I agree whole-heartedly that it’s all about building community! Good, strong communities…ones that are built on genuineness and trust…allow themselves to be receptive to your message (whatever it may be). Without an active community, you may as well be talking/”selling” to a brick wall.

And in today’s information age, you’d better speak from a place of sincerity because we can spot when someone it being disingenuous from the very beginning and it’s easy for us to move from one brand to the next!

Working in the nonprofit sector, we are sometimes slow adopters (no, really? Imagine that!), so I am always trying to imagine how we can update the way we use the tools we already have instead of using them in the same ol’, same ol’ style.

I am hoping to come to a point soon where we can really integrate both into a more cohesive strategy. I agree- I think it will be more effective.

I agree completely that an e-newsletter (or an older tool for relationship building) should be used if the strategy merits it. I just happen to come at it from a different perspective.

The same goes with direct mail. I will forever be put off by direct mail. I will probably never use it for my company but that doesn’t mean that it will not work. You can get measurable information from e-newsletter and direct mail (which sometimes you cannot get from strictly a social media strategy).

Chris Brogan does an excellent job at combining both mediums to get conversation rolling. If you can combine both I feel it works better than doing just an e-newsletter.

It is difficult for a newsletter to create conversation, granted. But just because the recipient of a newsletter doesn’t communicate back doesn’t mean that the message wasn’t received. Thus- communication (a message from the sending party to the receiving party) has taken place. Case in point- your blog post communicated a message to me. This happened regardless of whether or not I chose to communicate back. It just so happens that I did, thus starting a conversation.

Don’t read me as saying that I am an advocate for always using that type of marketing (alone). But I do think that those tools are still valuable methods of communicating, especially when used the right way!

Take Chris Brogan’s (chrisbrogan.com) e-newsletter. Chris offers tools and tips to readers and often expands upon the content of his blog. While yes, by a pure definition, I suppose one could call this push marketing, I would say that Chris breaks the mold by connecting the content he is ‘pushing’ out with the conversations and relationships he is having via other channels. It’s a value-add; good stuff. As a recipient, I can certainly say that receiving that newsletter adds to the relationship. The fact that Chris bothers to send it at all says something important to me!

Social media has given us more options than ever before to build relationships and share with each other. But does this mean that we can’t/shouldn’t incorporate our existing/older tools into a relationship building strategy?