When Did Social Media Stop Being Social?
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According to dictionary.com, the word social refers to the relations of human beings in a community. Technology has now brought us together into a broad, global online community. Twitter, facebook, and other forms of social media have brought us together. They now allow us to connect with each other from across the globe.
I can now communicate instantly across the internet with my wife, my in-laws, my parents and even my grandparents. I can reach out to new people and make friends and safely connect and engage perfect strangers in conversations.
The truth is that with these social media platforms, there is so much potential for good. It’s now easier than ever to build tribes and rally around good causes, fun conversations or whatever you happen to be passionate about.
But as with any good thing, people soon try to figure out how to monetize it even at the expense of it’s quality. People spam their links across Twitter. They market their worthless products. They excessively use auto-tweeters and affiliate links. They don’t engage and connect as real people. They don’t understand what it means to be social.
And yet, even though I’m saying they, I really mean we. We do these things. We spam the people around us thinking that it helps build our online products.
What ever happened to being social? What ever happened to acting like members of a community? When did we stop having real conversations? When did we stop acting like humans?
I’m not advocating the complete and utter dismissal of all ads on blogs, Facebook and Twitter. I understand that people should be allowed to use their property and their reputation to earn a profit for themselves and their families. In fact, I use Sponsored Tweets to make a extra cash every month.
But the key is balance. If you’re not actually engaging then you’re going to find your effectiveness getting smaller and smaller. Don’t spam those ads non-stop. Simply sprinkle one into the mix once in a while and be honest about it as you do it.
Ultimately, the more you humanize your experience online, the more you’ll see a community rally around you like you’ve never seen before.
Kavya Hari said:
First of all, social media is one of the basic platform to communicate with all the people from across the web. And, we have to share our own ideas,reviews, thoughts and so on. So, i like social media so much. Thank you so much for choose this topic on here
Abdul Wajid CK said:
Every one is in Love with Social Media, Kavya. But, Some of us is using Social Media as a Fish Market
Nicholas Cardot said:
I’m glad you enjoyed it. I just hope that as people develop their business online and use social media for promotion that they don’t also lose sight of the amazing ability that social media has to allow us to connect and engage with real people in real conversations.
Abdul Wajid CK said:
Hey Nick,
You wrote “why the social media is filled with spam” and more… And the truth is that, No one will ever buy or click those useless spammed online product and their links. We all know that, it is going to be a enormous problem for the Social World(Second life of a human being who is perfect at chatting, eating, and hating others).
Lets hope for a better Social World..
Nicholas Cardot said:
But I don’t think that’s true. Why would people continue to send them out if they’re not effective? I can’t teach against them on the basis of uselessness in their effectives but rather I teach against them because I believe in a value-added business model. In other words, I believe that we should be building products, promoting products and connecting with people in a way that adds value to their lives. If our product doesn’t add value, people aren’t going to be happy. They’ll feel ripped off. They’ll tell their friends. If our marketing isn’t adding value by making them smile, fulfilling a need, or inspiring them in some way to want our product then it won’t be effective.
Ryan Critchett said:
A great point, spreading a message that can’t ever get old.
I think we need a balance, like you said. I recently became a part of Triberr, which involves a bit of automatic tweeting but it’s similiar to ping.fm and other time saving tools.
The difference is, I’m on Twitter (as you know) engaging all of the time.
A very cool chick from.. I think NYC followed me yesterday. She does social media engagement party and event planning. So if we did a “tweet up” or something, with 40 people we all engage with on the web, she could organize the event.
I engaged her directly after she followed me. I asked her what he company was about. I even went and commented on her blog minutes later and to my pleasant surprise, she tweeted a post of mine to her 4,000 followers.
More importantly, I felt like I made a friend, and so did she.
Only the social will survive out here!
Ryan Critchett recently posted..Connectors And Catalyzing A Wave Of Awareness In The Blogosphere
Abdul Wajid CK said:
Hey Ryan,
It should be the thing, it should be the Social Media. I think she is a Cute chick with good heart, Anyway that’s not our point of talk. Man, we haven’t met each others yet, but we are building our relationship from here and from everywhere we get a chance to do that. Nick had wrote a post, which describes that twitter is leveraging its traffic, it is because of useless relationship built in twitter.
Nicholas Cardot said:
But I think right there is the balance. It’s alright to automate a little bit if you’re also on here chatting, connecting and making friends all the time. Getting involved is enough to create the balance.
I feel the same way that you do. I’ve made real friends and business colleagues from chatting on Twitter.
Ryan Critchett said:
I align completely.
Ryan Critchett recently posted..Responsiveness Is King In A World Of Twitter
Edgar said:
You’re absolutely right. Building tribes has never been easier. Solid base businesses require a really good relationship between you and your customers. Thanks for reminding us.
Edgar recently posted..Benefits of project management courses
Nicholas Cardot said:
You’re welcome. It’s true that it’s never been easier, but that’s only true for those who are getting up and doing it.
