Entries Tagged 'Social Media' ↓

YouTube’s been around for years, and it’s one of the most popular sites on the internet.  Sites like Hulu and Boxee are making American cable companies nervous (in Canada, Hulu’s blocked).  Certainly, the move from broadcasting on the tube, to broadcasting over the web is coming, but we have yet to see any groundbreaking made-for-web content. Last week, Rev3 put out a tongue-in-cheek open letter to Conan O’Brien, encouraging him to move his show to the web.  While the letter was a joke, is that so far off?]

The big question around broadcasting content on the web, however, is what’s the revenue model?  Network television makes its money through advertising – raising the same kind of advertising revenue on the web could prove to be problematic.  Cable networks make money through subscription.  This could be a possibility, but I think we’ll truly see if this is feasible this year if Hulu begins charging for content.

Where does this leave the advertisers?  Advertisers have used 30-second television spots with great success for half a century, but what happens when (not if, when) network television dies?  The logical answer is that advertisers will move these dollars to the web.  Some marketers are touting video as the next generation of advertising on the web.  Some marketers go so far as to imply that video will become the dominant content on the web, replacing text and static images.

This is where I get skeptical.

We have seen a number of success stories of people who have used video for business purposes to great success (the name Gary Vaynerchuk comes to mind, for one).  However, a few examples of success doesn’t mean that video is going to replace all content.

4 Reasons Why Video Won’t Replace Text

1. History Tells Us Otherwise

The web’s great value is that it’s a resource in addition to an entertainment source.  People go to the web to find information. That’s where there’s value for advertisers, because they can find consumers who are looking for answers.  Just as documentaries did not replace books as the way we do research, so too, will videos not become the definitive resource for a person searching for information.

2. People’s attention spans are too short

The web has nurtured an environment of people who have an 8-second attention span.  You might think this is an argument in favour of video, but it’s not.  How often can a person be hooked by the first 8 seconds of a video?  Not often.  Video as a medium needs time to develop, and it can’t easily be scanned.  Text on the other hand is inherently scannable.  I scan tens of thousands of words of text on the internet every day.  I do it because scanning text is easy.  I can’t scan hundreds of hours of video every day.

3. Look at usage patterns

When does a huge portion of web traffic occur?  While people are at work.  People will happily read/scan through multiple articles during spare moments at work, but very few people have the kind of job where stopping and watching a full video is acceptable or feasible.

4. The right way to use video hasn’t been discovered yet

The 30-second commercial spot on television worked because of the nature of the medium.  People had to watch it while they waited for their regular programming to come back.  There is a small trend of companies trying to reproduce this same format on the web.  That simply won’t work work on the web, because no one will actively seek out a commercial.  In fact, people watching television are actively looking for ways to avoid commercials.  What makes these companies think that just because you put them on the web now, people will want to watch them?

A Few of the Right Ways to Use Video

As mentioned earlier, there have been some success stories for using video, and as such, there are some lessons we’ve been able to glean from these about how to use video.

1. Promotional tool. Use video content as yet another avenue to guide people back to your web HQ.  This can be accomplished by posting something of interest on YouTube, and pointing people back to the HQ for more info.  This is about creating valuable content, not selling.

2. Do something different. A lot of people, especially in the world of blogging, are experimenting with video.  Unfortunately, most of them are simply taking the blogposts they would have normally written and reciting them into a webcam.  If your video doesn’t add anything, just write it.  Video allows you to demonstrate and visualize things in a way text doesn’t.  Take advantage of that, or risk creating some of the dullest videos on the web.

3. Add personality. The social web has demonstrated to us all that consumers like it when the brands they buy from have personality.  Video allows consumers to see who they’re buying from.  If you can create video that allows your customers to feel like they know you better, you’ve succeeded.

4. Create a viral hit. The holy grail of internet marketing is going viral.  It costs next to nothing, and all of a sudden everyone and their cat has seen your video and passed it along.  The problem with creating a viral hit is that there’s really no way to predict what will go viral.  The first viral hit of 2010 has been the American Idol rendition of “Pants on the Ground.”  Not sure that was intentional…

Experiment with video and add it to your marketing mix, but make no mistake, it is not a replacement, it is a supplement.

