Are You a Hit and Miss User of Social Media?
(www.businessandblogging.com) I have to confess that I am.
I have over a dozen social media accounts set up with various social media services ranging from Facebook to LinkedIn to StumbleUpon to Twitter.
Partially I have so many social media accounts because I’m curious. I read about a new type of social media and I hurry over to give it a try.
For writing blog posts such as this one, that tendency to try things out can be a good thing. I can review new social media when I have the inclination.
The reality is, however, I’m not using most of the social media accounts that I have to their full potential. I really only use two social media formats on a regular basis: StumbleUpon and Twitter.
That makes me a hit and miss user of social media.
This is one of those times that I’m going to tell you to do as I say and not as I do.
Social media can be a great means of promoting your business blog if done correctly. However, a hit and miss method of using social media will not provide the benefits to your business blog that you should get from the use of social media.
Rather, you need to devise a targeted strategy for using social media to promote your business blog. Here are some questions to help you put that strategy in place. Use these questions to evaluate each new social media opportunity:
- What benefit do I expect to get by using this social media?
- How much time will I spend using this media?
- How easy/difficult is it to learn the nuances of this social media?
- How are others using this social media?
- Can I form a positive identity on this social media that can be clearly linked to my business and business blog?
- Do my customers use this social media?
- Does the demographic of those who use this social media match the demographic of my customers?
- How many users does this particular social media have?
- Does the social media have a support team or help system available to answer questions?
- Are there any limitations (photo size, no. of characters, and so on) to this social media?
Have you used social media to build your business blogging community? How did it work out for you?
Image Source: www.sxc.hu
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POSTED IN: Blogging, Social Media, Social Networking, Web 2.0
8 opinions for Are You a Hit and Miss User of Social Media?
Peter O'Connell
Aug 8, 2008 at 6:02 am
Laura:
I’m glad to see there are more folks than just me doing the occasional “hurrying” to new social media set ups.
But with the relative newness of many of these services, both in the start and by their acceptance by the general public I think you and our in our testing are not doing a bad thing.
Sure you want to have a plan for social media, agreed. But you need to watch the acceptance of these new channels by your current customers and the quality of prospect you might develop from there as well. Quality based not only financially but business category too.
We may well find that these social media services attract individuals only in specific industries. Off the top of my head I don’t know of too many mid-level manufacturing companies or medical firms that are aggressively using these sites for anything more than recruiting. And maybe that will be the niche after the shakedown, I dunno.
To me these sites with the possible exception of LinkedIn and maybe twitter are not as B2B or B2C friendly or ready as we might hope.
Let’s see what their tipping point might be.
Best always,
- Peter
Laura Spencer
Aug 8, 2008 at 7:01 am
Hi Peter!
Thanks for your thoughtful response.
I think the trouble with hit and miss use of social media comes when the user has high expectations of how the social media will benefit. That was not necessarily the case for me (and probably not for you), but many folks think that simply by getting involved they are taking a positive step.
The other issue is that of time. A business that doesn’t use a targeted strategy may well be wasting time. As we all know, time translates to money.
Thanks again for starting the conversation.
Tracee Sioux
Aug 8, 2008 at 7:46 am
I’m super hit and miss. Mostly because social media can be an unfruitful time suck and I don’t want to waste time.
I have a my space that I never update so I’m wondering if it’s worth my effort to do a facebook page? thoughts on that?
I use twitter cause it’s super easy. I am flirting with submitting to Blogher and Kirtsy because i think my sites will do well there, as opposed to stumble or digg.
Really - is facebook worth the time? What’s it good for anyway? I’m all over the internet with two blogs and guest blogging and comments - is facebook going to get me anything that doesn’t?
Laura Spencer
Aug 8, 2008 at 8:02 am
Hi Tracee!
I’m exactly the opposite - I have a Facebook, but not a MySpace account.
