I think this is a first for this blog. A video.
I’ve never been a fan of internet based social networking as anything that is useful for business, but never quite had the words to describe why. Seth Godin has done it for me.
Networking is always important when it’s real, and it’s always a useless distraction when it’s fake. What the internet has allowed is an enormous amount of fake networking to take place.
That’s why you’ll never find me on sites like FaceBook or LinkedIn, and I never respond to invites. Internet based social networking works properly when you know the person you’re a friend of, and you really are a friend of theirs.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking about all of the web 2.0 style sites.
Twitter, the micro-blogging platform, can certainly be useful if used correctly. But it seems to me that 99.99% of marketers use it the way it was never intended. You have to ask yourself, is there really any use (or sense) in following people just because they follow you?
The phenomenon I’ve noticed on Twitter is that a spammer will follow me, and a couple of days later they unfollow me, I guess hoping that I will have followed them, and not noticed they’re no longer following me back.
Pointless distractions. We don’t need them do we?
And not being at all ironic here (as this isn’t pointless) this video sums it all up nicely for me in words I couldn’t quite express myself.
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-Frank Haywood
Tremendous post and one that is really close to my heart. I have just posted the first part of a short series relating to Twitter hoping to inject some reality into peoples thinking instead of them believing what the established “gurus” are telling them all the time about social media.
Your post, and including the video with Seth Godin, is great information. Another 2 min video from Seth in the same vein can be found on YouTube,( “Seth Godin on social networking and how to do it right”), which sums up all this total c**p that is flooding the Internet about getting rich with Twitter and social media.
Thanks
I have been reading a lot about this type of marketing and could never understand how one could create viable links and customers from that kind of platform. Social Networking only works when people actually listen to what you are saying. I get invites from people who are selling something so removed from what I write about it is obvious that they do not even read my content but just reply hoping I will buy their garbage.
I liken Social Networking to buying one of those useless e-mail lists where 99% of the e-mail addresses are 10 years old and the response is nil. A lot of effort reaching people who don’t purchase.
Most marketers use these site as another effort at ‘list building’ without building relationships with these people. I think these sites can be useful to meet people in your niche and relationships can be built from there. But mostly just a distraction stopping me from doing ‘proper work’.
Fantastic piece of video offering us all a mantra to live by.
I agree on what Seth Godin point of view On Internet Based Social Networking For Business and it is true having a personal attachment is really important specially when making business deals and etc. But in my opinion, what was the original goals and objectives of the social networking sites? If you know its history and origin you will understand how and why it has been evolve and now marketers and businesses using it for their own business agendas. It was not really designed to be that way at first. I remember when the first social networking site published on net it was actually a college thesis of an IT/CS students for the purpose of connecting their friend, schoolmates and alumni. And as is spreads around the country business minded people catch the attention of possible advertisements with social networking. These days you can never imagine how it evolves and keep on evolving. My point is this is a matter of a person which will choose on how he/she will use it for his own benefits.
Everyone has a point of view. What works for one does not necessarily work someone else. I have met some good people on Twitter and learned somethings from them.As for Seth Godin sometimes I find him to be condescending and ignore most of what he says.
One thing I noticed recently was a competitor of ours had quite a few links from Twitter. It seemed that the Twitter links were giving his site some juice.
So I figured it would be worth at least trying it out.
Other than that, I haven’t much business value in social sites. But, I do enjoy some of them socially. :O)