaking down the old rules of advertising, marketing and communications.  Banner ads are a struggling genre, in many regards, because they represent ‘advertising’ to users – impersonal and somehow untrustworthy by virtue of simply being, well, advertising.   The Web is innately a user-directed medium, just like human conversation, with endless opportunity for give-and-take, redirection, open flow.   Just like a talk with your friends.  Or a live sales call.

That’s why providing “value,” touted as the secret to successful blogging, Tweeting, email, mobile, and so on, is critical – because we have the opportunity to tune out or turn off the dialogue whenever it bores us or fails to provide rewards.

Building value into the conversation is important, but it’s also a signifier that it’s a conversation to begin with, even if it’s one-sided.  Think about it: using the Web is a very personal experience, in many ways, subject to each user’s whims and objectives.  It’s why any marketer should give their audience opportunities for feedback, and forwarding and repurposing of their content – that’s part of dialogue, too.  It engages them in who you are and what you’re bringing them.  And so, it’s a step toward real trust and purchase.

How do we create a sense of intimacy and dialogue in our online efforts?

• Show your face: It sounds dumb, but it’s not — put your picture on it.  Whether a blog post or an employee profile, put an image out there so they know who they’re dealing with.  And if you can put some personality behind it, via a personal profile, descriptive snippet or other expression, so much the better.
• Conversation, not broadcasting: This is one of the most important, and one of the hardest to pull off, frankly.  Keep your dialogue with prospects and respondents friendly, conversational, informative but not doctrinaire or textbook-tedious.  Imagine every posting, tweet or eblast you execute is like an email or text message to a close colleague…without any ****s and ****s, of course, if that’s how you talk to your co-workers.  Let honest personality and character shine through whenever possible.
• Feedback: Take it.  Encourage it.  That Comments section can do you a lot of good.  Even the haters and the trolls (who you can always block or delete) are evidence of a dialogue with the community you want to reach.  Willingness to listen, even if it’s to stuff you’d rather not hear, is evidence of your willingness to engage…and that implies better response and customer service, doesn’t it?
• Repurposing: Give people content they can use – white papers, technical articles, even graphics and easily Retweetable/Diggable posts that will – if they’re of value – be passed along, will raise your profile, and generate goodwill.
• Constancy: It’s important in social media executions, especially, to stay out there.  Yes, it’s more time and budget-intensive than not doing it, but social media programs are burgeoning almost exponentially, so it’s a matter of staying competitive at the very least.
• Planned Spontaneity: Don’t do anything – blog, eblast, BBS, Twitter or Facebook – without sitting down, either with your team or your agency, to figure out an underlying strategy.  You can still be engaged in an open dialogue with your audience while still advancing an agenda, and you should have an agenda.  If you’ve got a new product launch, if you’re expanding your sales area, if you’re trying to position yourselves as the go-to authorities in your category…no matter what the larger business purpose, it should be plugged into how you use social and digital media dialogues.  Treat these channels just like an advertising or sales program – ‘flight’ your efforts, lay out a calendar, and take it step-by-step toward defined objectives.