It’s Not What You Do, It’s the Way That You Do It!

Made Essential Reading on 11 March 2010 Felix Hemsley

It’s become increasingly apparent to me that a distinctly different dynamic exists between the way in which people operate within Social Media depending on whether they are B2B or B2C focussed.

Without appearing to be too pigeon-holing, I’d say 80% of those within the IT industry are simply operating on a broadcast model, continually pushing bait into the Social Media ‘sea’, hoping for something to bite and follow a link to owned media such as a corporate website. These messages may be repeated ad infinitum, becoming increasingly frustrating. In a previous life working on B2C social media campaigns, the emphasis was always on the collaboration, the community and the relationships which Social Media facilitates. Sure, there’s always space for some broadcast, some stand alone marketing messages, there always will be, but that should be a minimal side-line of a social media plan, not the core of it!

Social Media gives everyone a soapbox, and empowers everyone to tell their story, but what if no-one wants to hear it? Standing in the corner of Hyde Park projecting your story onto unsuspecting passersby isn’t likely to get a huge response, so why would it work in Social Media?

Whenever valuable discussions take place, we have them with people who are interested and can provide feedback and a dialogue. So this is what should be done in Social Media too, by identifying voices online and communities who align with your beliefs or business. But, this doesn’t mean you’ve simply found relevant people you can broadcast to (keep that for a targeted Ad Words campaign), what you have now is a community of people who can share knowledge, resolve issues and provide a support unit. By operating within this community and being the most helpful and responsive, you also become the most influential and it’s through that which you shall reap rewards.

It’s all about the connections you have online in Social Media which will ultimately define your success in what is essentially a very delicate medium. A recent case on twitter exemplifies this perfectly, being the right person in the right place at the right time.

NBC’s Conan O’Brien joined twitter on the 24th of Feb and had posted just 10 updates between then and the 5th of March when he chose to randomly follow Sarah Killen, an unsuspecting lover of peanut butter and jelly snakes. Sarah had just 86 followers on the 4th of March, a figure which grew to 8,635 following Conan’s tweet on the 5th. She has since accrued a following of 23,409 (at the time of writing this post), and this doesn’t look like stopping any time soon.

Now this was a chance occurrence, however without any input of her own, Sarah was conceptually ‘recommended’ by Conan, and as a result his devout following transferred across to her. Take this down to a realistic level and there are still some things to take out from this; by building a new connection we open ourselves to another ‘x’ many people, do it again and we have another ‘x’ many people. This then builds the community who interact with, respect, and value your input, not your broadcasts. By continually looking for relevant voices online, participating constructively and openly rather than simply broadcasting, you may find your ‘Conan moment’ in the next connection you make!

This was all put into a great small audio blog post by Keith Burtis over at AudiBoo, it’s only a couple of minutes long but encompasses all the above points on building a community very well.