Dave said:
I’m with Ryan you need to have a balance. I don’t have a ‘massive twitter following’ but they are all into design, SEO, wordpress social media and pretty much any tweet I see is relevant to what I like.
I do chuck a self promo post in my twitter stream to show the guys that follow me my latest stuff, but in my mind you need to have almost a percentage so I post 15 relevant finds that are design based (and they are good) and then I can can share one of mine. No one wants to see captain self promo tweeting and posting about himself constantly.
I have helped and chat with design guys in the US and UK who I would never have met without being on twitter (I’m based in the UK)
Don’t engage with everyone straight away, there are some spammers out there, just take it slowly, eg on twitter look at previous tweets and follow rates. There are great people out there who will engage and will like the stuff you do, just takes a bit of time to find the good ones.
Dave recently posted..Music Texture Pack
Nicholas Cardot said:
Exactly. A while back, I unfollowed everyone and started following on those folks who I engaged me in conversation. I had a lot of people upset at me for unfollowing them and literally the first tweet that I ever received from them was them cursing me for not following them. But in my mind, why would I unfollow someone who I never even knew and talked with? And then they when they revealed that level of hostility, I was glad that I unfollowed them. Now I’m working on following as many folks as talk to me. It’s a much better system when you just follow who you want to follow.
Brad Harmon said:
Do you prefer to be called Nick or Nicholas? I’ve been wondering that for some time but never asked.
Anyway, back to my regularly scheduled comment.
I think you do a great job with balancing the two. It wasn’t until your post about making money that I really noticed how much advertising you actually do. It’s perfectly counterbalanced though by your great content and superhuman engagement skills.
I think many would be internet marketers would make a lot more money if they followed your example.
Brad Harmon recently posted..How Do You Respond When Your Small Business is Attacked Online
Nicholas Cardot said:
Brad, most folks just call me Nick. I had a very difficult time adding a lot of the ads that I have around the site, but I’m finding them so incredibly profitable that I would be hard pressed to take them down. I literally made over $1,000 last month from advertisements and affiliate sales. I understand that they might annoy some people, but first I’ve worked hard to make them as easy on the eyes as possible, and second…well, they pay my mortgage and then some so I’m going to have to find other ways to please folks by producing excellent content and engaging as much as I can.
Brittany Rubinstein said:
I completely agree. I think it’s easy to get caught up in promoting yourself, but what people often forget is that by being social you ARE promoting yourself. You are building relationships, getting people interested in you. It’s a two way street.
Brittany Rubinstein recently posted..Maybe They’re Just Not That Into You
Nicholas Cardot said:
Exactly. I think you do a greater job of self-promoting by talking to someone about THEM than you’ll ever do talking about yourself. In the end, they’ll remember the person who made them feel like they were the whole world.
Ray said:
Funny, I had just posted a video rant about social media not being “sales” media so your post caught my eye on my Twitter feed.
I agree that balance is required as is intent. Just don’t call it social if it’s sales.
Great Post
Ray recently posted..Putting Social Media on the To Do List
Nicholas Cardot said:
Ha ha. Good timing that you made that video as I was posting this.
Susan said:
My problem is that I found I was losing too much time to ‘social media’ and the ROI wasn’t worth it.
Susan recently posted..How to Use Video to Boost Visits and SEO
ah hong said:
Can’t agree more that balance is the key in the world of social media.
It’s better to create value to the audience first by producing quality content and build a network around it. Rather than spamming the user with ads and user get nothing in value when visiting your blog, Facebook or Twitter.
ah hong recently posted..Event Registration Letter
Brad Patterson said:
I was drawn here by the interesting title, and I have enjoyed what you’ve whipped up for us, Nicholas. I had a feeling you were going to go in a different direction altogether, though:
The fact that we can sit in a room and communicate with the world while forgetting what is right there in front of us. I’m sure many folks can relate to sending emails to someone who was sitting only a ten-second walk away from them in an office.
Something about it makes me good…. hmm… What do you all think ? Cheers, Brad
Brad Patterson recently posted..Dogme Flies Unite ! ff @chucksandy
Brad Patterson said:
I was drawn here by the interesting title, and I have enjoyed what you’ve whipped up for us, Nicholas. I had a feeling you were going to go in a different direction altogether, though:
The fact that we can sit in a room and communicate with the world while forgetting what is right there in front of us. I’m sure many folks can relate to sending emails to someone who was sitting only a ten-second walk away from them in an office.
Something about it makes me go “hmm…” What do you all think ? Cheers, Brad
Brad Patterson recently posted..Dogme Flies Unite ! ff @chucksandy
Linfröolja Andersson said:
Well, social media has been very successful in making big impact on marketing online for small- and big companies all over the planet. Here in Sweden, there’s really important for every company to have Twitter- and Facebook-page.
shweta kodgire said:
Me too agry that social media has the amizing ability to make your business do well in online internet marketing , its the best way to be visible in market and I personally experienced that benefit of social media thanks so much for posting this topic.
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