Why hasn’t more companies adopted social media? Because social media is not social at all.

According to a recent study, only 20% of tweets are meant to share information. 80% of tweets are private thoughts that just happened to be shared with the world. However, that’s still a private transaction. That social media network is a small group of friends, and that tweet is the electronic version of a private conversation.

Consider my version of the real-life equivalent: An email conversation is completely private. That’s like a group of people in a closed door room having a conversation. A tweet, for these 80% of people, is a conversation that happens in a public place. Since it’s a public place, sometimes people overhear and chime in. “Sorry, I hear you’re talking about that new restaurant. I was thinking about going, you say it sucks?”

So, yes, private conversations can be extended to strangers. However, these are still strangers. At the end of the conversation, each party goes back to their separate ways.

Now, if this stranger happens to be Oprah, you may all of a sudden call Oprah a “friend”. “Oh yeah, Oprah and I the other day was talking about restaurants. She suggested that I should go try the one on ABC Street.” Now, of course, this doesn’t have to be Oprah. This could be a local celebrity, or a celebrity within a specific circle. Or, just someone, someplace, something that’s well known and well regarded within a specific audience.

Or, if you happen to run into this particular stranger everywhere, you may begin to be interested in getting to know this stranger. Obviously, you have like interests. (For example, I have made it a point to get to know someone after seeing that particular person at various art shows around town.)

My hypothesis is that social media works the same way.

If you are strangers, you will remain strangers. There are a few ways to overcome this. One of which is to form an offline relationship. Be the Oprah that they want to get to know better. The other way is to engage your audience in their natural habitat and keep “running into them”. That’s why musicians were successful with myspace. Recruiters are successful with LinkedIn.

This may also explain why Twitter is particularly challenging for marketers. There are no specific purposes for Twitter. Twitter is a public plaza. Many different conversations happening, but it’s virtually impossible for a marketer to form an engaging relationship with any one of them. It’s very similar to a marketer holding a product demonstration in a public plaza. People may just ignore them, or they stop, watch, and move on because they’re there to meet someone. They don’t have time for marketers.

That doesn’t mean that Twitter doesn’t have value to marketers. What’s a better way to disseminate news about a crisis than to use a speaker over a public plaza? No one putting up a flyer would ignore the public plaza, because at the end of the day, it’s a numbers game and there are a lot of eyeballs in a public plaza. Twitter works the same way.

In conclusion, social media has its value, but as always, it’s only a part of your marketing mix. Perhaps even only a small part.

Link: STUDY: 80% of Twitter Users Are All About Me

Photo credit: New York Public Library Outdoor Plaza, originally uploaded by celikins.

I’ve been reading a lot of Al Ries recently, and I have learned a lot from his books. If I have to pick one lesson to highlight, it’d be focus, focus on being the best you.

Today, Facebook bought FriendFeed.

Big news for the social web.

The objective for Facebook purchase is assumed to gain FriendFeed’s search capabilities to better compete with Twitter. *This is simply a speculation. Maybe Facebook would not utilize this acquisition to make itself more like Twitter, via new search functions. But then, why buy FriendFeed?

However, why can’t Facebook define a separate but distinct niche from Twitter altogether? Why can’t the two be complimentary to each other and in fact grow the usage of social web in general? It is the whole growing the pie versus growing your own slide of the pie story.

(Hmm… pie…)

In fact, Facebook and Twitter probably already occupy different spaces in users’ minds. This article on Mashable highlights a great discussion on this topic. Facebook is for people to connect with friends. Twitter is for people to follow complete strangers. So, what purpose does it serve to make them look more alike? Shouldn’t they instead play to their differences and to their respective brand equities?

So, Facebook, instead of striving to be the best Facebook, it is trying to be the best Twitter. Hmm…

Why are branding basics so counterintuitive to us marketers / business owners, in our constant quest for the more, more, more?

Photo Credit: Pie chart, originally uploaded by net_efekt.

When is it fair to judge? I don’t know… but I know that I do it anyway, fair or not.

I have long subscribed to various marketing emails, etc. But, as you may know from my previous post, I only recently discovered the wonderfulness that is Twitter. Now, everywhere I go, I see Twitter’s impact, potential, usefulness, etc.

As you may also know, I started with Twitter is because as a marketer in this day and age, I must be at least be familiar with these social media applications.

So, I ask the question: If you don’t tweet, are you a true marketer?

I know, that’s a pretty broad question. And of course, I know that the answer is “it depends” for those of you who speak the “it depends” speak. Others may quietly say “of course” because you’ve been in marketing for, well, forever. Still others would yell “No way!”

Well, I must say that I empathize with all of the above.

HOWEVER!

I subscribe to a newsletter that specializes in direct-to-consumer marketing. As I look for people I want to follow on Twitter, I thought I’d look up the editors of this newsletter. Curiously, I couldn’t find the first one, the second one, or any one of them. Not even the one who was supposed to be covering “all aspects of e-commerce and online marketing.”

Now, I understand plainly that this newsletter is supposed to cover more of the tested and true DTC tactics. But, if the guy who was supposed to be the guru on the online aspect isn’t jumping on the social media bandwagon at all, I question how in touch they are with the current marketing environment. Even if the newsletter doesn’t specifically cover social media marketing as an area of interest, the people behind it should be all over social networking… shouldn’t they? Or am I judging them unfairly just because they don’t have a Twitter account?

Another question that may be worth asking… am I really the only one who may judge them so?

twitter – What are you doing?, originally uploaded by keiyac.