Image via WikipediaOne of the biggest reasons that I have seen that cause the downfall of a social network, or social fabric is to treat it as a one-way conversation. When you look at Google blogs, or Microsoft blogs, or indeed some of the more popular bloggers out there, they are all constantly chatting with each other and with their commenter’s.

The biggest failures I have seen all boil down to when the conversation turns one way, much like a PR message, or marketing that does not seek to engage. When you look at the official Amazon seller’s blog, it is the same thing, there are only three entries, and no participation with the audience at all.

Many have questions, many want to participate, the goal is to engage with the conversation, and see where it goes. You cannot just throw things over the wall and not work with the conversation. Of course, how you approach the conversation is just as important as being there in the conversation.

If you look at the 22 confessions of a Dell Sales Manager over at the consumerist, you can see a direct example of the one-way conversation that failed, and caused Dell marketing pain and a host of other issues as bloggers noticed the bandwagon and the take down. The idea of the one way conversation, where Dell could control what was being said backfired. Some of the blog networks, as my favorite toolbox.com also suffers from the same issues, in that the writer does not always engage with people who are commenting on the blog.

The most successful bloggers, and the most successful social networks, those that are most popular are the ones that end up engaging with people. If you look at what was happening with Digg the Candidates back in April of 2008, you can see that the most active was barrack Obama’s campaign, and it was Web 2.0 that helped Obama win. The conversation was always there, you could develop a relationship with Obama, or his campaign no matter how remote, there was someone there, or the appearance of someone there. That appearance is sometimes all that matters.

You can see something similar with the failure of the Amazon Sellers blog, proposing to be an official blog from Amazon, it is on a Typepad address, and only has three entries. It does not seem official as much as the official Google blog or the Microsoft Blogs look. There is no activity, and if you go through the comments, Amazon is not interested in answering back, if anything the Amazon blog is a half hearted attempt at social networking at best, and destined for failure unless they start developing the community.

It is not that you are doing the social network; it is that there is no political, social, or economic will to keep up with the demands of a blog, engaging the audience, trying to control the message, and doing other crazy things that cause doubt as to the credibility to the social network you are trying to build. If you really want a social network, you have to invest the time, the people, the money, and the political support to make that network happen. It will not happen overnight, but Amazon could have a phenomenal blog if they kept it up to date and put it on the Amazon domain.

While it is great to get into social networking, you want to make sure that you have the ability to keep up with it. You have to make sure that the people who are involved with the social network understand that it is part of their job, and are given the time to actually work on it. Otherwise, the company will make an investment in time, money, and development costs, only to have the whole network fail because no one could be bothered to keep up with it.

Tags: social, network, message, media, support, time, energy, politics, social support, employment