Everyone will miss almost everything you share on social media
Those were the words of Columbia University Professor and technology reporter, Sreenath Sreenivasan (@sree) speaking to a large audience at the University of Washington this evening.
There’s just too much stuff and too many people for anyone to realistically see what you share.
- Nearly half a billion tweets each day.
- We upload 72 hours of video to YouTube every minute. Heck, as Sree says, if you want to hide your most secretive corporate video, store it at YouTube.
- Over 1 Billion posts on Facebook per day.
- LinkedIn has over 200 million users increasingly sharing posts with their connections.
Then why is that you want to be using social media. To reach the influencers. As Sree explained, “Your followers are not as important as the followers of the people who follow you.”
You need to get in the social media game in a real and meaningful way, per Sree, to connect with and build relationships with the influencers, whether they be reporters, bloggers, twitterers with an attractive audience, or influencers on other social media such as Facebook, Google+, or Pinterest.
You need to harness the power of social media tools that enable you to identify and engage relevant influencers.
We’re just starting to grasp the downstream impact of sharing, per Sree. All we know is that it is huge. Connect with relevant influencers and your ‘sharing’ power grows exponentially .
When it comes to the Internet, the majority of lawyers and law firms are unfortunately fixated on reaching their clients and prospective clients by pushing material at them. That means lawyers and firms want to use social media as a tool to deliver content to clients and prospective clients.
The problem with treating social media for direct delivery is that clients and prospective clients are apt not to see what you share — unless you get to the point of spamming.
Rather than focusing on the impossible with social media — delivering info to clients, focus n what works connecting with the influencers — they’re the ones who can build your word of mouth reputation.