In my continuing search to understand more about web-marketing, I have now read through Join the Conversation: How to Engage Marketing-Weary Consumers with the Power of Community, Dialogue and Partnership by Joseph Jaffe (Hoboken, NJ: Joseph Wiley & Sons, 2007). This book is written in a somewhat tiring style of froth, frenzy, and chattiness. Nevertheless, it adds further fuel to the notion that the traditional marketing categories of the four Ps (in case you have forgotten: Product, Place, Price, and Promotion) are now quite outmoded. In place of the old tradition, Jaffe introduces the “Six Cs”: Content, Context, Customization, Community, Conversation, Commerce. Unfortunately, Jaffe does not develop the ideas behind Contecxt and Customization with any real vigor and in the end it is not clear even what these Cs mean.

Content is King

Content that is real, meaningful, and fresh in the eyes of the visitors to your website is king. There is a consensus that content is king. And, for most companies generating content is really hard work.

Jaffe spends most of his energies around Conversation, what is it, how to get it started, how to participate (listen), and how to build relationships on it. There are some good lists of characteristics of conversations and Dos and Don’ts.