Why is Quality more Important than Quantity in Social Media?
Posted on 29 October 2009 by jasonverdelli
I am going to start this blog post with mentioning a pet peeve that I have about perceptions of the social web. Through reading thousands of different articles on social media and its place in business, I have come across many “marketing people” that say that you will not be successful using the social web without large numbers. Essentially I see these people as screwing up social media for the rest of us. This view on social media is misleading and needs corrected. So let’s look into this further and discuss why concentration of relationships on social media is so important to helping you achieve your goals.
Think about this example scenario for a second. You are at a business mixer with say 500 people. Everyone in the room is talking to themselves and doesn’t give you the opportunity to speak to them. If your like me you are probably thinking to yourself, “it’s a shame, all these people and yet no opportunity to have a conversation”. When people talk about themselves generally all they here is themselves and no-one else. Just the mind-set alone is about them, them, them. With this picture in your mind, think about how this relates back to your network, friends and/or followers in the online social networking world. Even though you can be in a room packed full of people, it doesn’t mean that you are going to foster any type of relationships. And relationships, as I’m sure you know, are the key foundation in moving faster toward the overall result you want from your strategy.
The key fundamental thought behind this is that you don’t need to have thousands of Twitter followers, LinkedIn connections or Facebook friends in order to be successful. I’m going to share 2 general guidelines that are good to keep in your conscious mind when building your network on social networking websites:
1. Know who will get you to where you want to be - On the social web it is not all about connecting or following “potential clients” for the hope that they will follow or connect with you. It is knowing if these are the kinds of people that you could meet without having to worry about one of you trying to “sell” each other. Connect with people that seem to share status updates that are of value to followers, not just a blatant promotion for themselves.
2. Conversations first, connections last – Once you have established base level connections on the social web (i.e. LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.), it is time to start creating conversations. Learn more about them by reviewing their profile and develop a conversation that gets them talking. I’m sure you have hear this before, but people always like talking about themselves and when you can get them going you will generate their interest in you. Create that message or re-tweet their latest blog posts to your followers or do whatever you can to provide them with what they will see as valuable. From that point, you can converse with them on ways that they can connect you to some of their contacts and/or resources that will help you accomplish your purpose of why you are using social media.
These are just a few ideas to think about when looking for better and faster ways on using the social web to work in your favor. So get out there and start working on building relationships with the people you have on the social web and see the difference it makes. Thank you for reading and I wish you the best of luck.
- Jason
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