While I prepare to announce the second member of my POSM I was pondering today the importance of being “included”. No matter how confident we are in ourselves or our position we all want to be included. Just look at what happens when some new tool comes out that measures our impact based on friends or followers. 
We love to be graded and give grades. Not me. Well, not anymore.
It actually all started when I published my case study on B2B social media and was met with resounding silence. I spent a lot of time writing up this three part series because I had heard from dozens of prolific social media “experts” that “we need more case studies!”. As they say, the silence was deafening, and I was honestly hurt. I know people read the material, hundreds of people, but nobody seemed to want to share with others or their thoughts with me, and I took that personally. I lost a lot of motivation to blog and take part in my community, which included these people always talking about the need for these case studies.
I told this story to a good friend who is NOT involved in social media, but does know communications quite well, but more importantly has known me for a long time. He said:
“It seems to me that in your blogging/micro-blogging world you create artificial indicators of success; numbers that somehow validate what you contribute. How many subscribers do I have? What is my Twitter grade? How many people @ me per day? How many Fakebook friends do I have? If you are simply writing posts to get more of those things than you have strayed from the original mission of your blog.”
Firstly, I still love the term “Fakebook”. Secondly, he is dead right. So about 45 days ago I stopped looking at metrics. I don’t worry if people unfollow me on Twitter because I’m talking too much Red Sox. I have not bothered to look at my Feedburner stats or even the amount of readers on this blog. In fact, instead of collecting all of these fake indicators myself, I’m cleaning up the amount of folks I follow on Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed. Life is too short to be drowning in noise.
I still measure these things for my company, because in that instance we have a direct correlation between these numbers and real business. But I’m in the business of communications and conversation, and that does not include worrying about fake indicators of impact. It is only when you stop worrying about success that success comes your way.
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Completely agree – which is why I no longer agonize over whether or not my Twitter followers will gain enlightenment over what I post; I think twice before I accept Facebook friend requests from people who I have to think more than 30 seconds about who they are; and and I don’t mind if I go two weeks without engaging at all because the other areas of my life are too busy.
This kind of reminds me of an interesting article/study a couple of weeks ago on how the more “friends” a Facebook user has, the more likely they are to be narcissistic. While, I don’t believe this to be true across the board – I think we’ve all tied too much of our social media success to the number of people who follow us, read us, etc. Goes back to this…Who has more impact – someone with 50 followers who take in everything they say, utilize the knowledge and disseminate from there? Or someone with 5,000 followers that only skim over the information provided but don’t utilize it?
Does this apply only to your personal blog/twitter/FB? I can’t really translate this to the corporate world when asked to measure/justify social media programs. Are you still measuring and tracking at work?
@LeslieDenson Glad you agree, I think numbers are what you make of them and your analogy to 50 vs 5000 followers is dead on. I think folks get way to bogged down in numbers.
@MegT Hey there! Definitely still measuring work stuff (see last paragraph), but to be honest the numbers are just not about followers, readers or subscribers. They are ALL about % of social media sales leads!
Kyle:
Clearly I didn’t comment on your case study ON your blog, but I have spoken about it elsewhere. Two weeks ago, I referenced your study when giving a presentation on blogging to the San Antonio chapter of RPSA, specifically talking about the importance of measurement and comparing metrics against the original business goals. I also included a link to your posts as part of a delicious page that the speakers created for all of the attendees. Check out this page: http://delicious.com/PRSanAntonio/Bryan+SocialMediaMeasurement
I guess I’d say not to forget that we have different ways of passing on the value of the content that we consume. Sometimes it’s leaving a comment for the author (one that as a blogger, I know I appreciate, so not being critical of your take in the post above); on other occasions, it’s bookmarking and sharing in our RSS reader; and sometimes, it’s working it into one of our own presentation.
So, Kyle, I hope this comment offers you at least a sliver of vindication for the hard work you put into researching and writing up the case study. I’m certainly thankful for it.
Bryan Person | @BryanPerson
LiveWorld
You are right Bryan and I certainly appreciate all you have done for me in the inspiration department.
I think that what I was trying to say as well is to not worry about the comments and the numbers, but be more focused on the things I can’t measure like the impact your blog and the SMBs have had on my practice of social media. Those are things that can not be measured, but certainly are, as the commercial says, “Priceless”.
/kff
Kyle … thanks again for another post that deals with ‘real life’ and is relevant to so many. (I checked out your blog for the 1st time with i found a post on ‘lurkers’). The ‘real-ness’ is what i appreciate.
I’ve been becoming more and more engaged in SM over the past 3 months – definitely noticing myself ‘cheking’ the #’s (Most on Twitter). Though i have not been at this long over the past week or so i had to ‘relax’ a bit … in that short week it felt freeing :)
So what’s the point … Life just isn’t all about the #’s!
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http://twitter.com/franswaa
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