1 Good Reason – Social Marketing

The current brouhaha over social media ROI fed by articles such as the recent one in Business Week trashing social media snake oil salesmen caused me to think of what we’re missing.  Too often we focus on the engagement, interaction and strong communications we have in social media.  However, hundreds of people will read this blog post, but only a few will comment (if any at all) or post on Twitter about it.

In the early days of TV there was much questioning of it’s value as an advertising medium.  It was touted first as the most amazing advertising medium ever invented, and then panned as over hyped and under performing.  Social Media is in the same position today.  It is neither the be all, end all, nor is it incapable of delivering.  We are still learning how to use it, misuse it, and understand it.  We need to understand the impact and limits of our ability to analyze what happens in social interactions.

90/9/1= the ratio of people in any given social network who are lurkers/contributors/zealots.

• 90% of the people in any network, from 1000 people to 350 MM people will never contribute any content to the general population
• 9% of the people in any network will contribute information occasionally, either weekly or monthly.
• 1% of the people in any network will contribute most of the information (80% of the 80/20 rule.)

I have observed these ratios at work from inside networks in my work with Ripple6 who built large social media networks for major corporations.  These participation ratios have been observed in Wikipedia, Flickr, Facebook, and reported by Forrester,  The concept  is generally accepted by most major social media practitioners. 

Now perhaps the number isn’t 90/9/1, maybe it’s 80/15/5 or even 70/20/10.  It doesn’t matter if you think it’s 90/9/1 or 80/20 just remember that many more people will see your social media outreach than will interact with you about it. 

It is most important for marketers to remember that just like with TV, Radio and Print, it is impossible to tell how many people will see and react to any specific social media outreach with any accuracy.  We are not used to this type of uncertainty in online marketing because we believe that we can know everything that happens online.  But in social media, we are thrust back into the realm of estimating the impact of our efforts, just as we have done for decades with off line media.

Posted via email from ckieff’s posterous