While you’re playing with video, you might also want to check out Get Seen, as recommended by Chris Brogan.  I haven’t looked at this yet, but Chris usually gives good recommendations.

Oh, and don’t expect many videos from me in the near future.  I know my strengths and my weaknesses, and I know that for the sake of anyone reading this, I should stick to writing.

Ten years ago, the question was does a small business need a website?  Not everyone agreed on the answer to that question, but as the internet grew and took on more importance, the “yes” crowd steadily got bigger.  Recently, though, that crowd is starting to shrink.  If you reframe the question to, “Does a small business need a web presence?” you’ll rediscover the big “yes” crowd.  However, no longer does it seem that that web presence needs to be a website, in the traditional sense of the word.  One alternative to a small business website is a blog.  Nowadays, many small business have a website and a blog. Are blogs the new websites? Does a small business need a blog?

While I firmly believe that every small business can benefit from a web presence, the question of the blog isn’t so clear to me.  Let’s look at some of the advantages and disadvantages of blogging for small businesses.

The Advantages

1. It’s cheap

Small businesses don’t have huge marketing budgets, and so anything inexpensive is worth looking closely at.  Whether you have a website already or not, creating a blog is quick and can be free.  If you want to host your blog on your own domain, then you’ll need to purchase the domain from any number of places.  Then, you have to decide which blogging platform to use.  All of the major blogging platforms are free: WordPress, Blogger, TypePad (micro), Tumblr.  I have played around with each of these, and I think that WordPress is the way to go for the small business.  The interface is powerful, and the ability to add plug-ins makes it infinitely extensible.  Even if you just want to set up a simple blog, it is painless to do in WordPress, and you have room to grow.

If you want something more customized than the basic themes offered by WordPress, there are tons of free WordPress themes out in the wild, and there are developers who specialize in creating WordPress themes if you want to go the route of spending a little money on your blog.  The other option is to tweak an existing theme.  AdamDiStefano.com is built on WordPress and runs a modified version of Chris Pearson’s free Copyblogger theme.

Even if you do decide to hire someone to create a theme and setup your Wordpress for you, these kinds of jobs are considerably less expensive than building a website, because the framework already exists.

2. Creates a rapport with a customer

I keep hearing that customers want to buy from a business that they can connect with.  While, I’m still not convinced that this is the primary thing that customers are looking for in a company, providing a little transparency to customers can’t hurt.  While I may not care if the person I’m purchasing my new rocking chair from is my friend, some insight into that person’s craft can go a long way towards convincing me to purchase from him.

Aside from that, one of the biggest advantages that small businesses have over big business is that they have a human face.  Big business is catching on to this and many big companies now have brand advocates whose entire job is to make the business look human through the use of social media, blogs and other humanizing devices (there is still something strangely creepy about this process).  Oftentimes, these efforts can come off as forced, and rigid, with a corporate blog reading like something between a press release and an annual report.  Small businesses have the advantage of already having that human aspect, and so blogging will serve only to cement that.

3. Establishes you as an expert

Returning to the example of my rocking chair-making friend, by blogging about his craft, he is building authority.  If he produces quality content that educates and informs, this will be recognized and add credibility to sales pitch.  I imagine that there is considerable skill involved in making a well-crafted rocking chair.

Because small businesses often have to deal with the customer’s fear that they are not as professional or reliable as corporations, building this authority and credibility is essential for reassuring customers and attracting them.

4. Creates a way to be found (SEO)

In a previous post, I explained how search engine optimization works on a basic level.  Blogging helps with three major factors that determine a site’s ranking on Google: content, regular updates, and popularity.

Content speaks for itself.  By blogging, you create content.  Content is what search engines index.  Likewise, by its very nature, blogging provides the regular updates of relevant new content, that search engines like to see in sites.

Blogging helps the site’s popularity because if you’re doing it right, you’re creating content that people will want to link back to.  These back links are the currency that search engine algorithms are built on.

All this boils down to ways people can find you.  Whether it be through search engines, or through those back links (which people sometimes forget are more valuable in and of themselves than as search rank juice).  More visitors to your site means more potential customers.

