Know-How Exchange : Social Media

Dear Denise,

I know of no white papers covering this topic, but a trawl on Google might just help. But here's my view. The thing about forecasting is that strictly speaking, it's not reliable. In fact, it's pretty much a crap shoot.

Social media trends are related to the predictions, possibilities, in systems similar to the weather, the NYSE and the FTSE: although we can watch these things and THINK we know what will happen—we can never know 100 percent, what return any specific stock
will provide or which path a hurricane will take until after the event. This is because each one of these things is a chaotic system and chaotic systems are governed by:

1. sensitive dependence on initial conditions.
2. rapid divergence of nearby trajectories.
3. strange attractors.

Now yes, many people might say that chaos has NOTHING to do with marketing. They're wrong. Take 1,2, and 3 above and let's look at them in greater detail.

1, relates to the forces that govern people's choices to interact with a message or not. It's relevance, specificity, and accuracy with regard to the thing that they are interested in fixing.

2, relates to the ways highly similar messages can create highly different outcomes when other forces act IN CONCERT to adjust people's attitudes and where their thinking takes them.

3, relates to why people do the things they do: what drives them, attracts them, puts them off, propels them, and repulses them.

Predicting social media outcomes is no really different: at best, these predictions are based on best guesses from the results of other people's activities. At worst, they are wrong in a positive or negative way.

What does this mean for you? It means that the only way to predict your social media future is for you to create it.

In social media, this means going out and making a stand and causing enough of a ruckus so that people begin to take notice
of you. You then use that buzz to your advantage. Only then do viral forces kick in.

What this DOES not mean is selling. There must be no selling. None. Got that? In social media, selling is a major no no.

You must be social. You must NOT come out selling ... because if you do, you'll go down in smoke and flames. I can guarantee it.

You must set out to attract an interested audience and you must compel and intrigue them enough to want to hear from you again and again.

To do this you must be interesting, engaging, witty, relevant, and perhaps even a little controversial. But your message must talk to people about what's important to them. It must ENGAGE people.

Start out with a plan. Figure out where you want to go and what result you want and then go out and bring that result to you.

In January of this year I had 65 contacts on Facebook. Through
a very simple technique (which I've only used part time), I've expanded this number to 1,252. I've done this without selling, without spamming, and without being fake. And all this technique takes is ten minutes per day.

At best, social media forecasting is a crap shoot. At worst, too much prospecting on networks like Facebook can get your account suspended or banned.

To quote Ghandi, "You must be the change you wish to see in the world."

I hope this helps.

Gary Bloomer
The Direct Response Marketing Guy™
Wilmington, DE, USA