Webnames.ca Staff
I do a lot of research on the trends in Social Media and where its future may lay. Professional marketers bang on and on about how it is time consuming for companies to be involved in social media with no clear return on investment.
Large and small businesses are jumping into social media for more transparency and engagement with their customers but most have no way of justifying the headcount that comes with participating in this sphere.
I don’t tweet for work (well not often) but I do have a personal account. Currently I follow 190 people/companies and about 180 follow me. I follow 2 friends and my sister and the rest is made up of other artists, art bloggers, eco nuts, work related people, random people I found to be funny, 3 celebrities, many food columnists and a whack of Vancouver neighbourhood tweeters.
I think of this stream that comes in, as digested news and musings from people I don’t know, but over time like and trust as we have similar ideologies.
When I see a post from one of the art bloggers about the gallery openings in town this weekend I think (a) I could go to this one or that one and (b) thank you for taking the time to find out what is happening and sending it off to me so that I did not have to do the painful research myself.
Some of neighbourhood tweeters I follow will alert me to some food event or farmers market or some such. I didn’t have to do a thing.
Tonight I am making a grilled cheese sandwich that I found from a link to the Grilled Cheese Academy (www.grilledcheeseacademy.com) that was posted by someone I follow.
I’ve had people suggest names for a new art co-op I’m starting. I’ve suggested a hotel in Italy to another. I read tons of the articles that work related people post and always find something relevant that I can apply to my job.
At the F5 Expo earlier this week, Malcolm Gladwell said “The first and most significant fact about the Internet and all the social media technologies that have been spun out about the Internet, it is an engine of weak social ties and not strong ties.” I don’t disagree, but when good recommendations come streaming at me in easy to read chunks, then those “weak social ties” become valuable to me by their quality and timeliness.
The upshot of Twitter? “I told two friends, and they told two friends and so on, and so on….”
I like getting recommendations. I like giving recommendations. As a business you should be hoping that someone is recommending you to me or that I am recommending you to them.