The Disadvantages

1. It’s time consuming

Writing a blog takes time.  Contrary to what I’ve heard some claim, it takes lots of time, especially if you want to do it right.  You need to brainstorm topics.  Outline posts.  Research information that goes into those posts.  Write a draft.  Proof and edit that draft.  Post the final version and do any necessary formatting.  Then there’s the process of promoting the blog.  All of this adds up to a sizeable chunk of time.

Unfortunately, time is probably the one thing small business owners have the least of, right next to money.  And as we’ve already seen, time is money.

2. It doesn’t make sense for every business

I’ve heard proponents of blogging claim that everyone should be blogging.  I don’t agree.  First of all, if you’re not comfortable communicating with your customers, you shouldn’t blog.  Some will tell you that you can learn the skills necessary to blog, and yes, you probably could, but the idea behind blogging is to be authentic.  If you’re not being authentic, don’t bother.  Or if the authentic you is not someone that you think will draw customers in, don’t do it.

There are also certain industries where I just can’t see much sense in blogging.  The way I see it, the ideal is to be sharing expertise with potential customers or with people who will refer potential customers.  The problem isn’t so much that the service or product you provide doesn’t require much expertise, because if you’re in business, you’re adding some kind of value.  Instead, the issues arises more when the area of expertise is related to something that people don’t particularly want to learn about.  For example, I use dry cleaning services, and I’m sure there’s a whole science behind the process, but I really can’t see myself or (anyone else for that matter) reading a dry cleaner’s blog.  And the people who will read the blog are unlikely to be customers.  There’s a better chance they’ll be people looking to start their own dry cleaning business, or looking for DIY home solutions.

For some businesses, running a blog just doesn’t convert.  A blog just like any marketing tool, should have a measurable return on investment (ROI).  If there’s no ROI, there’s no reason to do it.

3. Risk of abandoning it

Worse than not having a blog is having an abandoned blog.  You see them all the time because they are littering the internet.  A blog that’s online is there for all to see.  If a user finds your blog and sees that it hasn’t been updated for six months, this immediately raises alarm bells in that user’s mind.  The same user finding a static web page that hasn’t been updated in six months doesn’t have those same concerns as long as the info on it is current.

Whether, justified or not, an abandoned blog conveys lack of professionalism, poor management or fear that the business no longer exists.  if you start writing a blog, you need to be certain you can keep up with the commitment, otherwise, it will do more harm than good.

Conclusion

Blogging is not for every business.  To decide whether it’s right for you, you need to evaluate the above points and do the math.  However, even if you decide not to blog, you should still have some kind of online presence.  This can be a static website, an active presence on Twitter (warning: also time consuming if done correctly), a Facebook fan page, a Google place page, landing pages as provided by online directories, etc.

Blogging can be a powerful marketing tool, but it’s not for everyone.  Find what works for you, and use it.  And beware those who promise one size fits all solutions.

Folks, the post you’re about to read is a little different than the posts you usually see here.  It is longer, and rantier than anything I’ve ever posted here before. Despite that, I promise you that if you read it to the end, you will find a handful of intelligent sentences, and if you accept what I write, you will leave here smarter than the majority of the people in the “social media game.”  And if that isn’t enough, in this post, I’ll clearly spell out how to get thousands of followers on Twitter. Then I’m going to tell you why you shouldn’t do it.

Where this is coming from

A few days ago, I logged in to Twitter to see what was going on.  I caught a tweet by Chris Brogan.  The tweet said:

“The only thing numbers do are up your odds of offending someone.”

Chris has over 100,000 followers on Twitter, and I’ve called him “the closest thing to an expert” in social media I’ve seen. I want it to be clear that what follows is not meant to slam Chris.  I’ve read his book (affiliate link), and I think you should too.  He’s a smart guy, and by all accounts, a nice guy.  He knows what he’s talking about.  But when a guy who has built a career out of social media says something like that, it’s a knee-jerk reaction to think, “Numbers also helped you get on the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists.”

It’s fine, though. I know what Chris was saying. It’s not all about the numbers. What got me to react was Chris’ next retweet:

“Ideas? RT @remarkablogger: @chrisbrogan People with low numbers don’t believe that for one second. What to do?”

