What Is Conversational Currency?

[Jay Deragon]

Social Media and all the related tools are creating a new currency whose worth increases over time. We call this Conversational Currency and it is created by the propagation of your conversation and its relevance to your audience.

Conversational currency is created by people who share their enthusiasm for a topic, a conversation, with their peers. Because conversations are peer-mediated, they has more authority—this much we know already. However, what Conversational Currency reveals to us is the value conversations create which is reflected by endorsement, or propagation of a conversation by the community of peers.

A conversation turns to currency when people discover something meaningful in a "conversational" experience, they are prepared to spread the conversation as if it were their own. Conversations about brand experiences, topical perspectives and innovative ideas have become a new currency

Today value added conversations are increasingly creating a draw to people whom have an affinity to a brand, an experience or a topic of interest. What we consume and how we consume it are important parts of developing "conversational currency. Conversational currency is created by the propagation of a conversation by others that incorporate your conversation into their own narratives. The more valuable your conversation is the more likely they are to be propagated by others.

The conversational process is a form of powerful currency that transforms the relationship between individuals, brands and media perspectives. In this new type of transaction, individuals and brands can provide people valuable conversational currency by successfully delivering outstanding and meaningful information, knowledge and innovative ideas and perspectives. In return, the conversation propagates and, by extension, increases the value of the discussion by drawing attention, attraction, affinity and subsequently an increase in the audience. The audience then adds its perspective, insights and value to the original conversation thus creating a "new currency" of exchange and value creation.

What Determines The Value of Your Currency?

Conversations propagate based on the rate of interest. Bankers don’t care about money; they care about the rate of change of money. People don’t care about your tweets, they care about the rate of change of your tweets. People don’t care about your message; they care about the rate of change of your message relative to their position. Rate of interest in your conversation is reflected by the rate of change. The more your conversation "changes" from one to one to a million the higher the interest rate becomes.

The last mile of conversational currency is the conversion of interest rates to a return. A return from your conversation is represented by the application of the relative information, knowledge and innovation which is applied to a transaction. A transaction is the exchange of value for economic return. The economic return is not only represented by the currency of money but by other forms of currency that eventually lead to revenue. Get it?

What say you?