Why Your F2F Ratio Determine's a Business/Person's Involvement in Social

Ryan    Uncategorized     Social Marketing, Social Media

I’ve recently seen some situations where some individuals and businesses on Twitter vary the way in which they socialize with their followers and fellow tweeters. Starbucks has taken it upon themselves to follow anyone who starts following them (Don’t quote me on this, I just know they did it to me). WordPress on the other hand, has not a single person it is following.

From a mathematical perspective, Starbucks Followers to Followed ratio is close to 1. It’s actually greater than 1 if you want the truth. WordPress’ F2F ratio is, you guessed it, a whopping 0. Good, bad?

In a recent 2 tweet conversation I had with @Starbucks, they mentioned that “@ryanjin I think it comes down to how much engagement with the community you’re looking for”. A perfect explanation. In this thing we call social, isn’t engagement the overarching priority? If we used Twitter only as a means to convey our news, events, or press releases, we aren’t gaining any kind of value to even having it. Yet, WordPress has over 14,000 followers. I guess they’re looking for that kind of news source.

Back to what Starbucks is saying though. Social IS all about the engagement with the community. Listening to what others have to say, learning and hearing what trends people are talking about! I suppose there is a breaking point where you’re just going to get flooded with crap loads of Tweets every second, but that’s a whole other story. If a business in inclined to actively invest or explore a Social Media strategy, they need to grasp onto the technologies main features and harness the full potential without looking both pretentious or taking in any input from their audience.

Back to the math… I don’t really think you can’t justify an adequate ratio for a tweeter. There can be averages, and there can be norms, but for everyone’s social experience, the ratios will be different. Too high, you’re looking pretty spammy. Too low, you’re looking pretty pretentious. Exactly one?…. well you’re just looking a little too perfect. Only you will be able to manage and explain your F2F ratio. It’s all a matter of personality and being social right?

Peace.

Social Media Outsourcing (New SMO?)

Ryan    Uncategorized     Social Marketing, Social Media, Social Media Outsourcing

Just finished a nice discussion on Twitter regarding the benefits and feasibility of Outsourcing Social Media. Is it possible? Sure. Would you do it? No.

So why would I not outsource social media?

Would you let someone manage your own personal contacts, personal conversations, and personal business? Maybe. Would you let them manage it if they weren’t affiliated with the business/you? Probably not. Social media agencies are a possibility in the future, but the way they do business would have to be closely similar to consultants. When you let somebody else take charge of your brand, your image, and your projected personality, you risk looking phony, looking cheap, and losing a good chunk of your qualified audience.

Say for example a company tweeted on a product release. People are going to ReTweet that, reply to it, begin to follow the Tweeter, etc. etc. If you don’t have personalization behind that tweet that is ready for a bombardment of questions, followers, or whatever else, the image of that Tweeter will begin to suffer. They don’t work for So and So. Why should I trust this source? Let’s take our business elsewhere where we’ve done business before. They are more personable.

Agree or Disagree? Why?

Peace.

The Importance of Content

Ryan    Uncategorized     Content, Social Marketing, Social Media, Twitter

After a spicy lunch with EL this afternoon, we’ve both come to the agreement that content is the most important aspect at successful web marketing/social media strategies. What do I mean by this… If you’re just ‘ReTweeting’ everything from someone else, copying links from blogs not your own, or something similar, you aren’t providing a viable service/product/resource to followers. You might be for a short while, but eventually, people will catch on, and do their news surfing themselves. Not the way to go.

Instead, if you focus on the content… making videos, actually writing in your blog, supplying a real service, then you have something to market and socialize about. So what does this all boil down to? Social media is so new and is still in the wee early stages of development that anyone who tells you they know what it is to know about social, is lying to you. Give it another year or so, and you will definately know who and where social is going.

Social search, mapping, cacheing, filtering… this stuff is totally unchartered when it comes to social media. I believe that in the next few months, you’ll begin to see a more dynamic breed of programs and applications out there that really start to push social media.. and dare I say, social advertising/marketing to the next level.

Peace.