Kris Hoet is asking the community to help out, getting colleagues to answer eight FAQs advertisers have about social media and online marketing. Hereâ??s the first question, the rest will follow over the next few days.

(A) How far should I go in the dialogue with the users? (B) Can I accept controversy on my website? (C) What moderation level is acceptable?

A. Advertisers should go as far as their consumers demand. Right now, there are two approaches being taken by consumers to get in on the conversation:

â?¢ Consumers are pulling advertisers in. Through blogs, YouTube and other powerful social media venues, consumers are challenging advertisers, daring them really, to answer to criticism, questions and praise. Advertisers that donâ??t respond are seen as arrogant; advertisers who do are seen as accessible. Thereâ??s really no in between.

â?¢ Consumers are pushing towards advertisers. These are the people who donâ??t wait for organizations to come to them, they go after a response. They track down email addresses, try to circumvent the contact support forms on websites, write letters, and call head office.

No matter how far youâ??re being asked to go, nothing short of recognizing the issue and solving it properly should be the goal. Even if it means having eyes and ears everywhere, online and off.

B. Controversy should be accepted and welcome. Put it this way: living in a controversy free environment would be nice, but itâ??s practically impossible. If itâ??s there, it has to be recognized, responded to and solved. Run and hide from it and itâ??ll never go away.

C. Ideally, you want to encourage an open dialogue and further the process. Anything that contributes â?? positively or negatively, as long as it contributes â?? should be welcomed and accepted. Comments that cross the line into no-manâ??s land â?? hatred, utter stupidity, spam â?? can and should be let go.

I’m not advocating censorship here, I’m advocating conversationship. In other words, keep on topic, keep things moving forward and keep talking. In the same way you wouldn’t accept someone busting in on your group discussion at a coffee shop with profanity and vulgarity, is the same approach you should take to moderating your online conversation.

Next questions:

• Is online advertising making sense without a decent website?
• Are there examples of 2.0 initiatives made by traditional brands that went totally out of hand?
• How can impressions be compared to television GRPs?
• How intrusive should I be? (expandable formats, videos with sound on by default)
• What does interaction rate (only available for rich media formats) tell me about the impact of my campaign?
• Does the long tail change anything to the way I should communicate with my target group?
• Why on earth do people use sites like Second Life?

Back tomorrow.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 12th, 2007 at 1:38 pm and is filed under Web 2.0, Question A Day. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.