After 17 years of running businesses I have always marveled at the fact that we need to name everything in the business world.  We have to give everything a three letter abbreviation or we have to create a buzz word for something that no one really gets, but heck if it has a catchy phrase, then by all mean it has to work!

I do admit some of the names are so catchy that even I throw them out there.  Like Web 2.0 or SERP ( Search Engine Results Positioning ).  It really is fun to toss these words and acronyms out there, it makes you feel like a doctor does when they use a word like ‘pharyngitis’, a soar throat.  I am reminded of a skit from Jerry Seinfeld were he comically references that even doctors don’t know everything and the reason for the big office in their already big office is so they can go inside close the door and exclaim, “What the heck was that, I have never seen that before.”

Well welcome to marketing using FaceBook, Twitter and any other ‘Social Hubs’ ( aka a place people go online to be social ).  Yes we as professionals we often go into our back rooms and wonder how the heck did this baby become one of the top tweets and YouTube’s videos of all time?

Yes he is cute, but…really all time?  So this leads business owners to say “Why didn’t the campaign we worked on and spent $15,000 on, work?  We had the cute baby, we had the girls, we had the information, but we only got 2,000 ‘retweets’.  What the heck!?”

Get ready for one of those catchy phrases we throw around in the marketing sphere.  Let me explain—-Why your campaign didn’t work is because you didn’t truly set up your ‘Social Space’.  Yep another phrase to make us marketing folks feel smart.  You didn’t push away the garbage and invest time in your social hubs.  You spent the money and you sent out the status updates and the tweets, but you didn’t socialize, you advertised.

The best way to analysis of Social Space is high-school.  You have the popular kids, the drama kids, the nerds and you have the bullies.  Online you will have the same crowd.  How did you survive high-school?  How did you get that ‘one true friend’?  Time and trial an’ error.  You didn’t walk into the school demand what you wanted and get it.  You had to take time and build relationships either with your fellow students or your teachers.  You spent time and not everything you did worked.

Your Social Space online is created the same way.  You need to become ‘friendly’ not just popular.  You have to reach out on a SOCIAL level.  You need to invest yourself into the Social Space and if you don’t, then get out.  You can’t be a fake friend and except results.

Many companies are now hiring social media ‘experts’ and what does this job in-tale?  Status updates, tweets and comment control.  They post, they reply and they give a face to the company.  Think this isn’t a full time job?  Try having even 1000 friends in your living room and in 6 hours talk to each one of them and make sure no one feels out of place or ignored.  It isn’t going to happen.  Social media experts are running into this same issue.  They can’t talk to everyone and they can’t please everyone.

The solution?  Team up with the social ‘hotties’.  Back to high-school— you wanted to be in the cool group, well in your Social Space you need to find the cool groupies and enlist them to support you and assist you in the spread of content.  You can’t create your Social Space by just throwing money at it and you can’t do it over night.  If you own a business get your company in gear now and start your social hubs.  Get people talking about you even if it is just your mother and sisters for right now.

***The baby is an example that we never know what is going to catch fire in the online social world.. so keep trying you blooper outtakes may make you more money then your masterful commercial. Don’t be shy, you can’t make friends being shy.***

Personal example: ( Maybe I should of been more shy, but over 5,000 views in 3 days isn’t too shabby! ) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Krsfr97u2NM

Technorati Tags: Advertising, Content, Geolocation, LIME, Marketing, SEO, Social Space, Website

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