If I stumbleupon your LiveJournal entry, send a tweet after I reddit, and linkedin your facebook with myspace, can we please disqus this social media saturation? Or does that just make us friends or followers? All of this is making my RSS feed hungry or maybe no one diggs my point.
Social media and social networking sites are everywhere. We want to know what, when, who, where, why, and how and we want it now! Or do we?
All too often social media sites turn into some kind of electronic popularity contest. Who friended whom? Who followed whom and will they RT on Follow Friday? Listen to the language used: “friended”. That’s not even a real word; at least it wasn’t until a few years ago. The verb form of “friend” is “befriend”. Does anyone really befriend anyone on LiveJournal or Myspace?
What is a friend? Merriam Webster defines friend (when dealing with the social interaction between two individuals) as: one attached to another by affection or esteem or a favored companion. When people have thousands of “friends” on their social media site of choice, are they really favored companions? Who has that kind of time?
Sociologists, psychologists, and anthologists have theorized for quite a while that technology is creating a connected group of very lonely people. They’ve posited that technology isolates us. Social media sites have emerged as a way of combating that isolation. Is it working? Are we really more connected now than when we were before this craze? Does looking at “X number of followers” provide any type of warm and fuzzy feeling?
No. Pixels on the screen offer no real type of human interaction. Social media sites can be used to reach out and connect with people over common interests, but that takes an investment of time. It takes time to get to know people, develop a relationship, and turn that pixel number into something meaningful.
Generating a high number of followers might make someone feel like they’re doing an excellent job of marketing their blog or other site. But, if the person that number represents isn’t engaged, then it’s just a matter of accepting a friend request and never checking the material.
When you’re trying to reach a target audience, you must be engaging. You need to get involved with them to encourage them to be involved with you. Social media sites can create an enormous buzz, but without engaged people, there is no chatter. No chatter means no buzz.
The blogsphere needs to take a lesson from advertizing professionals. Know your audience. Figure out your target demographics and go after them with engaging material. Get to know them. All networking boils down to word-of-mouth and the best way to get people talking to make them care.
It takes a lot of time to properly network. You need to read their blogs and make meaningful comments. Try to draw them into an in-depth conversation and then carry that conversation to your blog in hopes of drawing others into it.
If you can spark a conversation on your blog, you’ve won regardless of how many followers you have.
What do you think? Digg my point now?
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