I don’t believe that for one second.  I’m sure this wasn’t Chris or Michael Martine’s (aka remarkablogger) intention, but this got me worked up.  The suggestion that everyone that has low follower numbers is just itching to find a way to get more followers is false. It’s not about the numbers. Chris knows that. Michael knows that. Even people with low follower numbers know that.

So where is this generalization that everyone is chasing big numbers coming from? Simple, it’s coming from all the “experts” and “gurus” that are pimping products and services to help you and your business increase your follower numbers on Twitter.

There are a lot of people out there selling products that promise to teach you how to become a Twitter Super-Duper-Sexy-Guru-Rock Star.  The vast majority of them are trying to teach you how to get more followers on Twitter.  The same phenomenon goes on for Facebook fans, or MySpace friends, or LinkedIn connections.  Not only are these products a waste of money, they’re missing the point.

The people who are chasing numbers are the people who are doing it wrong.

Authenticity

Then I think about the people who are doing it right, like Chris, and how he’s teaching businesses to be authentic, to care about their audience, and to connect with them. The idea is to be totally transparent.  That can’t be wrong, can it?  That’s when I read a post by Naomi Dunford from Ittybiz, entitled: “Anti-Social Media: The Dark Side of Authenticity.”

If you stop reading this now, and go read what Naomi wrote, I’d probably be okay with that, because it’s that good.  If you’ve bookmarked the post and decided you’re going to go back to it later, here’s a quick summary.  Naomi writes about how a lot of the big guns in Social Media give advice about being authentic, but that we tend to forget that the big guns are usually advising big companies.  Big companies are impersonal by nature, so even when they’re being authentic, they don’t expose themselves to vulnerability the way small business owners, like herself, do.  For the small business owner, being open and authentic means you can get hurt, and this is something that small business owners need to keep in mind.

Naomi writes for an audience of really small businesses (hence “ittybiz”), and I write for slightly larger, small and medium-sized businesses, but I think the considerations are the same.  Even in a medium-sized business, if you’re really being authentic, you’re opening yourself up as a person, and that means that you’re opening yourself up to people taking stabs at you.  It’s bad enough when you’re a SMB and someone takes jabs at your product, that already feels personal.  But to take it one step further, and be truly authentic, and have people taking jabs at you as a person, takes a willingness to get hurt.

Connections

We should be transparent and authentic because that’s what people want from us, but when you’re transparent and authentic with thousands of people, you’re just asking to get slapped around.  But weh have to be authentic, and if we want to be successful, we need the numbers right? Even Naomi, in a recent post, talked about numbers being social proof.  Her argument is that as much as we would like to not care about numbers, whether we like it or not, they’re going to be used to measure our worth as experts, consultants, businesses, people.

We need the numbers, and we need the authenticity.  If we have both, we are eventually going to get beat up on, or as Chris put it in that first tweet, we’re going to offend someone.

So, what’s the answer?  Should we be slightly less authentic?  Should we give up on chasing the numbers in favour of protecting our fragile egos?

This is usually the part when you’re reading an article where the writer exclaims, “Neither!” and gives you some anti-climactic compromise between the two that will solve all your problems and allow you to have your cake and eat it too.  Sorry, not going to happen.  Instead, I’m going to tell you that you should do both.  Be less authentic, and forget about your number of followers, and you’ll be happier, and more successful.

The Problem With Counting Followers

I’m going to go ahead and do something that someone else should have done a long time ago (and maybe they have, but it just got lost in all the spam).  Remember all those products that I mentioned that teach you how to become a Twitter Super-Duper-Sexy-Guru-Rock Star, and get thousands of followers?  Well, I’m going to tell you what’s in those products, and how you too, can get thousands of followers, and I’m going to do it for free.

I am going to use Twitter as an example, but the same can be done with any social media platform. Ready?

Step 1. Create a Twitter account. Use your real name and a photo of yourself as an avatar. That makes you seem credible.

Step 2. Tweet interesting or useful links, primarily about the niche or industry where you want to develop your following.

Step 3. Use a directory like wefollow.com or Twitter Search to find people who are interested in your niche or industry, and follow them.

Step 4. Wait a couple of days. Most of the people you’ve followed will probably follow you back, either as a courtesy, or because you’ve been tweeting interesting/useful stuff.