One thing that I like about Facebook is that you can set it up so that every single thing (practically) that you do online shows up in your Facebook feed. So every time that I make a blog post, Twitter, or Stumble - it also shows up on Facebook and all my friends can see it.
Before deciding to use Facebook I would ask yourself, “who is my target reader?”
Although older readers are getting started with Facebook, I still think that the main demographic is probably teens and twenties. My teen daughter would probably be on it 24/7 if I let her.
I hope that this helps answer your question.
Has anyone else had a different experience with Facebook?
Laurel Papworth
Aug 8, 2008 at 7:59 pm
Hmmm I think some values need to be established here.
First, does your organisation value ‘innovation’. Cos innovation means trying, discarding and trying again. Laura, the fact that you are an innovator, not a follower is a credit to you.
Second, if you are indeed a follower, who’s advice are you following? Do you religiously try every SN mentioned on Engadget? If so, swap blogs,or friends - find someone who regularly delivers new sites to try that fit your needs. We take our advice from peers online that we respect - we usually build respect by the communities we engage with and how we engage with them. Friends that recommend crap YouTube videos should be ignored for those who recommend good Ted Talks :) The same with SN recommendations.
Third, do you value engagement with your customer? If you do, cherry picking communities YOU like is not an option. Find where they are, go there, and engage in the style that that site wants you to use (real names, avatars, snarky, friendly etc). If Facebook has 75 million members (and over 15% of Australia’s adult population) then can it be ignored.
Fourth - and this is specifically to Tracee - blogs have no real distribution mechanism. Yes,they are a one-to-many lecture style (locked content, questions after) content site, and excellent for PR and marketing but they don’t have inbuilt audience. Facebook is a distribution site. The reason you don’t value FB is because you are focussed on content creation - a time consuming albeit worthwhile venture - whereas FB doesn’t allow you to blog, and has a few-to-few gated community. Yet FB has the most viral touch points of any social network - unlike blogs, where you are lucky if somone manually subscribes to RSS. FB has news feed, mini feed, notifications, email, inbox, wall, events, groups, fanpages and other viral touch points that are not about creating content but distributing it. Create your content (blog) then distribute it (facebook). You may want to look at the friendfeed and blog applications on FB, that’s how most people start building a small audience.
It’s worthwhile sorting out your social networks into a)content b) discussion or c) distribution, and then seeing if your customers are on there, and then matching your engagement style with their primary and secondary purposes for joining.
And good on you for trying, innovating, discarding and searching.. many people AND companies want immediate results, from one attempt, not longterm engagement and flexibility.
Laura Spencer
Aug 9, 2008 at 6:55 am
Hi Laurel!
Great, well-thought out comment.
I’m definitely not against innovation (or against social media, for that matter).
I was coming more from the perspective of the small business that has limited time and resources. For them, experimenting with each and every new social media may not be a wise use of their time.
One thing that I did want to say is that I think a company can be both innovative and still be following a careful strategy.
Thanks again for participating. I hope to hear more from you.
Angie
Aug 9, 2008 at 10:50 am
Here’s my take on Social Media. Unfortunately Myspace is saturated with spammers and teens. I think people get turned off from myspace because it is not preceived as a “business environment.” If your business is marketing to teens, than that might not be a bad thing for you. Second, facebook is generally about an individual; my face, me, me, me, not necessarily my business self. Linkedin and several others out there forget to humanize their system or help people make connections on something else other than business.
People buy people before they buy product and service. You have to connect and build rapport and it take a lot of time. . .Building your profile should be part of your daily routine. 2 hours max. . .do it early in the day and check back on it. It can be a time suck.
I agree with Laura Papworth: people often want an immediate repsonse or conversions, and that’s the wrong way to approach it. Social Media reinforces your brand and creates loyalty.
Its about long term conversion.
That’s my take.
Laura Spencer
Aug 9, 2008 at 4:06 pm
Hi Angie!
This has been a great conversation - thanks for chipping in.
I’m definitely in favor of businesses promoting their businesses (and business blogs) and I think social media is one way to do that.
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