Have you noticed how often people are walking around, staring at their phones? I think we’ve all witnessed people stumbling, walking into doors and the like while holding – and staring at – their phones. Or we’ve witnessed people glancing at and interacting with their phones at dinner with their companions each doing the same.
Although what these people are doing could be considered rude, each of these people are having some type of conversation with another through their phone.
Sadly, they are forgetting that you don’t need to have a phone to have a conversation.
Conversations have a simpler origin that requires no devices – only language and listening between at least two people.
What is a conversation?
We have a number of ways to start a conversation with people today – all of these valid communication methods (listed from most interactive to least, according to my perspective):
- In-person discussion
- Video chat
- Telephone
- Letters (paper letters through the mail)
- Social media
- Texting
- Blogs
- Web
- Fax (no one uses it really, but it is an option)
- Books and magazines
I’m sure I’m missing a few items here, but you get the idea.
I think as conversations move from person-to-person interactions (in-person, phone, video) towards a more abstracted means of written and electronic communications (email, texting, social media), there is less of a volley between at least two people discussing ideas and more of a push of ideas and information from a single person to others to provide immediate feedback. Almost like a transaction – someone receives information from someone else and does something with it.
What do I mean by volley? Not just two people talking, back and forth. I mean a volley where people talk, take a pause, collect their thoughts to respond, and listen. That is what makes an engaging conversation.
Listening is a key aspect of any conversation – and required if you want to keep it interesting and engaging.
We know if we are engaging when we talk to someone in person, and we can somewhat determine that through phone and Webcam/Video chat conversations. But it is only in person where you get immediate feedback that what you are saying is resonating with the other person, that he or she understands you, that the person has feedback or input for you, that the person wants to contribute to the conversation.
(Note: Julian Treasure does a lot of work on listening and how to improve your listening skills. He has done about 5 TED talks on the subject. A favorite is 5 Ways to Listen Better.)
And listening happens not only by hearing words and understanding what is said, but watching people’s physical reactions – their facial expressions, their body language. We can sense if someone agrees, disagrees, or has a different perspective. There could be nods, head shaking, smiles, frowns, or smirks. And we can ask for their opinion if they are silent with no expression.
In written and electronic communications, we’ll push out thoughts and ideas and hope that someone reads them and provide their reactions. Most won’t, whether they agree or disagree, unless you write something extremely controversial. Or you send an individual an email, where he or she feels that he should respond in some way.
Over social media and through blogs or Web sites, we build relationships with people who like or repost what we say. They complete an action to let us know they agree. It’s a relationship built through agreement. People like a post. Or they subscribe to a newsletter. And the social media engines leverage algorithms that learn this and link us closer together.
But such social media posts promote one-way conversation. Which raises the question: are these really relationships? Or are they groups of like-minded people who agree with each other?
Two-way conversations allow people to share ideas and information; they can include disagreements and hopefully, changed perceptions. But what makes conversations interesting is that they allow people to grow personally. Listening gives you the opportunity to see the world through someone else’s eyes for a second, possibly experience a little empathy, and change your own perspective of the world. The ability to share your ideas allow you to change others’ perspectives as well.
It’s a beautiful thing.
What happens with companies and conversations?
Companies often create content to satisfy content marketing programs, but these questions need to be asked:
- Are these companies having a conversation with readers?
- What are people doing with the content they create?
- Do people care about this content? Do they want to continue a conversation about it?
Companies will often create a form to collect contact information and place it before “important” content that they think people will find interesting. They post the package on the Web, promote it through SEM, email marketing, social media and all the usual suspects. They will also distribute the content to sales and hope they send it around as well.
In other fronts, companies will create apps that allow users to complete tasks that would normally require a phone call or conversation to complete. For example, someone could place an order, find an address, get a phone number, pay a bill, write a letter through an app without contacting a single person. Basically, the person completes a transaction that would have required a conversation in the past.
But when we do these things, are we encouraging or preventing conversations? Or are we engaging in transactions – from our content marketing programs to our apps. Do this – then that happens.
We only know what people think about us and our content based on the stats we get from these transactions. We know how many comments we get, or likes, or follows, or reposts. We can view data about how many people download a PDF or view a blog page. But as stated earlier, in social media, even companies can end up forming “tribes” of followers who think similarly as they do.
In apps, how people use the apps gives us insights into which functionality is most effective (however we define that), which functionality works as planned, which functionality is not used often or users end up with many errors using it.
But again, these have nothing to do with conversations. These are transactions. And transactions are meant to get us into agreement about factual things. Do this – then that.
A conversation requires much more than that.