Step 5. Use friendorfollow.com, or a similar service, to see who you followed that didn’t follow you back and unfollow them. When your following to follower ratio is too high, you look like a spammer.

Step 6. Intersperse some self-promotional tweets in with your other interesting/useful tweets, but always post at least 8 non-promotional tweets for every promotional tweet.

Step 7. Repeat steps 3 through 6, ad infinitum.

BONUS: Use a list like the Top-500-All-Follow-Back list.

Tada.  There you have it.  If you do this, even for just a couple of weeks, you’ll easily gain thousands of followers.  This information is not hard to figure out.  In fact, it’s obvious, and yet people are charging $100+ for it.

So, if this is so easy, and I know how to do it, why at time of this writing, do I not have over a thousand followers?  Because doing this misses the point!

Numbers are important, but the only thing I remember from my introductory quantitative methods class is this: numbers can be misleading.

The problem with focusing on the number of followers you have is that it’s not the right number to focus on.  Instead, you should focus on the total number of connections you have made – the total number of real relationships you have.

A few years ago, I got a Facebook friend request from a girl that I didn’t recognize.  Since my Facebook rule of thumb is that I will only friend someone that I actually know, I decided to check her out before accepting the request.  The first thing I noticed was that she wasn’t one of those spam accounts because her photo was too real (read: she didn’t look like a pin-up).  The second thing I noticed was that she had over 2,000 Facebook friends.  At the time, that was the most number of friends I had seen anyone have.  The third thing I noticed was that we had about 50 friends in common.  The fourth thing I noticed was that she had apparently gone to college with me.  I did not go to a big college. At this point, I was mildly perturbed.  All signs pointed to me knowing this girl, and yet I had no idea who she was.  So, I did what any normally obsessive compulsive would do, and I called a few friends of mine that we apparently had in common.

The result of my investigation was that I, in fact, did go to school with this girl, but didn’t really know her because she was a social shut-in.  She had no friends in school, but seemed to collect them on Facebook.  None of our “mutual” friends really knew her, they had just mechanically accepted the friend request when it came their way.  Aside from feeling sorry for the girl, I couldn’t help but feel like, she too, was missing the point.  She wasn’t using social media as a method of staying connected, or making new connections, she was just collecting “friends.”

Fast forward a few years, and that’s what people are doing with followers:  collecting them.  Well, guess what?  Collecting followers is not going to do anything to help your business, or your personal brand.

Coming to the Point

Social media is about networking and making connections.  Instead of focusing on accumulating tons of followers, you should focus on connecting with the ones you have.  Connections are important, because they’re the real value in social media.  People you connect with are the ones that ultimately end up being part of your tribe.  They are the ones who will introduce you to new opportunities.  Having tens of thousands of followers, and no connections is akin to walking into a conference, saying, “Hi my name’s Bob” to everyone and then leaving.  If you don’t delve further into that relationship, the introduction by itself is meaningless.

I don’t have a ton of followers on Twitter, a ton of friends on Facebook, or any other big number, but the people that I’ve met and connected with are more valuable to me than any random 10,000 followers.

I’ve been asked what my policy for following people back on Twitter is, because I do follow back a lot of people, but not everyone.  I follow people back who appear interesting, and who I can tell are interested in connecting. If your twitter stream doesn’t have a single @ in it, there’s a very small chance I’ll follow you.

The other reason that you should focus on making a few deep connections rather than simply trying to amass thousands of followers is that that’s just how humans are built.  Dunbar’s number theorizes that humans can really only process about 150 real relationships at any given time.  That means that once you’ve reached capacity, in order to make room for a new connection, you need to kick someone else out of your social circle.

This is where being less authentic comes in.  If you know that you can really only have 150 real relationships, shouldn’t you save your authenticity for those 150 individuals?  Maybe it’s time to be a little less candid with your 2,367 Twitter followers.  Instead, save your authenticity and your transparency for your real connections.

As Seth Godin is so fond of saying, if you find a few fiercely loyal connections, those people, those members of your tribe, will promote you to their friends, and thus begins that most sought after occurrence in business, the wave of word-of-mouth marketing.

