Do You Have To Touch Every Conversation

I think this is a really good post, an important subject to think about. It is easy to get overwhelmed with the amount of sites out there, because there a zillion, but you can get involved in a certain amount in a real way. Your presence is seen when you interact and comment, and participate in the conversation, and you simply can’t do this in every network. You shouldn’t have to either to be able to have a social web presence, am I right?

While I think there is a value to ping.fm ( I actually just joined it today) I think the real value is in diving deeper into the networks that you ARE actively involved in. I like the title of this blog a lot…. Do you have to touch EVERY conversation?? Absolutely not.

I only understand what your point is in theory, but you and I have two different problems. You are trying to make conversation better and I’m trying to keep it going.

A good goal might be meaningful conversation…being engaged with your target audience to the point where you both get something out of the interaction. For some it’s possible to be present in numerous conversations across multiple platforms while for others, remaining engaged is only possible on a limited scale. As for Seth, he may not allow comments on his blog or be on Twitter, but he (promptly) responds to emails from the Tribe…to me, that’s being “in the conversation”.

I love this post. I’ve been debating on dropping my activity on a few of the social networks I’m on and after reading this post, it has given me the urge to drop a few more than originally planned :)

I haven’t the bandwidth to be everywhere; I haven’t all that much to say about many issues – but I’ll comment on some.

yes, Seth doesn’t have comments; he actually says why he doesn’t.

You want to comment about something he’s said? Blog about it. Point to his post. Trackbacks show.

If it’s interesting, you’ll get the benefits of the comments on your blog.

Stick it on friendfeed; see the comments on it there.

I’d rather have his blog as it is, without comments, than not have Seth’s blog.

Thank you for this post!

I have been trying to get into Twitter over the last week and although I get it and know why people use it – announcing what I’m doing or what I’m reading every two seconds of the day just isn’t my thing – although I’m still trying!

I agree in that I don’t think it’s possible to reach every conversation that you find relevant and trying to is just going to give you a headache!

Hey Chris,

Interesting points but I’m wondering do you have any research to back this up or is this just your point of view from inside the bubble?

I go to social media events all the time and we all drink the Kool-aid and love what we all do but outside of our group there are people who make money and have been making money for years selling products that have labels that don’t appeal to the social media crowd. These are labels that have been tested and sell to the masses making millions and millions of dollars a year.

We all live two to ten years in to the future. When is someone from social media going to make millions and millions per year?

There are doctors and lawyers at parties I go to that don’t read blogs, don’t watch online videos and have never heard of social media or Twitter. I’m not saying they are right or they are wrong or that we are right or that we are wrong. (I love Twitter but I can’t get into Pownce. I want to get into Friendfeed but just haven’t made the time.)

I’m just saying that there is a lot of preaching to the choir inside our bubble and there are people inside our bubble who have drank the kool-aid and believe the gospel of social media but they have yet to make any money from living in the future.

I see that we social-medians often look down on companies that “just don’t get it” but those companies are making and continue to make hundreds of millions of dollars. We all preach that those companies are doomed or dead but yet they continue to function they continue to employ they continue to manufacture products that sell and they don’t have blogs or even have twitter accounts and they certainly don’t have a comment section on their printed marketing materials.

Has anyone in social media made over 100 million dollars in one year?

Has anyone in social media made over 1 million dollars profit, not gross but profit in one year?

Do we in social media really get it? Or are we just happy with ourselves, our new found popularity and are we just proud of our self proclaimed untested, un-monetized labels?

If we have a product with a label that bloggers think is crappy but that people still want and that people still buy do we really need to touch any conversation in social media?

Are we, the ones in social media, the ones who really “just don’t get it?”

@Tim Street: Amen.

I wrote this in an email to a co-worker this weekend, but did not send it, thinking it might just be a little too negative. Now, after reading your comments and several other comments on some blogs that are part of the “Gen Y Mutual Admiration Society” I’m thinking it may just be dead-on accurate.

“I see all this Web 2.0 stuff we are doing for the brands like running on a treadmill… always more to do, nothing ever done, going nowhere, and getting no customers.. I am beginning to think it is all a crock of shit anyway, spewed out by HubSpot and those like them just to sell their services.. all this crap isn’t getting page views as Web 2.0 shit is just a bunch of people shouting at each other with megaphones! Nobody’s really BUYING anything.. they are all SELLING. And, as long as you can sell Web 2.0 “air” and get people to buy into it, you’re good.. like a big MLM scam… I believe in relationship marketing, but I think the bubble has passed where there now are more people getting into it to sell rather than buy.

People/companies that got in a long time ago, like narms.com, tourneycentral.com, guykawasaki, chrisbrogan, dooce etc are doing just fine because they have traffic, momentum, etc. but trying to launch something new get people to give a flip?? I’m thinking it is a long, long, long road uphill, paved with rocks… “

Hey Rufus,

I still think social media is valuable. I make money from doing it but I’m not yet making a really good living or making millions.

