Any piece of marketing worth its salt generally starts with an insight. A nugget of wisdom. Or a frustration. A central piece of truth to use as an anchor for the creative. Now more than ever, that truth is quite often revealed in the conversations taking place in social media. But what about instances where those conversations aren’t really taking place? Well, whether you’re talking about marketing a brain-meltingly catchy pop song, a new tablet computer, or an alternative to outdated on-premises CRM systems, it’s probably a good play to try and help the conversation along. Help it thrive and flourish. Listen, learn and adapt as it evolves. Call me maybe (Fig. 1)? Indeed.

(Especially, if you have something to say about a problematic on-premises CRM “solution,” but more on that in a minute.)

First, a digression. At the time of this writing, the Microsoft Surface tablet (Fig. 2) is a trending topic on Twitter. In some ways, the conversation could be said to be unfolding along relatively predictable lines. In others, not so much. But the evolving conversation begs the question: what did Microsoft anticipate would be said? What did they promote, plan for, or seed? What are they doing now?

If you went to work this morning and someone handed you a creative brief and told you to create a campaign for the Microsoft Surface tablet, what’s the first thing you would do? Well, unless you were terminally indifferent about your career trajectory, you would probably start with a look at that Twitter convo to see what the world was saying about the thing before you first put pen to paper.

But what happens when the brief you’re handed leads you to a subject that—for that particular social-media moment anyway—just doesn’t yield much conversation? Well, perhaps that silence is an indicator. Perhaps the absence of conversation is itself a statement. Perhaps the lack of a forum is, in fact, the opportunity to create one. As Microsoft learned, just because nobody was talking about the tablet-in-waiting, didn’t mean that nobody wanted to.

Which brings us back—somewhat obliquely—to Carly Rae Jepsen and her 100M+ YouTube views. What does Microsoft’s tablet or a cloud-based alternative to an on-prem CRM system have to do with her? Well, it’s a bit of a leap, but roll with me on this. When using social media to aid a marketing effort, giving people a clear path to participation is crucial. If they know what to do, they are more likely to do it. Marketing something in a way that promotes a certain, well-defined type of sharing is a very good thing for your long-term chances for success. And—as the title of the song implies—sometimes asking people to do just that isn’t a bad thing. It didn’t hurt that the King of Klout (Fig. 3) decided to be the one showing people how to join the fun, but I digress again.

All of this brings us back to the original topic: marketing cloud-based sales and customer service solutions as an alternative to on-premises systems. And a rather remarkable absence of conversation about that topic. So, we’re going to try and start one. Hand people an open mic and see if they want to talk. Not purely as product marketing—although it’s obvious that we have a vested interest in the subject—but with some degree of curiosity and altruism too. We are genuinely interested in how people feel about this topic. So why not ask them? To call us. Maybe?

Actually, we’d prefer it if they just hit us up on Twitter (Fig.4). Join the discussion by using the #sos and #custserv hashtags on Twitter.