Social Media: Game vs Substance
How about Empire Avenue?
Both great sites. Both are trying to gamify and monetize your social media presence.
I'm of two minds on this.
On the one hand, we all humanely like to know how we stack up against each other.
We like having a score or a share price.
On the other hand, is social media something that we should be scoring, ranking or comparing.
As I got going with Empire Avenue, I found that I was creating and connecting social media accounts and uploading mass amounts of photos and FB friending anything that moved, all in an effort to try and UP my social media scores. I remember seeing one particular early EA adopter promoting on twitter that he wanted everyone to friend him on Facebook. Crazy.
As I reflect back on my crazed and competitive actions, I see I was rash and misguided.
Let's let these ranking and scoring sites do precisely that, score and rank our REAL Social Media presence, not a fake artificially inflated/created one. Do we really care what song is on your ipod right now? No. Do we really care what you are the mayor of? No. Let's not hyper list every movement during the day. This becomes NOISE. We need to cut down the noise so that what is left is the stuff of substance!
I realize that I am as guilty of this as anyone.
So am I quitting Klout or Empire Avenue? No.
Am I suggesting you should? No.
Am I going to cease engaging in Social Media? No.
Am I going to cease engaging in Social Media? No.
What am I suggesting?
For me: Create content that matters. Centralize on a few mediums. Don't broadcast the same content on every single Social Media platform.
For me: Create content that matters. Centralize on a few mediums. Don't broadcast the same content on every single Social Media platform.
For you: Be intentional, be meaningful. If you do, I will follow you. If you don't you just lost a "friend"
I think we have a social form of the Heisenberg principle here. As soon as people know there are observed, they will change their behaviour. It is probably impossible to stop this - And maybe we should not. One of the important steps in improving is to observe (measure) and change behaviour in order to see what works. Certainly, a score can be faked out. However, the scores is just a model, a representation, the real aim, can often not be reached by shortcuts.
ReplyDeleteThanks Ralph, those are some keen observations/comments! Totally agree. Over time the addictive behaviour runs out and is unsustainable, the share price which measures your true reach and true activity will eventually stabilize. I believe the response to observed behaviour only lasts for so long. True colours almost always shine through in the end.
DeleteYes the simple act of observing something does change it…our so the theory goes. To me Klout is of little real value. While it may be able to count the number of people I influence (under their system) they will never know that last week I close a 200K deal with one of them.
ReplyDeleteEmpire Avenue is a great idea. It allows you to connect with people and have some fun doing it. Still I would not put much wait into your share price. If you wanted to spend a grand I am sure your stock would shoot right up.
I am not a social media person. I am a networker. My take on networking is that you must approach everyone as a potential best friend for life not as a potential sale.
LOVE.IT.
DeleteThanks for the comment. Insightful. My question for you is if you approach everyone as a potential best friend, how do you keep from dropping them or letting them down? Don't know about you but I can only juggle so many best friends. Interested to hear your approach.
I should have read this post before making a comment on the sequel. I also believe in the idea of posting meaty and useful content rather than cross-posting rehashed materials across different platforms. I'm not sure about Klout but at Empire Avenue, my focus is on wealth generation as a means to be able to launch missions. If I have 30mil eaves in there, my idea is to run as many regular missions as I can to benefit all my profiles, blogs, etc. That's the thing that made EA very attractive to me.
ReplyDeleteOK, now we're talking! I'm blowing 2million on my Blog promo with HUGE response so far. A blog that has only had a handful of comments over the last year now has more than 30 in an hour! My hope is that the content is interesting enough that ppl subscribe and come back because something piqued their interest. Yes, I see the missions as a HUGE thing for EA! I can get ppl to do things for me online and pay them in virtual currency. If I do it right, the things they do earn me more online currency which in turn I can use to create more missions etc... Sounds like we think alike!
DeleteThis is a good approach. Each platform has its own style and devices have particular strengths. There is a lot of competition. In terms of content, context and contacts, they all have their user bases and try to get inertia early on since future offerings will probably attract newcomers at that time. Values, personal and social, continue to develop, sites and apps try to match either the mainstream or niches. There is some experimentation required to find a good fit.
ReplyDeleteI think you have to use social media as you ordinarily would, maybe tweaking it to optimize your use, but do not twist yourself so much that you are unrecognizable. You don't want people following and interacting with a phony persona because you won't form genuine connections. And social media is just a means to connect with other people, not an end in itself. No one will put on their tombstone "87,345 Tweets sent".
ReplyDeleteI like the idea. Produce compelling content and then use game mechanics to expand your audience.
ReplyDeleteContent is king
ReplyDelete