Quality not Quantity the key to Social Media success

As of today I have exactly 17,309 subscribers/followers/friends/colleagues over my various social media networks. These are personal, business, and organisational accounts. Many more if we count account pages and organisations I share administration rights.

So what? So what indeed!

Of course this is nothing compared to a particular young person I know. He has 10s of thousands of connections, so many I gave up years ago even talking social network numbers. One video post alone spurred nearly a million views and 1000s of comments that lead to equal amount of subscribes/likes/follows over the various networks. Of course this young person doesn't sell anything, it's a profiling game that strokes the ego very nicely.

If on the other hand your job is selling products/services/ideas the question of raw numbers is much less important. Numbers should be just the start of your strategy. It is in fact the type/sort of people you should be most concerned about. In other words the 'quality' of your connections.

As the image below illustrates certain people are much more influential in connecting with other people than others. Imagine if the central message here was a recommendation to subscribe to a particular news service. Imagine now that you have received a message from a trusted associate recommending the news service. Emotionally and statistically you are approximately 10 times more likely to take up that same recommendation than a cold recommendation from a random/unknown source. Let that sink in for a while.

Quality networks are more important than the raw numbers

One of the best tactics I use is to conduct an audit of your social media networks. Rank people and organisations into relevance for categories. Divide these into logical communications groups and start becoming more relevant to more people over night. Your contacts will reward you with a smile because "Quality Rocks!" .

SnapChat for Pleasure & Business

What are you talking about? Snap to it...

For the uninitiated SnapChat is an App for your smart phone, officially described as a visual messaging app. It uses video and/or photo accompanied with text that can be sent to a select group of recipients. The best way to think about it is as a visual text message.

However it is the temporary nature of the images that last only for 10 seconds that is the most original function of the application service.


 *TM

It is very popular among teenagers and twenty somethings that reportedly love the anonymous nature of the communications. Messages abound about it's use in so called 'sexting', where body parts are filmed or photoed and sent to a 'friend' for a peek before disappearing. Some will find this disturbing, others liberating, depending on your age and motivations.

Naturally much speculation has been made about it's use in criminal activity such as threatening behaviour or stake outs of houses or objects. The apparent attractiveness being that there is no evidence of the images left to incriminate anyone.

Can it be used in business of some sort?

We've discovered that SnapChat has the ability to send these images messages to groups and this has been used by some innovative organisations to convey advertising messages or information messages.

If you're looking to differentiate yourself from the mob of social media promotions and wish to target switched on smart phone users then SnapChat is the business.

*TradeMark of SnapChat inc

Search Gravity rules revealed

Search Gravity™

When Isaac Newton founded his ideas about gravity under the apple tree little did he know that in the new cyber world the same rules would apply.

While 'gravity' may seem a strange way of approaching the impact of your online assets. It's one of those concepts that makes more sense the more you work with it.

OI Organise Internet's successful search methodology is focussed around the realities and rules of online gravity. "We've been developing this methodology for 10 years now and it works. The methodology helps us keep ahead in the often shady world of SEO" Says Dave Abrahams, Principal Consultant of OI Organise Internet an specialist Australian search innovation firm.
Clearly the firm isn't going to reveal it's latest innovations it is keen to spread the word about their  research & development.

The first rule of Search Gravity™ is about QUALITY. 

We make clear to all our clients that when they are building assets in cyber space they need to be quality assets, everything from websites, Social media, videos, blogs needs to be good quality. Using dodgy tricks to attract hits, likes etc simply ruins your online reputation and effectively acts like anti-matter. Likewise poor marketing efforts degrade your organisation, poor grammar and oversized images have negative effects too. Quality is the magic formula of the building gravity in cyber space. Quality differentiates you from the space junk and white noise out there online.

The second rule of Search Gravity™ is about creating MASS.

To use an obvious pun "It's not rocket science" to create online or cyber mass. It is however difficult to achieve in any organisation. Competing agendas and diverse responsibility chains make the task a challenge. You really need to establish common links and reference rules .This will sew together an organisation's assets and not tear them apart. For example when the Marketing department launch a new Social Media campaign they may be inadvertently diluting your online mass by creating parallel offerings. "We see this a lot in our business" says Abrahams "Many campaigns have different names and syntax to the original product or service. The names may seem cool but they play into the hands of competitors who can take over a top search ranking".

Rule three of Search Gravity™ is about Attraction & Acquisition

Just like any aspiring planet you need to attract mass to get bigger. In the cyber world this can be facilitated by partnering with organisations that not only link to your offerings; blogs, product specials or campaigns but also apply the quality and mass rules that you've created previously.
"We often negotiate on behalf of clients with third parties for positive cyber partnerships. Naturally it's up to the clients to sign off on the partnerships but more often than not this works out to be mutually beneficial" says Dave "In some cases we've even started partnerships that lead to mergers or buy outs"

These are OI's three rules of creating Search Gravity™. Sure they are not the sort of thing that NASA will be adopting anytime soon but gee they are an easy way to conceptualise, organise and report to clients. We're developing new tools and techniques all the time that use these metrics and methodologies. Feel free to talk to us about advanced ideas or campaigns.

Fast Videos Inspire Us

PixelMache a Social Media Machine!

Here's a sober Social Media tip that demonstrates how video blogging via our award winning Pixelmache.tv product can build your brand responsibly.

I shot, branded, published and distributed this video in less than half an hour.

Innovation Award presentation for Pixelmache.tv

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