Are You Really My Friend?
As I make my way through cyberspace and Facebook and Twitter I find it amazing, and somewhat amusing actually, to come across “Friends” with hundreds of thousands of “Followers.” Now I realize that no one can actually have that many “Friends” but at the same time that kind of connectivity is astounding. But it got me to thinking about marketing and about how you possibly communicate to hundreds of thousands of people.
Kristine Shine, VP of PopSugar Media, recently wrote about this and I wanted to summarize her thinking about four things you need to keep in mind about Gen Y and Social Networking.
1. A follower is not always a friend. Did you know that 40% of Twitter users have zero tweets? 35% of Twitter users have used it fewer than nine times? So having a large number of followers doesn’t mean they will stick around or pay attention to you.
2. You know they are your friends when they talk to you. When an organization (a brand) invites itself into a conversation it can be offensive so measure your effectivness on the depth of your dialogue. Friends in social media are only acquaintances – until you get them to interact with you.
3. A community builds itself – brands don’t build community. You can’t build a community around your interest because that is self-serving and disrespectful of the social medium. Marketers need to work harder at developing smarter ways to be invited into communities that are relevant to the message.
4. Gen Y are expressionists – let them do the talking. Prompt with questions, entice them with exposure and give them a chance to share their opinion. Let them lead the conversation.
What do you think of Kristine’s advice? To me, point #3 is where most non-profits falter. Post comments below.
In this context, I don’t agree with #3. Someone, somewhere had to start a given community. I would venture that the foundation of that community was a common idea/interest or set of ideas/interests that resonated with enough people for communication to begin and continue. Whether that original founding “seed” came from an individual or a group or a brand/corporation/non-profit does not seem to be relevant. What is important is that the basis for the community was seen by a group of people as being important enough to join in the conversation.
Where marketing can enter the picture is by offering new information to an existing community. Marketing can create a new community that resonates with an existing set of people. Marketing can even use exposure and education to inspire a new group of people to join a conversation that they never knew existed.
If the topic is something you’re passionate about, who better to help start or further the conversation than you/your organization?