In social media, you’ve got to have friends
Marketing guru Seth Godin wrote today about Dunbar’s number — the average human can’t have more than 150 friends. We’re not capable of handling more than that, according to British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, simply because our brain — specifically the neocortex — can’t process any more.
Writes Godin:
“Some people online are trying to flout Dunbar’s number, to become connected and actual friends with tens of thousands of people at once. And guess what? It doesn’t scale. You might be able to stretch to 200 or 400, but no, you can’t effectively engage at a tribal level with a thousand people. You get the politician’s glassy-eyed gaze or the celebrity’s empty stare. And then the nature of the relationship is changed. I can tell when this happens. I’m guessing you can too.”
While 150 friends sound like a realistic number — or perhaps even high — for the true relationships developed over the years, does that number really relate to a digital, and especially, social media world? What’s the right number of friends to have on Facebook, connections on LinkedIn, or followers on Twitter? Especially if you are using these tools for social — and business — purposes.
I’m certain that my 501 Facebook friends aren’t exactly thinking about me every day, even if I update my status quite often. People understand and are increasingly comfortable with the concept of digital connections, which allow people to connect and reconnect with others of their own choosing on their own time. They know full well that they are not building deep bonds with everyone on their list.
Yet last week when I mentioned on Facebook that I needed to borrow an LCD projector, two people I don’t know well immediately stepped forward to offer to help. While those acquaintances may not meet Godin’s — or Dunbar’s — standards for friendship or being part of my “tribe,” they certainly met mine.
The common wisdom in social media business circles is that it’s the quality of your followers, not the number that is important. That is mostly true. Yes, the people using automation to, say, inflate their Twitter numbers are annoying. No, they are not helping themselves with anonymous strangers ignoring their every tweet.
However, many small businesses are too apt to stay in their comfort zone of immediate contacts and known associates. Without stretching themselves and their reach, their opportunities for new leads will be limited.
So what’s the magic number of social media contacts for a small business? Start with your circle of those you really know. Add some people who are valuable sources of information on trends in your business. Now, the important part. As a business person, you have a sense of how many customers you need and how many leads you work before a close. You also have a sense of how many new customers you’ll need on a recurring basis to remain profitable. How many leads will that take?
Add it all up. You can do the math. That’ll give you a target to shoot for. And the number may be well above — or below — 150.
Will Twitter be its own worst enemy?
“Essentially, Twitter left a ball and a stick in a field and lurked on the sidelines as its users invented baseball.”
– From “Mob Rule! How Users Took Over Twitter,” Wired Magazine
That sentence from a new Wired piece by Steven Levy sums up perfectly the history and growth of Twitter. The simple microblogging service has grown from the work of its users. Users created its conventions — @ symbols with names, retweeting and hashtags. Developers created countless third-party applications to boost the functionality of the simple product — many with names playing off the Twitter name. (Tweetie, Twazzup, Twellow, anyone?)
However, Levy’s article also clearly states the challenge Twitter faces as it wrestles with becoming a mature business. He points out that changes suggested by the company have historically drawn fire. For example, Twitter created a Suggested Users List in February, with about 200 recommendations for celebrities/companies/etc. that new users could follow. As Levy correctly writes: “Outrage ensued.”
And behemoths Google and Facebook don’t help Twitter’s business planning by adapting similar real-time functionality into their services.
Small-business owners undoubtedly could look at Twitter’s history and say this is no way to run a business. However, any business owner can recognize the company, despite its early lack of clear direction, has enormous potential if it can keep the “mob” somewhat happy as it evolves.
Will Twitter be its own worst enemy?
We won’t know that for some years to come. In the meantime, Levy’s piece is a great reflection on how Twitter got to where it is today.
Small businesses on social media: ‘Show me the money’
Catching up with some odds and ends from the social media world:
• Thanks to Steven Moore of Marietta, Ga. (who, by the way, shares great small-business advice on Twitter) for passing on some interesting news. A new survey finds a growing number of small-business owners are using social media to promote their businesses. The survey, by Internet2Go and Merchant Circle, found about 45 percent of those surveyed are using Facebook or Twitter. Writes John Jantsch of DuctTape Marketing in his analysis:
“… small business owners are coming to understand the power of social media and the relative low cost vs. high return opportunity. However, the survey further suggests, to me at least, that while it’s easy to get on Facebook and Twitter, there’s still a gap in understanding how to make them pay. The danger in jumping into social media networks, with no barrier to entry, without a strong “hub” foundation of a blog or content portal is that it’s difficult to convert someone from the awareness that might be gained through Facebook to the trust needed to make a sale.”
Absolutely, John. Social media by itself will not help you, unless you have a clear, integrated strategy that drives people to your blog or Web site and you build a business connection. Social media are emerging as a major piece in the business puzzle. However, “puzzle” is the operative word here; small businesses are still trying to make sense of how social media can rock their world.
In short, social media consultants better always be prepared for one request from potential small-business clients. With apologies to actor Cuba Gooding in the movie “Jerry Maguire” — “Show me the money.”
