1. Word of Mouth. A recommendation from a friend is huge and that’s what happens when people talk about your positively on social media.
2. It’s where the users are. One out of five web site page views is on Facebook. If you maximize the traffic on facebook to your web site what would that be worth in Advertising spends?
3. People are already talking about you on social media. Are you going to join in the conversation or just let them talk behind your back?
4. When they talk about you, you have a great opportunity to help them. Many companies have whole customer service departments set up on Twitter.

I think social is digital.  To me social is the core of communicating with technology to build relationships. It’s online. Through a computer. Actually through a smart phone (not mobile because they are more often not mobile). Through analytics, insights.

The most valuable part of being digital is being personal and social builds personal into digital.

A good roundup of these criticisms comes from a column from a Knoxville News Sentinel reporter Michael Silence. The prediction is based on two assumptions. First, that everyone is tiring of all the noise generated from social media. Second, that corporations are not seeing any return on social media  and will pull the plug on social media spending.

From reading his column, I don’t think Silence is endorsing these views, but I disagree with both points.

First the noise claims – The idea goes social media creates more noise and shortens attention spans making it harder to be heard. Basically the attention span claim is a typical old media vs. new media argument (or the I hate change argument). It’s been applied to radio, television, music videos, web sites and now text messaging and social media. The argument is correct  that people pay less attention to social media than a newspaper column. The growth of social media creates less of an appetite for long form media, but that doesn’t make social media evil or the effects of it wrong. It’s just different, meaning communication techniques have to evolve to communicate effectively.

Second the return on social media investment -  Many companies jumped on the social media bandwagon to just be in the game and not be left behind and they ended up being left behind because they didn’t look, listen and planned before they acted. They jumped into social media without any knowledge of what it meant to be engaged with their community not mention any  goals, no plans to measure what they did. Companies that have a social media plan, that have engaged their community have seen enormous returns on social media. In fact a lot of companies that went into social media with goals and a plan are now investing more into social media because they have seen a great return on their investment. This is true for companies large and small.

After several attempts on my own to solve the problem (changing my password), I finally google my issue and find a twitter support site that says twitter knows about the issue, but hasn’t solved the problem and asks anyone to experience the problem to leave a comment with their username and any specific details. So, I leave my username with the other 40 pages of comments.

That was two days ago I reported my issue. My twitter account still doesn’t work. Now their are 95 pages of comments on the twitter support page. This is the first time I’ve had extended issues with twitter since I signed on in March 2007. Since I’ve lost touch with all of my twitter pals, I’ve discovered there is absolutely no one left on myspace, but still a lot of people on Facebook. I guess I can live without twitter (if forced) and without twitter I actually found something to blog about for the first time in over two months.

UPDATE: Within 15 minutes of publishing this post twitter started working correctly again. I’m sure it’s not related.

Social Media Response Flow Chart

• Facebook – “Candidates who update their profile page regularly give fans a reason to return more frequently, resulting
  in higher rates of interaction and larger fan communities.”
• Twitter – “High rates of messaging result in greater absolute numbers of followers and a greater level of follower engagement.”
• YouTube – “The most popular political videos are campaign advertisements and position statements crafted specifically for the Web.”

I know this sounds conspiracy theorist, but it’s not. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has actually collected training documents from the feds detailing procedures.

• IRS training material on how to search social media, google streetview to investigate taxpayer’s and their business
• Department of Justice powerpoint slides detailing social media companies data rentention policies and how well they cooperate with investigations (facebook does, twitter doesn’t)

Also, I know that the feds aren’t the only governmental body using what you publish on the Internet against you. I personally know someone who was audited by the Arkansas Department of Revenue because of the professionalism of their web site (I guess we all know who is next after this post).

Now, Dunbar is researching whether larger social networks (like facebook) have allowed people to stretch their Dunbar number. Dunbar told the Times Online, “The interesting thing is that you can have 1,500 friends but when you actually look at traffic on sites, you see people maintain the same inner circle of around 150 people that we observe in the real world.”

An interesting aside on newspapers and Dunbar’s number: One of the concepts behind hyperlocal newspapers and web sites is that you must reach into all of your reader’s social circles– reach into group of 150 friends– and photograph, report on someone to keep your readers. That’s why you see all the photographs of your neighbors pet or cousin’s softball trophy in your small-town newspaper.

My favorite one follows