With so many companies trying to figure out how to leverage social media and blogs to their marketing advantage, one key point often gets missed. "Just talk to them!" If more companies would spend half the time reading blog posts and responding to them that they spend obsessing about how to get more people to blog about them, they'd be way ahead of the game. In fact, Mack Collier points to a great example of a big company doing exactly that and taking the time to engage their customer evangelists in conversation.

The example starts with a blogger, Chris Brogan writing about his love of Saturn and how GM could better leverage their customer evangelists.

...every Saturn owner I know is hip, Internet-savvy, and excited as hell about being part of the Saturn family. And it's that last part that says why GM should come out and get us.

I've owned FIVE Saturns. Yep. Even though my last one was a used car and had problems from the day I bought it, I went and bought a new one the moment that one died. Five. And when people ask me about my car, I tell them about buying five. I tell them about my brother's Saturn (since sold), and my tax lady's Saturn (passed 350,000 miles, and they still wouldn't let her buy a new one).

See the crazy exuberance?

What caught Mack's interest (and my own) are the comments that follow the post.

There are some insightful points in there about how companies can better leverage social media and online evangelists. One of my favorites comes from a poster who talks about her experience as a Mini Cooper owner. She explains that MINI often sends "surprise" packages to owners featuring cool MINI schwag and says:

It also taught me a fundamental rule about marketing- if you have a great product, your customers will be your best advertising ever- because they will be passionate about your product and do more spontaneous pitching to friends and strangers than you could ever do in a commercial of any sort.

What really caught people's eye however was Saturn Communications director Kyle Johnson showing up and putting his two cents in.

Check out Saturnfans.com. Charlie Eickmeyer does a great job of connecting Saturn owners.

Edmunds.com also has numerous forums for Saturn owners @ www.carspace.com. Along with Saturn, they just ran a promotion to send a blogger to the Frankfurt Motor Show. The winner is a 21 year old senior at Michigan State by the name of Eric Tingwall.

Johnson went on to invite Brogan to contact him for further discussion.

The interesting thing here isn't just that a company as large as Saturn is taking the time to engage bloggers on a one on one basis. It's the trickle effect that happens when companies do so.

Chris Brogan responds to Johnson and points out:

And what I'm saying is this: for all of the big companies out there NOT getting it, you've gotta do what Kyle just did: find the conversations. Get onto the social nets and find them, and then, if there's value, show us what you've set up. It might be cool. It might not. But we'll at least know.

And Brogan is right. Word started to spread that Johnson had shown up at Brogan's blog and more than a dozen posts on marketing blogs are now discussing the conversation. The positive buzz created simply by engaging the customer is likely worth almost as much as the information gleaned from the direct contact.

Mack sums it up nicely:

Look at the companies that are spending these millions trying to create ads and videos that will 'go viral', when all they have to do is spend some time reaching out to bloggers and having a conversation with us. That's the quickest way to get bloggers talking about you.

And it's free.