Yes, you can get into social networking/social media—the terms are interchangeable in this context—for very little cost and effort, but that won’t necessarily get you much.
So, social media doesn’t promise you a massive audience after all — only a many-to-many audience, which could be one-to-two, one-to-5, maybe even one-to-dozens, hundreds, even thousands or millions but only if your audience is paying attention. That’s hardly a massive audience in most cases..
Let’s start with the definition. Wikipedia defines it: Social media is media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media uses Internet and Web-based technologies to transform broadcast media monologues (one-to-many) into social media dialogues (many-to-many). It supports the democratization of knowledge and information, transforming people from content consumers into content producers.
The same group started a second discussion along similar lines: Why Social Media Networking, such as Facebook and Twitter, live or DON’T live up to their hype. Find that here. When last checked, it had about 50 calmer responses.
A recent discussion on LinkedIn titled “Social Media for Business Is Crap” drew over 1,000 responses very quickly. Clearly, it touched a nerve. The discussion finally got pulled from the site when some people went ballistic. You can see what’s left of it here.
“Wasn’t the big allure of Social Media supposed to be that for very little expenditure in money Big Fat Finance, time, and resources, a business could get their information to a massive audience? Now, it would seem that social media requires hard work and lots of it, plenty of planning, a good degree of talent, and a lot of luck. Not to mention money …,” one respondent wrote. Well, yes and no. Let’s clarify a few things about social media and business.
It certainly requires hard work. As Wikipedia notes, it changes people from content consumers into content producers. That means you have to produce content people actually want. As the LinkedIn respondent noted, that takes time, effort, planning, and money (because good writers and content developers don’t work for free).
Does this mean that social networking for business is crap? No. But it does mean that you have to take the time to understand what it is good for and what it cannot do. Only then can you determine how, when, and even if you want to participate in social media.
Sure social media can generate an audience of tens of millions — just look at Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign — but that audience can be fickle. There are so many delightful distractions in the social media world that you not only have to attract your audience, you must hold on to it every day. Beyond your mother and your spouse (maybe), that’s not so easy. You hold on to your audience by delivering compelling content they want and can’t get anywhere else. Other compelling content is only a click away.
Social media is not going away. Businesses will have to deal with it, one way or another. An upcoming wiredFINANCE piece will identify six critical things social media can do for a business and how to get started. ###
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