Value Is The Key To Social Media Success

Value is when the benefit received is greater than the effort that is put in.

As a math equation
Value = Benefit / Effort

Something is valuable as long as the benefit is greater than the effort. You may even get away with the benefit being equal to the effort. But the moment the effort is greater than the benefit, there is no value. No one wants a 1 for the price of 2 deal.

Breaking it down into benefit and effort gives us two manageable parts that we can affect to reach the desired result of increased value. To increase value we can focus on increasing benefit, focus on reducing effort or a combination of the two.

Benefit
To better understand how to affect benefit, we break it down into relevance and net gain.

Relevance is a measure of how important or interesting the audience finds a given message or interaction. It is important to note that relevance does not measure whether an audience finds a particular message good or bad. A counterpoint or difference of opinion is still relevant as long it is centered on a common interest that is shared by the participants.

Net gain is a measure of the overall increase that a person receives because of the interaction. This may be an increase in knowledge, entertainment, ego, financial or social status.

Effort
Effort, as it relates to social media, can be further broken down into the three basic components of accessibility, consumption and usability.

Accessibility is how easy it is to find, see or engage in the interaction. Remove barriers, make it more visible and give people the right information where and when they need it to be able to interact. This includes things like providing a bookmarking button at the end of a post, visible links to your social media profiles in the navigation of your blog or simplifying the form that captures a person’s contact info before they download a white paper.

Consumption means that the message occurs in a form that the audience is familiar with and can easily digest and participate with. For example, a blog is consumable when it’s written in language that the audience understands and the length isn’t longer than the audience’s attention span.

Usability determines how easy it is for a person to apply what they have gained after the initial interaction. It ensures that the message or interaction is easy to use or execute. Things that decrease usability are legal issues, copyrights, downloading third party software, an association that may embarrass a person in front of their peers, or any other hoop someone might have to jump through in order to further use the message. Youtube does a great job with this by providing embeddable code in a neat little window that makes it easy for non programmers to share and post a video.

As I said before, value is the key to successful social media participation. Make a commitment to provide value to those you interact with through every conversation, marketing campaign, blog post, tweet and interaction and you will be successful.

I am currently putting together a Value Checklist which will outline specific action items that should be accomplished in order to increase value in your social media interactions and messages. If you would like to receive a copy of the checklist, please email at ljjones6 at gmail dot com.

The Real Shaq is the Real Social Media Guru

By now its no secret that the real Shaquille O'neal is on Twitter as @THE_REAL_SHAQ. The truth is, he is doing a great job and people could learn a lot from watching him.

Shaq Is Real
The greatest thing that we can learn from him about participating on Twitter is that he is participating as a real person who just happens to be a celebrity. Its not his assistant or some marketing agency acting on his behalf. Its him, sending tweets from his phone and tweeting with normal, average, everyday people just like you and me. Now that's cool. After all, he could have just followed and tweeted with other Twitter celebrities like Lance Armstrong @lancearmstrong or Steve Nash @the_real_nash.

He is real. He is personal. And he also has fun with it.

Recently he gave away two tickets to a suns game with this Tweet.

People n phoenix u have 5 min to touch me I have 2 laker tickets n my hand I'm on a corner at a bus stop
4:42 PM Feb 28th from txt

And 9 minutes later @austino won.

Wow the winner is @austino he saw mw walgreens on 7th and glendale congrats follow him
4:51 PM Feb 28th from txt

Be real. Be personal. And have fun. It takes time, but you will be rewarded.

One Man's Noise

With the internet and social media making it so easy for anyone to become a publisher, it can be difficult to keep up with all of the content that is produced and can be difficult to find the good content among the noise. As I was discussing this today on Twitter with @mehwolfy, he tweeted that "@ljjones one man's noise is another man's music." A very true statement. What's interesting and relevant to you may not be the same for me and vice versa.

So what is noise?
Noise is content that is not relevant or of value to you or a given audience.

Listening
If you are listening, then you are part of the audience and you need to filter the noise. Don't try to listen to everything. There is just too much. Listen to what interests you and to people who interest you.

Publishing
If you are publishing then you are writing for an audience. In order to write good content rather than generating more noise, you need to know your audience and understand what content they will find valuable. Write for them.

