Article posted on Jul 02
I tend to be relatively active on Twitter, Facebook, and a few Blogs. When it comes to these types of communication, people often refer to them as “Social Media”, “Social Networking”, or my least favorite, “New Media.”
Let me just throw a quick stone over at “New Media” before I get to the heart of my point: the name “New Media” implies that there was an “Old Media”, and that one is inherently outdated. I believe that no mode of communication is, or ever will be 100% effective. Your clients consume content in various ways. Every medium has its place (though the market for interpretive break-dancing may be truly limited.)
What I really want to address however, is “Social Media” vs. “Social Networking.” Are they synonymous? I would answer, “No.”
The concept of “Media” is content. The concept of “Networking” is a relationship. It’s important to understand that what thinking of the different social networks and how to use them, and what to expect from them.
I ran a test earlier this week. I have a similar number of friends on both Twitter and Facebook. I put a message out on both, and asked people to please send me a direct message back if they read it. no ReTweets, no Public Replies, no “comments” on Facebook. The result? about 3% of my friends on twitter responded, and about 6% on Facebook did. That was about what I expected. Additionally, the Twitter responses were almost immediate. The facebook replies were over a day and a half. If I were to put a similar message on my blog, I would expect to get pretty good results, and spread over a longer period that either of the other two.
So this brings us two four factors of Social Media/Social Networking:
1- Attention to message
What is the likelihood that your target audience will even notice your message. In the case of Facebook, people seem to pay more attention to rather or not their friends have any updates. I don’t think that twice the number of my friends on Facebook cared enough to respond; I would guess that half as many of my friends on Twitter even saw my message at all.
2- Life of message.
How long is your message relevant? On some networks your message stays around for days, weeks, or months. On others, it is like the game we all played at parties, where you hit a balloon into the air. As long as someone keeps bumping the balloon it stays flying and exciting. If it goes neglected for even a moment it falls and is forgotten.
3- Intimacy of message.
The point is the real crux of “Social Media” or “Social Networking.” to what extent does the consume feel that you have a real relationship, vs. to what extent you are really just publishing content?
4- Reach of message.
How likely is your message to become viral? Who will read it that you didn’t explicitly attempt to reach?
Twitter:
-Attention: Poor. Just streams by for many people. Often ignored for a period of time.
-Life: Poor. If it doesn’t get read immediately, most people won’t read it at all.
-Intimacy: Variable. Some people have intimate conversations and connections on Twitter. It seems that most usage is trending away from this though. You may see short bursts of intimacy, but generally it seems more like “micro broadcasts.”
-Reach: Very good. Through searching of Hashtags, searching for company or brand names, and ReTweeting, there is the potential that a well crafted message or campaign could really go viral here. I think we have all heard stories of a person mentioning a product they are having a problem with, and having the company contact them over twitter to set it right.
Blogs:
Attention: Hard to quantify. In my personal opinion it seems as if there are fewer people sitting eagerly in front of their RSS reader prepared to consume the content. But, the content is often better written, and more fully fleshed out. That combined with the longevity of the posts means that over the long haul there may be a lot of people reading the article closely. But it does seem that Blogs have less of an “edge of your seat” aspect… where fewer people are eagerly awaiting your next update (But maybe I’m just not Seth Godin 
Life: Excellent. A blog post is a web page. It can drive SEO, traffic, and interest for you forever.
Intimacy: Again, variable. Some people have very active and involved comments on their blogs. I would say this is generally the exception however. I believe that for most people blogs are not as good of a way to buid a “relationship” than Twitter or Facebook can be. But, do to the fact that the reader doesn’t need to “friend” you, it does allow for someone to passively learn about you and build an affinity over time.
Reach: Potentially good. Especially if you are playing the SEO game. Easy to show up in Google Alerts, searches, etc. Also, if you write well others will link to you and drive more traffic. More than the other networks however, you need consistency to pull this off. If your blog content sucks, then it is unlikely that the one gem you write will get much notice.
Facebook:
Attention: Pretty good. It seems that the intimacy level tends to be higher on facebook, and many people pay closer attention. Maybe this is party because it seems to be more about real updates and personal info than the 140 character Twitter “Micro Broadcast.”
Life: Better than twitter, worse than blogs. your message lives a couple days instead of a couple hours.
Intimacy: Arguably the best. If you use facebook well you can forge real relationships.
Reach: Not as good as the others. You really don’t see people using the “ReTweet” type of concept so much on Facebook. The platform could do it, but the usage pattern doesn’t seem to do it much. If you leverage facebook you will probably reach fewer un-planned eyes than on twitter or your Blog.
Social Media and Social Networking are not the same thing. One is getting a message out. The other is building a relationship. You can do both at the same time, even on the same platform, and with the same message. But different social networks are better or worse at one than the other. ask yourself what your real goal is, and what helps you reach it best.
Excellent post, Steve. I think your analysis of not only the language around social media/networking is right on point. More importantly, you’ve done a great job here of noting the effectiveness of specific channels without getting too technical in your analysis. I wonder…what’s next? Will Google’s Wave make an impact on the mix?
Larry,
That looks awesome!
You know, when I watched the video of Google Wave, my mind really started spinning on similar questions. The problem is that it’s so hard to really predict what social networks will or won’t be adopted, to what level, and what the usage will really be like. As an example, when Google Social was all the buzz, and the ability to build social apps that could be easily installed on iGoogle, my first thought was that it was potentially a Facebook killer. But it wasn’t. It really hasn’t seemed to gain much traction.
Similarly, why is the actual usage of Facebook and Twitter so distinctly different? There are different capabilities to be sure, but even where they are similar the usage is different (an example in my article is the concept of the ReTweet.)
No longer can the best platform be assured to be the one that really catches on…. even if you’re Google.
Don’t get me wrong… I was blown away, and excited over the Wave demo. We’ll have to see how well it really rolls out, what the adoption is, what crowd really jumps on it, and how they use it.
I can’t wait to embed Wave’s in my blog though
Thanks for the comments! I really appreciate it!!
Excellent points Steve, right on target. I also agree that the RSS readers are also deminishing, what I find is people are becoming more loyal to certain blogs only and are increasingly reading them traditionally, and only a few. So you have dedicated followers, and not necessarily the population numbers we once saw. For this reason a lot of social media experts are declaring blogging is dead, welcome to “life streaming”, but I think this is incorrect. The good news is dedicated blog readers become evangelists; they spread your message on your behalf, which is really what the crux of social media is all about (at least from a corporate or messaging standpoint). For example a reader of this blog I would suspect is more likely to recommend Twelve Horses as an Internet firm. They also integrate your corporate identity into your own, much like all of the folks who have a Backcountry.com sticker on their car in Salt Lake valley, or someone who chooses “X” corporation under their “pages” section of their facebook profile.
Cheers,
Andre
Excellent post! I’m saving this to my social bookmark right now ;D
Thanks Tyler!!
Excellent points, as always Andre. Thanks much!