It's better to listen than to speak, better to engage than broadcast.. but how does that scale?
The easy answer for a company and their brand would be "figure it out.. when people talk, you need to be listening" ... of course, that is easier said than done. It means that every person in your company has to start listening and switch from saying "it's not my job" to actually engaging. Tough stuff.
@DavidVUK asked about Lady Gaga. Can she engage all 10 million Facebook fans? Does a celebrity need to tweet AND read all the responses.
Well, yes and no...
Yes. every fan that gets a personal response from the celebrity or even their staff will tell you that it feels different that seeing a broadcast message. Wherever it's physically possible and the desire of the celeb, you can't dispute that engagement beats broadcast.
But I think we've been asking the wrong questions.
It's NOT "How many followers?" or even "how many conversations?" that the real influencers need to be asking. It's "how many conversations are people having with each other?"
Sure. A higher number of followers is more than a smaller number. Basic math, right? Answering tweets from followers is better and more of those is bigger than a few... Easy, and for most of us scalable. We just add more time or staff.
But let's look at Lady Gaga conversations.
David used her FB popularity in a tweet to me. I have no idea how involved he is with Lady Gaga, her music, her antics, brand or her fan base. I CAN tell you that this is by far the longest conversation I've ever had about Lady Gaga.
I'm not a fan, but she has David and I talking about her... and now YOU are reading a post from someone who knows very little about Lady Gaga.
Will that make you listen to her music more?
Are you more or less likely to buy Gaga merchandise (my assumption is that there is Lady Gaga merchandise that I've never seen or paid attention to)?
Maybe.. maybe not.
But you might be thinking "that Lady Gaga has some pretty smart marketing if some old guy on Amplify is talking about her"
And that might be just enough to get you to read the next article, notice a cover spread on the magazine rack or ask "Is that Lady Gaga on the radio?"
And so the influence of Lady Gaga grows.
My point. She did not buy an ad. She didn't follow me on Twitter. And as far as I know did not pay David to start this conversation.
She produced content that got our ATTENTION.
@JimKukral, author of "ATTENTION This Book Will Make You Money" was on the last episode of Profitable Social Media Radio (http://budurl.com/btrw) reminded me that getting attention from doing whatever Lady Gaga does besides sing (again, I can't think of one example) works because she is very talented.
All this conversation and ATTENTION stuff will not work in a vacuum. You have to start with something worth talking about.
If YOU have something worth talking about.. make sure it's out there in a form that others can talk about. Put it in a tweetable, bit sized phrase and let people know. a meme (idea) that can be shared by people beyond who you engage.
Buy ads if you can. Broadcast where you have a audience and LISTEN and LOVE (engage in conversation) to share, help and respond.
Do the right thing. Share a good thought.. and KNOW that others will be talking about it.
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