What is more important online? Audience or Influence?
Is it better to have 10,000 twitter followers or 100 Evangelists?
What does this tell us about our own Social Media strategy?
Would You Like to Know More About Online Social Media Sales and Marketing?
Is Anyone out there?
Across the major Social Media Platforms, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Google + etc we are continually being told how many people are “members” and encouraged to go out and convert as many of these members to Fans, Followers or subscribers.
Take a look at this short video in which I introduce the subject…
Does this really make sense? What does it mean to have 10,000 Twitter followers? How can you “friend” this number of people, when the Dunbar number tells us that the actual number of people an individual can have interactive relations with is 150.
Is this all about Social Proof? Do we chase these numbers to convince others that we some how have significance on social media? And of course, in so doing, encourage them to join the multitude of fans and followers because clearly the others know something they do not?
Who are these people anyway? If I look at my “networks” I find that there is actually very little overlap between say my Twitter followers and my Linkedin connections. Should I be doing more to cross convert one to another? Would this make me more influential or make any difference to my business? I doubt it.
Social Media is not a Soap Box! (Click to Tweet)
So what about Influence?
Do you have Kred? or Klout? or a signifcant Peer Index? Check out the links if you are not sure what I am talking about.
Is it more important to influence your followers and fans than just accumulate them? Even more important should you try to reach out and connect with Influencers who score highly on these influence measurement platforms, hoping that some of their magic dust will rub off on you?
In my view sharing information and engaging with people who have a common interest in a topic is far more valuable than simply building a follower list. If you have some value to give and you take the time to blog or tweet or post on Facebook, then you want your audience to gain that value from you and make use of it. Simply collecting fan and follower notches on the social media bedpost is a waste of your time. (Click to Tweet)
Seth Godin argues in Tribes (Amazon affiliate link) that you only need 1,000 true followers and that influence tops audience any day of the week. The great thing with Social Media is that you have the tools to create these communities and interact with turning them into your “tribe” in the process?
- The challenge for business today is how to do this most economically and effectively? How many networks should you focus on?
- What type of media should you use?
- How do you integrate this with your “old style” outbound media?
- How do you use each platform to best effect?
- Do you need to become an expert on everyone?
- How much time is all this going to take?
- How do I measure the ROI and find out if it making any difference?
Where on earth do I go from here? Well, if you are facing these questions and challenges and would like to take some initial steps to answering the questions, contact me and we can discuss the challenges you face and how we can address them.
Tell me what you think! Leave a comment or email me at jbdcolley[at]aol[dot]com.
Thank you for joining the Conversation.
Would You Like to Know More About Online Social Media Sales and Marketing?