Everyday more content is created and if we don't filter it, it all becomes noise. But always remember just because its noise to you, doesn't mean that it won't be music to someone else's ears.

Keep Your Blog Posts Short

Blog posts don't have to be long to be powerful. In fact, some of the best posts are the ones that are short and get right to the point.

Reasons to keep posts short:
- People have more to do all day than read blogs
- If a post seems too long, I may just skip it
- It keeps you as the writer focused on the subject
- People like things that are easily consumable
- People have short attention spans

If you do have a long post, break it up into two or three separate posts and share them over a few days. It will keep readers coming back, rather than getting bored and leaving.

You Can't Buy Influence

Today I came across a post about Gary Vaynerchuk Using Adwords Ads to Buy Twitter Followers?. The author, Jacob Morgan - a social media consultant, asked the question is it ethical? Gary is being very transparent about what he is doing, so I am not sure that its an ethical question. I think the bigger issue here is whether or not Gary has influence over the people that follow him through Adwords.

Gary has gained a lot of followers with this tactic but I doubt that he has much influence over them. Influence is about earning trust. Its a relationship and a relationship that starts with money, is bound to fail. As soon as the money runs out, the relationship is often over.

Plus this tactic just smells funny. It may not be as bad as Belkin paying people for good reviews on Amazon.com, but it feels like it belongs in that same category, along with buying links for SEO and paying people to Digg your story.

True social media is about trust, and it can't be bought. Key things we should learn from this:

1. Social media takes time and effort
2. Be authentic
3. Don't force it (You can't buy it)
   
4. Avoid tactics that "smell" funny
   

The Economy Needs To Be Re-Branded

Although President Obama is trying his hardest to help our struggling economy, he is looking for advice from the wrong experts. Like most people, he is thinking, this is an economic problem so lets ask the economists. But this isn't a problem about money, its about dealing with human emotion and right now those emotions are fear and confidence.

Companies are scared of the recession and are laying off employees. The people who still have jobs fear losing their jobs so they spend less money. Because consumers spend less, companies fears are validated, and so they lay off more people. And Banks don't trust anyone with their money. Its a vicious cycle and unless we can restore confidence, we won't get out of it soon.

It won't matter how much money we pump into the economy if at the end of the day people's confidence isn't restored. Many surveys show that lots of people don't think the economic stimulus package (800 + Billion$) will have any effect on the economy. And if they don't think it will, then it won't. Its kind of like a reverse placebo effect where you don't think a drug will help you get better, so it doesn't.

And the media doesn't help at all. They continuously tell us how bad it is and give us minute to minute updates on the total jobs lost. I admit, its bad, but all the media does is scare us and make a bad situation worse. All in the name of better ratings, they are willing to help us into the hole and cover us with dirt. Sadly, the only way to get the media to stop spreading mass economic chaos is to get them to focus on something else that would bring them bigger ratings. I don't even want to think about what that would be.

We need something that inspires confidence, trust and optimism. The current stimulus plan does just the opposite. Its too big. Happened to quick. Its highly debated. People already don't trust the government with money. And all the fighting in Washington between the two parties only makes it worse.

So how do we fix it? We approach this from a marketing point of view and re-brand the economy. We start from scratch, get rid of the old, throw out the stimulus package and work on developing strategies to gain consumer confidence. A good marketing plan will go further than all the money in the world.

Communities, You are just a Guest

In an effort to market their products, I often see companies wanting to run out and form a community around their brand or product. But unless you are a brand like Nike or Apple, you can forget about it. No matter how great you think your product is, it just isn't cool enough to support a community. And until you come to grips with that, you won't be successful in social media.

So what is cool enough to bring a group of people together and form a community. The key is common interests. Common interest is what brings people from all walks of life together and is the glue that holds social media together.

People have connected and formed communities long before your product arrived in social media. So rather than trying to reinvent the wheel, why not find a community that already shares a common interest with your brand and participate.

But before you run in there and announce your arrival to the party, take a step back and listen. Listen, watch and get a feel for the community. Figure out the rules, the ins and outs, and the etiquette of the community. And then develop a strategy to participate. And if your strategy for participating involves telling the community how much they need your product, then you need to start over and go back and do some more listening.

Communities are powerful and a great way to engage your audience. Just make sure you play by their rules and not yours. After all its their community and you are just a guest.