• TweetDeck released an upgrade today which already has proven it significantly reduces the drain on your computer and is much more stable. TweetDeck is the most widely used third-party application to get the most functionality out of a Twitter account — seamless retweets, direct messaging, link shortening, etc. Previously, I would have to load it a second time to get all the columns to load. This version is a great improvement. I wish TweetDeck were available for BlackBerry. iPhone users have a great choice between TweetDeck and Tweetie.
• Interesting Wall Street Journal piece today on MySpace (both owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.) The article’s headline: “MySpace Tries to Recover Its Cool.” Says the WSJ:
In a strategy shift, MySpace is striving to become an online hangout for people to connect with friends over entertainment content, whether it’s the new Pearl Jam album, blogs from celebrities like British pop singer Lily Allen or a karaoke contest for the Fox musical comedy “Glee.”
The site is experiencing flat growth (especially compared to Facebook) and declining ad revenues (the article states eMarketer estimates U.S. ad spending on the site will be down 15% from 2008.)
The challenge for MySpace is how they are going to remain “cool” as users age and move elsewherewhile younger users face an endless selection of entertainment choices. We shall see.
In business, think before you tweet
A New York Times article this week had a great headline — Short Outbursts on Twitter? #Big Problem.
The subject? People, especially celebrities, getting into hot water for posting tweets without thinking through the consequences beforehand. (The # symbol in the headline, for non-Twitterers, is a hashtag, which is a means to make a user’s post more searchable.)
Today, a lot of people expressed outrage over President Obama getting the Nobel Peace Prize. Twitter’s servers were pounded this morning. Some of the outrage turned into humor, some of it clever, some extremely disrespectful. A lot of tweets from leading conservative bloggers, such as Michelle Malkin, gained a wide audience. Yesterday, before the nearly three-hour Twitter downtime, a large number of people were angry with the rock group U2’s singer Bono because he recorded a video shown at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester. A lot of those critics apparently forgot that Bono had done the same thing for the earlier Labor Party conference.
So, right or left, there are going to be people who get carried away with their political emotions.
Where does business fit into this? Regrettably, many of the people engaged in the snarkiest Obama remarks were business people, many of them using their business name as their Twitter ID. Their companies may have policies on social media, e-mail or Web usage in the workplace. If so, these people certainly violated them.
Did these people stop and think before they tweeted, or were they “Stuck in a Moment” (a U2 song) and had to get something off their chests? Did the New York financial person who I unfollowed because of some very offensive remarks really think it was a wise business move to assume all his followers shared the same political worldview?
Debate is a foundation of our democracy, and social media provides a great opportunity for people to get their voices heard. However, few businesses have ever succeeded by politicizing the company and polarizing their customers.
Business people using social media: This is yet another reminder. Think before you tweet. Think before you put up that party picture on your Facebook profile.
Keep the lines clearly drawn between your private and professional lives. Don’t let your emotions dictate posting things that could hurt you and your business.
What’s the cost of a Twitter outage?
“Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you got till it’s gone”
– Lyrics by Joni Mitchell from “Big Yellow Taxi” in 1970. (Younger readers, Counting Crows remade Joni’s song in 2002.)
It’d been almost a month since the last major Twitter outage, and those lyrics came to mind this morning when millions of people (and companies) could no longer follow the timelines of those they follow. Twitter users could tweet to their heart’s content, but no one could read what they had to say. Now many users are gamely trying to catch up on 2-3 hours of downtime, checking on what they might have missed.
Depending on how many people you follow, that could be a lot of tweets to cover.
Recent news focused on Twitter being valued at $1 billion. Those valuations, of course, were based upon business analysis, as it should be. Today, there are reports Twitter is negotiating deals with Google and Microsoft to sell them feeds of Tweets into their respective search engines.
But what was the cost of today’s outage to millions worldwide? Consider the businesses who have cut back on customer service staff and let users interact with a live Twitter account. Consider the corporations who use Twitter to promote and discuss their products. What about the numerous small businesses and professionals who use Twitter to promote their services — and themselves? Or the marketers paid to promote businesses through social media?
That’s the business cost. Hard to put a price tag on it. Then there is the social, political and entertainment cost. U2 frontman Bono kicked up a storm on Twitter with a video presented at today’s Conservative Party conference in Manchester, England. Many Brits apparently felt he should not associate with such an event and had rather harsh things to say. Suddenly, that vent was closed and the angry were left without a voice.
On a far more frivolous level, not even the outage could stop Twitter’s current No. 1 Trending Topic — teen sensation Miley Cyrus apparently killed her Twitter account at her boyfriend’s request. Her fans want her back. At this writing, the top topic is #mileycomeback.
There are plenty of people who will laugh and say I need a life when I ask these questions — What did the Twitter outage do to your day? What did it mean for your business?
It meant a lot to Brits, especially in London, the world’s largest market for Twitter users, who suddenly — right or wrong — couldn’t complain about Bono’s video. I’ll bet it also meant a lot right here in Atlanta, the world’s 10th largest Twitter market.
A lot of people don’t understand Twitter, but after today — and other too frequent outages and fail whales on the site — many know they’ve lost something when it’s gone.
