The Internet is the new global frontier for today’s marketers. Between Twitter, LinkedIn, Four Square, Facebook, Second Life, blogging, Friendster…well, I could keep going on, and on, and on, but I won’t. I think it’s enough to say that there’s no shortage of social media options out there for you and your company, and if you’re not taking advantage of the power of social media marketing you’re missing out.
The question is, when it comes to social media how much is too much?
With Social Media, You Get What You Give
There are some companies and businesses out there that can get away with being what are known as broadcasters in the social media world; they send out announcements and thoughts to every one of their followers, but because they have literally thousands of followers they’re not going to take time to do the same.
Remember that freaky kid in high school who used to sit in the corner and talk to himself? Sometimes he had something cool to say, but for the most part you just stopped listening. That’s how it works when you’re a broadcaster on Twitter.
To get the most out of your social media campaign you have to take the time to interact with your followers, and unless you have a dedicated social media department that does nothing but dream up fun stuff for your marketing campaign you’re not going to be able to do that if you’re running a social media campaign on 50 different fronts.
So How Much Is Too Much?
I’m not going to sit here and tell you which social media venues to run your social media campaign on. Everyone has their favorites. Here’s what I do recommend:
If you can’t consistently create new content for each venue, you’re resorting to automation or you never have time to reply when people message you back, you’re doing too much.
Social media metrics should be as qualitative as possible. Anyone can send out automated bots, but it takes a real social media mogul to use it to reach out to their clientele. Social media is about people connecting with people. The minute you’re too busy to do that you’ve already lost the social media game. It’s time to step back, cull your social media activities, focus on the ones generating the most interaction and move on from there.