I started a blog last year about the monetization of online video. I didn’t make any money at it at first but now a year later I get paid to speak, I get paid to consult and there are video projects that come my way because I blog about viral videos. I also happen to produce a video series that gets millions of views so that doesn’t hurt either.

I’m not saying social media is bad, I’m just saying I’d like to see some research and see where people are making real money using social media.

NBC Chief Executive Jeff Zucker’s commented sticks in my head: “Our challenge with all these [new-media] ventures is to effectively monetize them so that we do not end up trading analog dollars for digital pennies.” (New York Times, March 10, 2008)

@Tim Oh, I’m there with you. I think SM in the mix is good, but like everything else, if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

Way back in my puppy days, I worked for this really large Fortune 500 company who saw the future of at-retail services move from product assembly and display into merchandising, etc.. They “set the world on fire” and after two years, we made our first million in revenue. There was a lot of back-slapping, hi-fives.. we knew everything about this business.

A year later, I left to join a competitor and REALLY got to know the industry. If you weren’t in the $10million + club, you just weren’t a player. These folks did not spend hours designing a form or week-long retreats learning management techniques; these guys were front-line “get er dun” types, from the top boss down to the at-retail reps. That was the way REAL at-retail merchandising got done.

And the Fortune 500 guys at my old employer still kept drinking their own Kool-Aid and in 2004, they folded.. got bought out by Canadians no less (not that there is anything wrong with that…)

These Web 2.0 guys remind me of that Kool-Aid drinking crowd. When you get inside this Web 2.0 bubble, your view of everything can be very myopic. In the past year, it has turned from a community into a shout-down, shout-out fest where everybody is talking and nobody is listening.

Now, I will go quiet on this topic as I have already barked way too much.

PS I like Jeff Zucker’s quote. I think I will keep it and use it one day.. thanks.

Whatever social medium you use, touch as many as you can; at the end of the day, social media = relationships and that is where the real value is.

I am in the plurk, but I hate. goodbye

Seems to me that it comes down to creating an effective strategy for ‘out-posting’ as you would call it Chris. Taking your advice, I have become active in four outposts, and aggregate information and capture my own content with two. Before I sign up for yet another service, I always ask myself, who am I trying to connect with and how will this serve my strategy.

Great post. I agree with you Chris. Ithink we each have to choose the social media tools and communication strategies that best work for us. Do you is what I say and release the need to judge why others are doing something different. They do what works for them. And that’s what makes the world so groovy. We all have different approaches. Learn from others. Take the lessons and information you need for your life and business, and move on as my Internet savvy 69 year old mother with a Facebook account and several email addresses says.

After understanding what a polymath is (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymath)it brings me back to a fishing quote by G. Love “dreams are like fish you gots to keep reelin’”. A couple of threads through all these comments: (1) point, (2) passion, (3) personality and, (4) perseverance (source: Short and Taton). I would argue you if you can’t commit, or keep reelin’ it’s not a worthwhile or sustainable social media tool.

Fishing is a great analogy.

Brings back memories of taking customers to fish north of Ontario, Canada. The real fans brought their fly rods while the rest toted regular type ones.

Nonetheless, we all had a good time.

So I have elected to learn and join communities via LinkedIn, Facebook Twitter, but am smart enough to read others’ blogs to at least keep me informed of the tools they are using.

I really appreciate, and relate to, this post.

Just last week, I started following you and some others on Twitter considered to be “on top of it.” For the life of me, I just can’t keep up with Twitter, and I can’t get the hang of it. Yes, I understand it, but it sometimes overwhelms me.

On the other hand, I know the only way I’ll figure something out is to just jump in and give it a try. So we’ll see what happens. But there’s no way to keep up with everything going on in the social universe, and doing so means you’ll do it all at a mediocre level, at best.

Too many people, too many conversations. You can’t be everywhere, unless you are Q.

This is a constant topic I’m discussing with artists. My big thing is not wasting time in places you don’t have any positive feedback or revenue from. Why waste time in Myspace or Pownce if noone is there that is worth talking to? or believes you are worth networking with?

@Michael Darwin – Even though I really have nothing further to add to this conversation, I had to give you props for the reference to Q. Brilliant.

I Agree

At what point do the social media platforms become just one big playground and everyone finally realizes all this new conversation bollocks is just the slick, virtual version of all the old conversation bollocks?

Yes, you can make contacts and money by hanging out in bars and golf clubs and conferences et al and chatting with like-minded people too. And guess what? These are called conversations also.

“I don’t do this because I don’t like it…” Of course not Chris. Why should you like everything just because it’s new and comes through your computer. Just like the people who prefer to hang out at the chess club instead of the golf club.

I don’t understand how normally intelligent people are so starry-eyed over shiny graphics and the fact that you can have business conversations in your pyjamas from home.

Chris Brogan in comments:

“I’ve doubled my business earnings from Twitter.”

That would be an excellent article…

d

Completely agree that you cannot join every conversation going on out there. It is important to find the sites that work for you, but also pay attention to the other conversation occurring.