In Monday’s blog I talked about how online social media has empowered us to use word-of-mouth to promote our ideas, causes and businesses. Online social media has given us the tools to directly connect with people in a way that has not been possible in the past. I realize that the internet is no substitute for friendships and intimate human relationships. That is important and should not be trivialized by claiming that social networks can do more than they in reality can do. Humans are only capable of maintaining a certain number of close personal relationships and having 500 friends on Facebook or 5,000 followers on Twitter does not indicate that person has more friends. It does show that those people may be, to use Malcolm Gladwell’s terminology from The Tipping Point, Connectors, Mavens or Salesmen. What tools like Blogs, Twitter and Facebook do is give those people who naturally generate ideas, connect with others and spread information a platform on which to do these things. In addition they can do these things very economically without relying on permissions, sponsors or governments.
The 20/80 Rule
We know that the majority of the people involved in social networks are not the ones who generate and spread ideas. Gladwell sites the Pareto Principle that states that 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. In other words 80% of what is online comes from 20% of the people. Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research show in their book Groundswell that of the six groups they identified in their Social Technographic Ladder, Creators, Critics, Collectors, Joiners, Spectators and Inactives, the Creators are the smallest group but responsible for most of the information and material online. This doesn’t make the other groups irrelevant, they are the ones who read, collect, comment-on, join, buy, and decide on the information provided by the Creators. Before the internet there were certain people who had a large circle of acquaintances who always seemed to know where the best pizza in town was or who was the best mechanic. Others seemed to have a good understanding of politics and their friends and associates would listen to what they had to say about the affairs of the day. When someone said, “Go ask Mary, she’ll know,” you asked Mary and you listened to her even if she wasn’t a close friend. That is what is happening online with a larger circle of people.
Social Media Experts
The role that so called social media experts, marketers, mavens and gurus perform is educate people and businesses about these new tools. Will this make people with no inclination more influential? No, not likely. Will this make Giovanni sell more Pizzas? Not if Giovanni’s pizzas suck. But if they are great Pizzas and Giovanni’s Google Places page is setup correctly and his Facebook Page is operating then Social Maven Marie can “like” it and tell her friends and Online Critic Chris can write a review that Joiner John will read next time he’s looking for a pizzeria to take his new girlfriend Connie the Connector to who decides where her softball team is going to go after next week’s tournament and …. Well you get the idea. Sometimes it’s not about persuasion or spreading the word but about making it easy for the persuaders to spread the word. How do you make it easy for others to spread the word?
Part of what Image Media Partners does is work on ways to make it easy to spread the word. Please contact us if you would like to get a free assessment of your website.
Photo Credit: Colin Smith
