Social Media By the Numbers
My friend Mike recently posted this on his blog:
Social Media Heroics
Even if you’re a small business, there’s some great insight to be gained from Marla Erwin, Interactive Art Director for Whole Foods Market. Marla was instrumental in creating Whole Foods’ acclaimed social media program and the results have been phenomenal! For example, in the first year, Twitter.com/Wholefoods gained a million Twitter followers. It has now surpassed 1.75 million people. (Social Media Examiner)
(Emphasis NOT mine.) I love how the number of followers somehow makes the account a success. (Was it ever on the suggested user list? We know that skews things but translates little in terms of quality.) So beautifully misleading about what is truly important.
Just as importantly, there is no actual data in this article. Sure, it’s impossible to be wrong if there is nothing to judge, and that’s nice for the writer’s job security… but I fear how many small businessmen read fluff like this and then waste time joining Twitter with no plan in place.
I’m reposting his thoughts because I couldn’t agree with them more. It’s so easy to simply pointing to follower/fan numbers and equate large followings with success. But while numbers and metrics are important, they desperately need context to have meaning. Otherwise, as Mike points out, you have small business owners (and large businesses!) jumping on the Twitter bandwagon without any plan or goals.
I’m reminded vividly of South Park’s recent Facebook episode that sharply parodies the obsession with numbers—and the tendency for uninformed social media users to treat online interaction as a platform for broadcasting rather than conversing.
That’s the wrong attitude. There are lots of right ways to think about using social media, and one of the best I’ve come across recently is this Mashable interview with Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh. The full interview is worth a read, but here’s the money quote for my purposes—the perfect contrast to going about social media strictly by the numbers. Figuring out the ROI is a little more difficult when you take this more holistic approach, but what is the ROI when all you point to is a number of Twitter followers? (And by the way, Hsieh has a book deal for a title called Delivering Happiness.)
Mashable: How do you decide what to tweet? Does the potential for happiness the tweet could bring impact your decision-making?
I tweet at least once a day and my goal is to have each of my tweets fall into one or more of these 4 categories (ICEE): Inspire, Connect, Entertain, or Educate — all of which I believe are somehow related to happiness. I get a lot of requests from people (including many Zappos employees) to send out a tweet promoting them or something they’re doing, which I generally turn down because it doesn’t fall into one of the ICEE categories.
Also, I wrote a blog post awhile back [about this subject] titled, “How Twitter Can Make You a Better (And Happier) Person.”
Mashable: From the research you have explored, what are some of the key elements to happiness, and in what ways do you think people can engage on sites like Twitter and Facebook to enhance those?
I think the ICEE philosophy works in both directions:
Inspire and Be Inspired: You can inspire others through tweets (for example, a great quote or a link to an inspiring article), and you can be inspired by following people that are trying to do the same thing (for example, @theseantourage, @gretchenrubin, @workhappynow on Twitter).
Connect and Be Connected: In addition to connecting yourself with other people, you can also connect people with each other. We have about 500 Zappos employees on Twitter, and we’ve aggregated all their tweets together.
It’s a great way for to help build the company culture and for employees to connect with each other.
Entertain and Be Entertained: I love reading tweets that make me laugh or smile. It’s actually pretty challenging for me to try to come up with funny tweets, and I’m surprised that some of my tweets get retweeted as much as they do and others don’t at all, so I view it as a fun game trying to figure out and predict what people will find funny. This tweet I sent [recently] is one of the most retweeted tweets I’ve ever gotten:
“Instead of getting an iPad, I now use my iPhone with a giant magnifying glass attached to my face.”
I think it’s gotten over 300 retweets.
Educate and Be Educated: Most of the articles and blog posts I read I discover through Twitter. If there’s a really interesting article or blog post, then I’ll tweet it out, especially if it’s on the topic of happiness.
