Does Social Media Really Work? | Yakezie Reader Insights | Yakezie Forums

Hi all,

My friends are all on it and I read about it all the time, but does social media work for you guys?  Facebook, Twitter, FB, tweets…  Call me old school, but I feel like mobile phone, email, instant messaging, webpage, forums, blogs, isn't that enough media streams already?!?!  Maybe I'm getting old…  Sounding grouchy like a grandpa, "Sonny, I remember when I was your age, we sent mail through the post office!"

Bah Humbug!

Grandpa Buck

retireby40 said:

Get off my lawn!  heh heh

Social media is not doing much for me right now. I'm just not connected enough yet, but I think it will keep getting bigger so I'll keep plugging away.

Facebook is quickly becoming one of the biggest sites around.  Many people still don't know what RSS is but they have a Facebook profile. 

Twitter is also huge and also where many get information from these days.

I think the more you can market the better.

Twitter has helped a lot. Still haven't seen too much of an inflow from FB.

I got a bunch of traffic from facebook today. My wife promoted the baby post so her friends came over to see.

Semi-grandpa, haha, I'm still debating.  I just have my hands full with all the older media forms, don't know if I can handle adding Facebooking and Twittering…  We'll see.

moneycone said:

I'm a semi-grandpa – fine with Twitter, haven't gotten to FB!  

 

With Twitter the biggest advantage is getting to know your peers and it is relatively low maintenance if you have the right plugins installed.  

I think Facebook is good for "spamming" your friends with your links. Just think, it only takes one good blog post to be seen by literally thousands of people (at least the title).  For example, whether you set up a Facebook fan page or not, if you "share" one of your stories it can be seen by all of your friends (well, at least those of whom did not block you for sharing too many of your own post). If 10% of your friends also share your story, it can be seen by all of their friends. And so on, and so on. 

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that someone's blog post will go viral much quicker than someone's tweet will.  There are so many people that spend ridiculous amounts of time on Facebook that someone is bound to see a shared post. When I hear twitter, I automatically assume that people are using their phones and I believe that a phone is not exactly the place that people read blogs.

The hardest part that I've discovered is getting your "friends" to share your post. So in this sense, it kind of takes me out of the viral marketing race :( 

I use social media quite a bit, and facebook and twitter are up there for traffic referrals.  On the other hand they are dwarfed when comparing to other sources  – mainly search engines, guest posts on high traffic blogs, links via popular sites, etc.  The thing is, however, when you put all the social media together – they add up to quite a bit of traffic.   So one or the other isn't the end all be all, but aggregate effect can be great.

Definitely – I use Twitter both for blogging and under my real name, both with slightly different purposes and following different kinds of people.

You gotta use SM for the right purposes though – not just for marketing and self-promoting. I use it to talk to people, find new and interesting links and build relationships, not just sharing my stuff. Basically, it's FUN, not a chore.