With the world atwitter about Facebook and CNN falling all over itself to promote it’s Twitter account, what’s the point? Does social media really improve your life?
A few months back I was talking to an old friend online. He mentioned that the biggest waste of technology, in his opinion, was young people wasting ‘one of the most powerful communication tools” by posting updates about their fucking cats, or something in that vein. John’s point was pretty simple: We, meaning computer users, have some of the most advanced communication tools available, tools that people could, literally, only dream of a few years ago and we’re spending our days uploading pictures of LOLCats and other junk. John is a few years older than I am and at first I was a bit put off by his rant. He was, after all, talking about my generation.
After a bit of thought, I think the most troubling part of his rant was that he was exactly right. On Facebook, I have a few hundred friends. Most of them are people that I know from years ago. High school and college classmates. Every once and a while, I log in, note the first few updates that show up on my page, and log out. Nothing too earth shattering here. Surprisingly, my interactions on Twitter are much more involved. Using TweetDeck, I filter the tweets and am able to locate new people online and follow their updates.
After watching the CNN coverage of the #IranElection, I have to admit that CNN doesn’t get it. The goal of social media is not, exclusively, to drive traffic to your cable news channel. To make social media truly work, you have to build a bit of cred. I’ve talked about building Twitter Cred before. The bottom line is that you can’t just ask people to visit your Twitter page and simply answer a few tweets once and a while and hope for the best.
Continuing on this trend, I noticed a few tweets from a local Beaufort SC business a few weeks ago. I have a Beaufort search set up in TweetDeck, so I see anything with those words that hits Twitter. Anyway, the tweets were straight-forward “Trying to build a bit of business here, Beaufort based “INSERT BUSINESS TYPE HERE” trying to survive the recession” or something like that. The bad thing is this guy could have easily used Twitter to create brand awareness and possibly driven some traffic to his store. But, because he didn’t spend time learning how the whole system works, he walked away with a bad experience and no new customers.
Fun:
So, no matter what people tell you, the main point of social networking is fun. Any business or finanical benefit is a follow on to this. Period.
Brand Awareness:
Clearly, the guy from Beaufort, mentioned above, is not building his brand awareness. If done properly, this business owner might have started driving more traffic to his site or his business. Let’s say he was selling widget installs. If he would have set up a Twitter search for ‘widget install’ and started communicating with folks that can’t do the install themselves, he would have found his audience. Even if they weren’t located in Beaufort, he could have built on his years of widget knowledge to create an awareness of his company/service. While it might not send people through the door, he might have carved out a nice little niche on the interwebs…
Learning:
For me, this is a huge component of my social media life. I use Twitter searches to discover breaking news on many of my hobbies and interests. People use Yahoo Answers to do the same thing. While not a social network, per se, it is a social site that provides great value to it’s users.
Finally, Sales:
Seriously, this should be your final concern. If you show up on Twitter or Facebook with less than a hundred followers and start sending out spammy links to your products, it’s going to be over pretty soon. Ditto if you set up a Facebook Fan page and start adding hundreds of folks from your general area before making any sort of reasonable contact with them. You will be ignored and marginalized. Simply a waste of your time.
Selling shouldn’t start until after you have already created a bit of value for your followers, fans, or friends. I don’t mean you should spent ten years doing this, but make sure you have an audience that cares about your posts or tweets. Discuss your current business; offer advice to newcomers and people searching for answers in your field; connect with other users of the social media service that share your hobbies and passions. On average, sales pitches should make up less than 10% of your communication in any given community.
So the take away here is that social media is mainly a fun way to waste a bit of time, create some chatter about you or your company, and maybe learn a few things. Just don’t expect to show up and have customers lining up to give you their money….
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