Is Social Media Relevant & Relative?

David Bullock and I were having a conversation about how people “use” social media like mass media. Blasting out messages that are not relevant or relative to other peoples interest.

The power of social media rest in using it to communicate content that is relevant and relative to a specific audience.

What Is Relevant & Relative?

Lets start with definitions so we can understand the context of relevant and relative social media activities.

Relevant means:

1. bearing upon or connected with the matter in hand; pertinent to your market: 

Relative means:

1. something having, or standing in, some relation to something else.
2. existing or having its specific nature only by relation to something else;
3. having relation or connection to your market.
4. having reference or regard; relevant to your markets interest

Now given these definitions for individuals and businesses to create traction with their social media activities they “MUST” think about relevant issues and relative audiences they want to reach. If we don’t then all we’re doing is pushing out mass media that isn’t relevant and relative to our audience. Sounds like a lot of people on Twitter and in mass media.

Where, What And Who?

In order to maximize the use of social media one must first think about where, what and who.  Where, what and who is relevant to understanding the dynamics of your market and how to create attention, attraction and an affinity to you instead of your competitors. A few details to put things into context:

1. Where is an indication of location. Location is an indication of market presence. Market presence is where you want to be otherwise you’ll end up communicating to the wrong market. So where is your market? How can you find them? Answers to these two questions takes knowledge of social technology that will save you time and make you more productive, Where is relevant!
2. What is an indication of interest. Once you found where your market is then the next step is to understand “what is the markets interest”. Interest is reflected by traffic, readers and propagation of content that is in context to the markets interest. Knowing what is of interest to your market enables you to think about what topics, conversations etc. you should create that pulls the market to you and away from them, your competition.
3. Who are people you want to influence. Influence is and always will be part of any effective sales process. However influence is no longer about mass media rather about “social media”. To understand social media read “Again, What is Social Media?” and hopefully this puts social media into context that is relevant and relative to “how” you reach people and influence them with relevant and relative content.

Where, What and Who are just the beginning stages of laying out an effective social media strategy. Finding the answers requires thinking, use of the right technology and the skills to do both.  However, once you gain the where,what and who knowledge (David Bullock’s expertise) then you have to focus on the why, how and when (what I focus on). Unless you learn how to be relevant and relative you are likely to become irrelevant and not relative. Get it?

Why, how and when will be covered soon.

Does this put things into context?  What say you?

Tagged as: blog marketing, brand marketing, business disruption, business relations, business transformation, creative capital, innovation economy, jay deragon, relative, relevant, social capital, social commerce, Social Media, social media roi, social technology, twitter