Stop focusing on the number that gets displayed on the welcome page of your social network of choice, and start instead focusing on the number of real connections you’ve made.  Take the conversation beyond social media. Many of the connections I’ve made have started with a blog post, a comment, a tweet or a status update, and led to non-social media communication like e-mail, IM, or on a few occasions, actual phone calls. This is the place to get authentic. It’s where it matters, and it’s where it counts.

The biggest problem with accumulating tons of followers is that, usually, that’s where it ends.  Getting the follower is not the end, it’s the beginning. Now that you have that follower, it’s time for you to interact with him or her, and create a connection.  This simply can’t be done with thousands and thousands of followers.

The point is this: It’s about the people, not the media.

What do you think? Is it actually possible to connect with tens of thousands of people in an effective way? Is the social proof of big numbers more important than making the real connections? Is saving your authenticity for your real connections actually just being a wimp? Talk it out in the comments.

When you’re in the online marketing world, it’s easy to assume that everyone is doing what you’re doing. If I don’t stop to think about it, I just assume that every company has a website, every company is using Search Engine Marketing, and every company is taking advantage of social media. That’s false. It’s easy to forget that close to 40% of SMBs don’t have a website. Even among big companies, who almost all have websites, their integration into online marketing is far from complete. Only 16% of Fortune 500 companies have blogs on their site.

Be sure to keep those numbers in mind next time someone tells you “everyone is on the web and using social media.” It’s not true. What is true is that if you want to innovate (or just follow the times), that you should at least be on the web and experimenting with social media marketing.

So, what is the value of social media? What can it do for you that you can’t do better on your own?

Humanize your company

It’s a paradox that SMBs try to be like big companies, while big companies are trying to be like SMBs. Many large companies, such as JetBlue and Zappos have used the social web with great success to humanize what would otherwise be simply monolithic, faceless corporations. This human aspect is the SMB’s biggest advantage in competition against big corporations, but in order to maintain that advantage, the small business owner needs to be prepared to do at least as much as the big corp to provide a human face to his customers.

Provide Exceptional Customer Service

This is another area that Zappos has done extremely well, so it’s no wonder that they were bought out by Amazon earlier this year for ridiculous amounts of money. Amazon wasn’t looking to buy their technology, they obviously had technology equally as good as that of Zappos. What they were looking to absorb was their culture of exceptional customer service. Providing this customer service on the social web is easier than ever. Monitor the conversations around your brand, and responding to them in a human way.

Develop Loyalty

Customers are not loyal to low prices or fast service, because they can often find things for cheaper and faster. They’re loyal to remarkable brands – brands that make them feel good about purchasing from them. Through the interactive experience that social media provides, by putting in just that little bit of effort, you can make your customer’s experience exceptional, which will lead to loyalty and repeat business, not to mention word of mouth.

Announce Promotions

Seth Godin popularized the term permission marketing to identify marketing that people want to see. The theory is straightforward. Marketing is more effective if you’re targeting it to people who want it. By using social media, your audience comes to you and listens to what you have to say. That way, when you announce a promotion or anything really, you have a captive audience that has already given you its permission to talk to it.

Discover leads, partnerships, opportunities

The social web’s biggest strength is that it’s social. It connects people to one another, and in business, success is about who you know. Through social media, you have the opportunity to meet new potential customers, new potential partners, and to discover opportunities that you may have otherwise missed out on if you were solely relying on traditional broadcast marketing.

Learn

The wrong way to use social media is to simply broadcast over it, without tuning in to the conversations. The value in social media comes from the wealth of information that is given away freely. You can learn more from social media interaction than an entry-level university course if you take the time to listen to the right people.

So, Should I Use Social Media?

As I said in my last post, social media is still young and growing. As far as I’m concerned, it has potential, but it is as yet unproven. It may be cheap as far as the monetary cost of marketing goes, but it is probably the most time-consuming form of marketing you can engage in, and one thing most small and medium-sized businesses don’t have a ton of, is time.

My advice is to try it out cautiously. Begin with one outlet at a time, and once you’re comfortable with it, add on another. Don’t dive headfirst into every social media outlet you can find. There is no easier way to find yourself with no time at all. Instead, start with a blog. Once you’ve gotten the hang of blogging and participating in the blogging community, branch out onto Twitter. If that goes well, see if Facebook can help your brand, and so on. It does not necessarily have to be done in that order, you could do it any number of ways, but my point is that you need to slowly immerse yourself.

