THOUGHT (aka Centric's Blog)

If social media is a home, then social media interaction is like meeting in a bar.

Social media is a place where people get together to talk to their friends. It’s a place to find new friends. It’s a place to share stories—in the form of words, photos, and video—and discover new friends.

So, let me repeat that: social media interaction is like meeting in a bar.

A bar is not a store. People do not go to a bar to shop. They aren’t there to look for a new pair of shoes, a flat-panel TV, or even to find the best price on a bottle of Macallan. Nor are they there to find the sports scores or to learn how to re-roof their house.

And this is what separates social media from commerce sites like Amazon and Ebay, and from functional sites like Yahoo and Google.

Thinking of social media interaction as meeting in a bar can help shape an effective social media program. Think of your presence as the bar, and create a great place where people can relax with friends and discover new ones, and you’ll reap great rewards.

Treat it like a program designed to sell stuff, and don’t be surprised when everyone gets together and throws you out of the bar.

Ready to dive into social media? Great! But before you dive in, remember one thing: people treat profiles as their homes.

Let me repeat this: a profile is a home.

Would you like it if someone went through your home, looked at your stuff, and tried to sell you things based on what you have? Of course not. This is why Facebook’s Beacon technology was widely reviled. What we accept on Gmail—data scraping to serve targeted ads—is unacceptable in our home.

Keep the concept of “a profile is a home” in mind when planning any campaign, and everything will make a lot more sense.

• If you’re developing a widget or an app, ask yourself: Would I have this in my home? Because that’s what you’re asking people to do—to put something into their home.
• If you’re creating a profile on a social network, ask yourself: is this a cool home? Would people want to come and hang out here? A cool home is more than decoration and eye candy. A cool home is about stories, about the real people who live there, and about the other guests who stop by.
• If you’re going to be reaching out to people on a social network, ask yourself: am I comfortable knocking on my neighbors’ door? Do I have something to say to them if they open their door? Am I interesting enough to be invited back in?

Ask yourself these questions. And if the answer is “no,” rethink.

“Well, social media may be big, and there may be a lot of people using it, but my audience isn’t there,” you say. “They’re just too technical, too specialized, too old.”

Well, you may be surprised. We recently uncovered significant social media potential for one of the most unlikely clients you could imagine: a convention center. Think about that. This is a building. And yet, there were thousands of photos and dozens of videos all happily tagged with their name.

Best of all, if you want to find out if your audience is in social media, it’s as simple as doing a quick search of 4 popular sites: MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, and Flickr. Use the search function to look for:

• The name of your company
• Names of your brands
• Specific target industries, like “plumbing” or “electrochemical research”
• Professional or special interest groups, like “IEEE” or “first time moms”

You may be very surprised at the results. And even if you aren’t, you’re only a hop away from Google, where you can search for “name of your audience” + “social network.” You’ll quickly find there are many more social networks than you can imagine. Including ones as broad as “social networks for moms,” to as narrow as “social networks for oenophiles.”

Happy searching!

The other argument we hear about social media is that, “Well, isn’t this just another web boom all over again? Isn’t it just a flash in the pan?”

Well, even if it is a web boom all over again, consider this: how dependent are you on multiple companies that simply didn’t exist a dozen years ago? Companies like Google? Yeah, there was a bust, but the first web revolution changed the world.

To see how deeply entrenched social media is, all it takes is a quick trip over to Alexa. Out of the top 10 US websites, 6 are social. Out of the top 10 global sites, 7 are social.

This isn’t a blip on the radar. This is a massive, well-entrenched global shift.

So, ask yourself: can I afford to be invisible in the largest sites in the world?

This is the first post in a short series "blowing up" common myths about social media. These are real short and easy to digest. I hope you enjoy!

One of the big things we hear when we start talking about social media is that “it’s just for kids. Our audience is older/more sophisticated/moms/retirees, so they couldn’t possibly be on Facebook or MySpace or YouTube.”

That sounds totally reasonable. It’s also almost completely wrong.

Let’s look at the raw numbers:

• 37% of US adults engage in social networking every month, excluding teens (eMarketer)
• 70% of teens use social networking every month (eMarketer)

Pretty impressive numbers. In fact, if you do the math on the adult number, you’re looking at over 100,000,000 people in the US alone. One hundred million adults who use social networks every month.

And social networks are only a small part of social media!

So, ask yourself: is a pool of over 100 million adults—remember, this excludes teens—big enough to fish in?

Source = eMarketer