The local maximum of social media

Tara Hunt as published a nice presentation on how people need to “forget about social media strategies, and think about customer-centric business strategies”. I’ll add another layer of complexity. They also need to stop thinking about what people do on the web, and start thinking about how the web fits into the rest of people’s lives.

I hear so much hype about social media marketing plans these days. Typically it involves something to do with Twitter, and something to do with Facebook. That’s fine, you may create something compelling using these tools, but you’ll only ever reach a local maximum. You’re very unlikely to get through to people in a deep, long-lasting, emotional manner unless you consider how the web fits into the rest of their lives.

The reason is that people don’t just spend their time online. In fact, according to a Nielsen report for Q2 2009, they spend somewhere around 25 hours online every month - or just over an hour a day. To really understand what people need and want, to really understand how to make your offering or message resonate with them, you need to understand what they do for the other 23 hours of their day. Aside from sleeping and working, how else are people spending their time? Who do they interact with? What do they do? What things do they get excited about?

People don’t care about the internet, they care about other people.

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