Nerd alert: I love communication.

From the Paleolithic cave paintings in the Altamira caves, to an 140 character Tweet, to a letter a great-aunt writes and mails to her great-nephew, all of these events illustrate the humanistic need to share experiences and connect with other human beings.

Wikipedia defines communication as "the process of transferring information from one entity to another."

The key here is that information is transferred and then received; a process involving two willing entities.

So simple. So beautiful.

So jacked-up when you consider all the chaos that exists in the social media realm.

'Early' studies of online communities as they developed in blogs were often held up to Lasswell's or even Shannon and Weaver's models of communication. Regardless of what model or paradigm you were a scenario - or in this case an online community - through, the presence and extent of two-way communication defined an online community.

I believe this same, very basic concept can be applied to social media for any person, business or brand. The rate at which friends, fans, consumers, or complete strangers are engaged and then reciprocally engage, defines the quality of your social networks.

Again - not rocket science. Yet, when I sign into Facebook or Twitter, I'm overwhelmed with GROUND NOISE and STATIC. No one is talking to me and everyone is talking AT me.

In this industry, I even see businesses selling social media 'platforms' or 'strategies', as if the art of genuinely communicating with other human beings can be bottled and sold. It seems the brands, products or companies who are 'tearing it up' on social media are those who have people that genuinely love the brand/product/service doing the communicating. These companies are few and far between though, and I believe the result of the mad rush to "be on social media" or "have a social media marketing plan" is all the mayhem we're consistently bombarded with in the online realm.

Should you be on social media? Well, do you have something you are so impassioned to say? Do you have someone you care about saying it to? Do you think they will care to listen?

Most importantly, will you put forth the effort to listen and respond to their response?

I wish I could bottle and sell this process in the social media realm. Easier said than executed.

Although if I could, we might just inject some calm amidst the social media mayhem.

Labels: Facebook, Social media, social media marketing, Twitter

Sat in on a webinar yesterday; the speaker was teaching small, private business-owners of the restaurant variety how to create their own Facebook profiles and fan pages.

I had to reflect...

It was Somewhere around August 31, 2005 when I first signed up for Facebook. Hurricane Katrina had just hit. Grad school friends and I had retreated to one cohort's apartment in another, more northern town because it had electricity and Internet.

Of course, everyone was lounging with their own laptops, scoping each other out on Facebook instead of engaging in genuine conversation, but I'll save my opining on that behavior for another post.

So - I signed up for Facebook. For the next two years, I spent a lot of time conversing with peers, scoping out other people's pictures, posting my own in a very vein manner, wasting time I should've been spending on the thesis, etc.

Grad school ended. Fast-forward five years, and businesses are spending a lot of money and scrambling to "network on Facebook." Posers are claiming to be "social media experts" and are making a decent amount of money telling said businesses how they can help them "network on Facebook." Business people are spending an hour on a Wednesday morning, listening to the technical basics of setting up their own Facebook pages and profiles.

I illustrate this development out because I find it fascinating that, what was once a new online venue for college kids to waste time and entertain themselves, has rapidly developed into a forum that people are spending a lot of time, effort, and money on, all in the effort to do things like "connect," get their brand out there, "facilitate online communities," etc.

At the end of the day, I feel like few businesses get "being on Facebook" right (if there is such a thing). I feel like this because, as a long term Facebook Kid, I pay attention to very few businesses or services that are on Facebook. They have my attention because....wait for it....

They know how to communicate with me.

Not mind-blowing.

In fact, quite simple.

Yet, so few seem to have figured out how to do it (yes, those few do include DC-advised Facebook participants).

So while Facebook has evolved, the invaluable commodity of genuine communication remains in order to facilitate any relationship - offline or on Facebook.

Labels: digital marketing, Facebook

Image via Wikipedia

Found this story from the Financial Times very interesting. How one Facebook fan page for Coke has grown to 3.3 million fans, second only to Obama's page, and how Coke is dealing with social media. Worth a read.

Check it out HERE.

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Labels: Facebook, Media, Social media

Image via CrunchBase
This week, the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project
released a new data memo titled Adults and Social Network Websites that
looks at how adults use sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace. Among
the main findings of the report:

The share of adult internet users who have a profile on an online social
network site has more than quadrupled in the past four years -- from 8%
in 2005 to 35% now, according to the Pew Internet & American Life
Project's December 2008 tracking survey.

While media coverage and policy attention focus heavily on how children
and young adults use social network sites, adults still make up the bulk
of the users of these websites. Adults make up a larger portion of the
US population than teens, which is why the 35% number represents a
larger number of users than the 65% of online teens who also use online
social networks.

Still, younger online adults are much more likely than their older
counterparts to use social networks, with 75% of adults 18-24 using
these networks, compared to just 7% of adults 65 and older. At its core,
use of online social networks is still a phenomenon of the young.

Overall, personal use of social networks seems to be more prevalent than
professional use of networks, both in the orientation of the networks
that adults choose to use as well as the reasons they give for using the
applications. Most adults, like teens, are using online social networks
to connect with people they already know.

When users do use social networks for professional and personal reasons,
they will often maintain multiple profiles, generally on different
sites.

Most, but not all adult social network users are privacy conscious; 60%
of adult social network users restrict access to their profiles so that
only their friends can see it, and 58% of adult social network users
restrict access to certain content within their profile.

For the full report please visit:
http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/272/report_display.asp

Labels: Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Pew Research Center, Social network, Web

I follow Matt Dickman on Twitter. He has a solid understanding of marketing technology and coming trends and is an interesting blogger. Matt is Vice President, Digital Marketing at Fleishman-Hillard in Cleveland.

Here is a recent post on Matt's blog Techno Marketer, about the ages of users on Facebook and MySpace that is worth checking out. Facebook is reaching critical mass in the US, overtaking MySpace in the 36-45 age range. Facebook's over 40 growth is still booming at 24% although their growth in the under under 30 age group has become stagnant. MySpace still dominates the high school and college crowd.

Follow Matt on Twitter at @MattDickman.


-jamie

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Labels: Cleveland Ohio, Facebook, Fleishman-Hillard, mobile web, MySpace, Online Communities, Social network, Twitter, Web