Finally, if you decide to take the plunge into social media marketing, always do it as a complement to other forms of marketing. There have been success stories of people who market their business using the social web, but that is the exception not the rule, so be careful. If, after some time you do find that social media marketing is working better for you than anything else, you can start leaving behind some other media, but don’t bet the farm on social media marketing.

I have a confession. A big confession. One that may very well destroy my reputation. Are you ready for it? I’m a social media doubter.

If you’re still reading, and have lost all confidence in everything I have to say, I suppose I owe an explanation.

My Social Media Experience

My social media journey has been tentative, undistinguished, and lackluster. I started off on the right path. Many years ago, I enjoyed hanging around internet forums and mailing lists, and interacting with people in that manner. That was arguably the earliest form of social media on the internet (unless you count BBS as social media). However, from there, things started to get out of control, and I wasn’t sure I liked where things were going. It started with MySpace and my eery feeling that everyone on it was doing something creepy, so I never created an account.

Then came Facebook, and I assumed that was pretty much the same thing as MySpace. Something happened with Facebook, though. All my friends were on it, and they were posting all their pictures on it, and having whole conversations on it. It even spilled into their regular conversations. I felt lost half the time around my own friends because I didn’t have a Facebook account.

So I caved.

I’ve now had a Facebook account for several years, but it’s always been reluctantly. I have never posted anything more than a profile pic and some basic information. I’ve never added a friend (although I do accept friend requests), albums, notes, or played any facebook games. My presence on Facebook is purely voyeuristic. I’m not an active participant.

Enter LinkedIn. I think I created my LinkedIn profile when I was looking for a new job. Before I could complete it, I’d found one. My LinkedIn profile now sits gathering dust and is only awakened when a colleague stumbles across its comatose form and asks to connect with me.

Then there was Twitter. I resisted Twitter for so long because I thought it would be a huge time sink. A few months ago, I started to experiment with it. I am now active on it. My follower count is underwhelming, and I’m still more of an observer than anything else, but I’ve become fascinated by Twitter and all its possibilities. That doesn’t change the fact that I was right about it being a huge time sink.

Finally, there’s blogging. I’ve been reading blogs for years, but only started my first real attempt at a blog, 52 Short Stories, in January 2009. 52SS remains a personal passion project of mine. I don’t expect many people to read it. The blog you’re reading is a professional endeavour and part of my professional development.  I’ve enjoyed my foray into the world of blogging so far. I’ve learned a lot and had conversations with some intelligent people.

Social Media “Experts”

So why am I telling you any of this? Because I want it to be clear to anyone who reads this blog where I’m coming from whenever I talk about social media. In terms of most forms of marketing, I consider myself to be well-read, experienced and possessing expertise. In social media, I’m a recent convert. I’m reluctant on Facebook, a Twitter neophyte, and a LinkedIn virgin. I study social media fervently, but I don’t have the expertise on it that I can claim in other areas. Instead, when I talk about social media, I’m talking not as an expert, but as a student.

Does that mean you should ignore what I have to say on the topic? On the contrary, I think my learning experiences can be valuable to someone who’s also trying to learn the ropes. You can avoid some of the mistakes I’ve made, or extrapolate on some of my successes and create your own path.

Besides, there is no such thing as a social media marketing expert. Sure, tons of people have written books on Twitter and other forms of SM, but they’re not experts. Social media is too new to have any experts. Everyone is still experimenting. The closest thing to an expert I’ve seen is Chris Brogan, and that’s through sheer immersion. As of right now, there is no right or wrong way to use social media. The rule book hasn’t been written yet, which makes it an exciting place to be. It also makes it a scary place to be for small and medium sized businesses that have little margin for error on their marketing strategies.

That’s why I’m going to be conducting some social media experiments of my own and reporting back on them, and in my next post I’ll look at the value of social media for small businesses and give some tips for starting out in it.

Until then, here are some thoughts to mull over:

How long have you been involved in social media? How much has it changed the way you interact with the people around you? How has it changed the way you meet people? How often do you think of social media in a business sense?