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September 03, 2008

Comments

There seem to be quite a bit of conversations in social media marketing blogs on the topic of social media scaling/not scaling .
Here's the latest of a long series of post I read on the subject. I like it: http://overtonecomm.blogspot.com/2008/09/scaling-social-media-requires-community.html
We're certainly used to the scaling power of say, advertising, which is huge and almost limitless(but with a very poor level of engagement).
Social media is people to people. It can't scale in the same way. It takes time to build relationships and manage them. So may be a team of marketers can scale to hundreds of relationships. And it's probably enough.
Social media is like a rocket. You fuel the first tank and you hope that's enough for the second tank (fueled by your influencers) to help you land it where you want.

Exactly - social media is about relationships - and you cant just look at it with a business lens and ROI.

I also prefer fans over influencers- they are not your influencers unless they choose to be...;)

What many forget is that this is no longer about what the brand wants but what we the consumer. sorry feeling a bit snarky today

I agree with the above and add that from a much longer term perspective, gained by chunking-up trends we are seeing now, social media will be seen as being about making smaller groups more effective by focusing intent...and not scaling up the participation in hopes of old style mass media business models. Smaller (like-minded)communities that actually accomplish getting truly organized will achieve the better results and be socially supported. This may or may not have anything to do with marketing...and scalability, while seemingly important now, may be best set aside till we better understand some more of the emerging digital social norms that will stick from this formative period. In the meantime, if you are impatient(who isn't?), I submit that really understanding the mechanics of small victories is more important.


David - yes, yes ,yes. You totally get it! Understanding scale - but not to scale it up but to weave through it.

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