Social Media is Media, Media is What People are Talking About

I had been one of those people that was convinced by social media. It took me a month working on a social media campaign for Group82, to realize social media has not reached its potential yet. Everyone sees the huge audience on different social media sites, therefore they think they have to be on them as well.

The problem right now is that social media is not genuinely social. This is because of the people who think they can translate social media to real life. Everyone knows that it doesn’t mean you are social because you have a million followers on twitter or a billion Facebook friends. For some reason those numbers are still important to people. What has been frustrating to me is trying to find people who use social media platforms effectively. Successful companies like Apple do not need social media platforms to succeed. Where do you look for effective Twitter accounts? There are an infinite number of connections on Twitter that can be made but which ones are the most relevant to the company? Then finally after searching for specific CEOs’ and businesses’ Twitters, I came across this.


Social media may create conversation but that conversation is momentary. Tweets, trending topics, wall posts and news feeds changes constantly. What replaces that information? New information, so you post consistently. It is annoying when a person repeatedly posts statuses, so why wouldn’t it be when a business does?

If you were to have a face-to-face conversation with someone it is much easier to sound confident and knowledgeable. With the nature of social media it is not guaranteed that the text you use mimics the tone you speak with. Social media is brief and to the point, that is why people like it. The goal then is to provide people with information they want and are interested in but with out any fluff. I have realized the most successful people do not use social media to advertise their product or service, but rather use it to connect with and understand their clients and employees instantly. If they do not use it to connect with clients and employees, then they use it to give their perspective clients and market useful information that does not directly promote their own product or service. Once again, no one wants to hear how great you think your company is.