No, please don't. There are already about 10,000 spammy 'social media gurus' to every 1 real twitter user.
I'm yet to see any compelling evidence that this has any effect on anything except the signal to noise ratio of what is already a very noisy space.
Interaction of individuals with businesses in social networking sites tends to fall under the category of 'brand loyalty', as in, people already like the brand, and therefore are willing to publicly associate themselves with it. If you already have that kind of brand loyalty, then you don't need 'social media' as a marketing tool - your customers will probably do it for you with very little encouragement.
I think the real business opportunity of sites like Twitter and Facebook is becoming a self-styled 'social marketing' guru and then following 10 million people. That's what everybody else seems to be doing.
Appreciate your thoughts. We have seen evidence that raising your profile and brand on Twitter does lead to sales of products, books, services. An element of it is establishing yourself as an expert in your niche but there is a thin line between actually being an authority figure and positioning yourself as one with no substance to back it up.
I'm yet to see any compelling evidence that this has any effect on anything except the signal to noise ratio of what is already a very noisy space.
Interaction of individuals with businesses in social networking sites tends to fall under the category of 'brand loyalty', as in, people already like the brand, and therefore are willing to publicly associate themselves with it. If you already have that kind of brand loyalty, then you don't need 'social media' as a marketing tool - your customers will probably do it for you with very little encouragement.
I think the real business opportunity of sites like Twitter and Facebook is becoming a self-styled 'social marketing' guru and then following 10 million people. That's what everybody else seems to be doing.