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If Social Media Is The Answer What IS The Question
If Social Media Is The Answer, What Is The Question? Articles By Bacal Where Social Media Meets Business
Social media is one of the most extreme examples of over-hype that I've seen in my lifetime, particularly with respect to the admonition that if your business doesn't use social media, it will become extinct. That's not to say social media has no value, but for most companies it will have either little value or actually end up as a cost center.
I've written a number of articles on social media and business that tend to the contrarian. After all, how can you stand out in the crowd (differentiate from competitors) if you do what the crowd does?
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Preface - Giving The Business To Social Media
This is the preface to an aborted book project on social media and how it's based on hype and hope rather than strong data in terms of business effectiveness. - Social Media Research Often Mistakes Causation With Correlation, and How Poor Research Misleads Businesses
In this brief article, we look at just one of the faults in most social media research. - Does Social Media Contribute to Depersonlization and Human Objectification? Could it be that social isn't so social? And that its thin relationships and illusions of relationships are turning people into objects to be used?
- Social Media Works When It Scales, Failes When It Doesn't
A major determininat of business success use of social has to do with whether the particular function scales. The more person to person contact requires individualization, the less successful social media is. - Advocate, Reporter, Consumer? Who Do YOU Listen To About Social Media? Understanding where an expert comes from can tell you how much credibility to give to what she says. Take a look at three different roles.
- Opportunity Costs and Loss of Focus: Two Dangers For Businesses Using Social Media If your business hasn't seen profits from using social media, this may be the answer for you.
- A Look At Why Popularity Doesn't Mean Effective When It Comes To Social Media It's easy to be overwhelmed by the sheer number of accounts on social media, but be careful, because "popular" doesn't always mean useful.
- So, The Use of Social Media For Customer Service - So Far a Big #Fail We think we know how powerful social media is for providing customer service, but what if it's wrong? The evidence still points to social media as a huge failure for providing customer service.
- Almost ALL Social Media Metrics Are Worthless People measure what's easy to measure, rather than what needs to be measured. Social media metrics are misleading because the real important stuff is next to impossible to assess. The result: Bad Business Decision
- Twitter Things That Make Me Go Hmmmmm There just nothing more to say about some things on Twitter
- What If We Lived Our Real Lives Like We Live On Twitter A bit of a humorous look at some Twitter realities.
- How To Understand Social Media - Look From The Inside AND From The Outside Unless you can look at social media as both a participant, and as an analyst from outside, you'll miss its strengths and weaknesses.
- Thin Relationships and Social Media - When A Friend Is Not A Friend Thin relationships feel like friendships, but they resemble very tenuous acquaintanceships, and can lead to disappointment.
- Some Uncommon, and Unpopular Observations About Human Communications and Social Media Social media may be here to stay, but lest we get lost in it, here are some short bytes on social media and how people communicate.
- More Uncommon Comments About Social Media Here's more short bytes of commentary on social media (mostly) that will challenge your thinking. Don't want to think? Go away!
- Idealizing Social Media Costs Millions In Waste You can't have a powerful social media strategy unless you ensure you understand social media and HOW PEOPLE REALLY USE IT. If you have an idealized perception of social media it's will cost you, and big time.
- How To Develop A Social Media Strategy In A Parable By Robert Bacal For people who prefer the blunt truth in story form, in this case, about social media strategy development.
- Developing A Social Media Strategy For Your Organization If you want to use social media for business purposes, read this first!
- Social Media Empowering Customers? BalderdashFind out why all the claims about social media empowering customers is just plain wrong, and based on a lack of understanding of power and influence.
- Social Media and 50 Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong Sadly we seem to be in an era where popularity determines what is "true". That so many people are saying simliar things about social media effectivenes does not make it so.
- The Church Of Social Media Ever strike you that all the talk about the power of media sounds remarkably like the sermons, faith and belief found churches? Except without G*D, and all?
- The Big Social Media Lie: Disagreement = "Don't Get It"When social media proponents talk, they label anyone who disagrees by saying "They Don't Get It". Why? Maybe because their fanaticism is not based on data, or track record, but simply on faith and belief, NOT evidence. Why else would they put down CEO'S, executives and so on?
- Why We Get So Much Faulty Information About Social Media We are inundated with poor data and incomplete information about social media that makes it appear far more useful for business than is warranted. Why? Conspiracy?
- If You Want To Measure Social Media ROI, Measure IT, Not Something Else It's not easy to measure whether social media works, but the solution isn't to use metrics that are really measures of activity and not results.
- Fact, Opinion, Truth in An Era of Information Overload, or.. There's so much information available to us, yet we may be getting less and less able to understand the world around us. Scary stuff!
- Giving The Business To Social Media Research ( Book Excerpt) Most of the research you see posted about the effectiveness of social media is biased, suffers from poor methodologies, and comes from sources with hidden agendas. No, not paranoia or conspiracy, but the result of zeal and lack of objectivity.
- Five Reasons You May Not Benefit From Spending Time On LinkedIn LinkedIn may be great if you are job-hunting, but is it really worth the investment of your time if that's not your goal? Here's five things to consider.