Social Media Monitoring – Killed the #SocialMedia Star

Social Media Score… What does it meeaaan?

Social Media Score... What does it meeaaan?
Disclaimer: This image is a fake. Not to be taken seriously.

Social Media meets SEM

Internet Marketers are competitive by nature. Clearly if you are wanting to rank 1st on the search engine you have to compete.  SEO’s wish to rule the Social Media world as well. Why? Traffic equals money. Going viral can mean a lot of traffic and a lot of money.  To those that want to profit from the online world they must find ways to slice and dice data to see what activities carry a monetary value. So what do these SEO minded people do? They create measurement and scoring to see how well they do in the Social Media arena. Attach a game to it, make it fun, and gamble a bit.

Does your local market carry a good audience for Social Media?

Check it out, right now you can go find which U.S. cities are the most social media savvy. Social Media Rankings .

And apparently:

“The average New Yorker has nearly twice as many total friends across all social networking sites as business people in Houston.

Also noted that Phoenix ranks #5 for Twitter use. Props to the home town. …. and #9 for being the rudest city in the US. It is unclear if those are related. Cool survey. Great info. But don’t let over analyzing your potential to make a buck off someone make you a jerk. Looking at people as dollar signs makes you a soulless individual. Granted if you are a marketer you have to be honest about marketing value. And yes there is value to marketing via social media.

Your Pout Score:

Perhaps this is a bit cynical, but what does a social media score really mean? Is that a pat on the back because you have impressed a computer program? If you want to beat yet another computer game then go download angry birds. Your true reach?… Does that count the number of DMs that run through twitter? Entire conversations happen on twitter behind closed doors. Granted, it is cool to put a ticker on how far your voice travels. But are you twittering just to get noticed? Are you gaming for influence? What happened to just keeping it real? Clearly extremes in either direction are bad.

What’s your take?

Do social media scoring systems destroy the social media platform or do they help people realize “hey, I am a big doofus so I need to chill on the twitter-thon”?

6 thoughts on “Social Media Monitoring – Killed the #SocialMedia Star

  1. 40deuce says:

    Interesting perspective.
    Social media metrics are interesting. They can help a company know if they are on the right track, but at the same time some of the other measurements seem to be a bit of just a pissing contest.
    I’m with you in the down the middle category.

    Cheers,
    Sheldon, community manager for Sysomos

  2. Thos003 says:

    Thanks Duece. Pissing contest indeed. =)

    I like social media. And yes, I like knowing what works. But if are always over analyzing things then you might just miss the big picture. Take the fun out of “fundamentals” and all you have left is “daaa – mentals”. =)

  3. Vert Studios says:

    I appreciate that you accept the notion that social media isn’t for every business. I live in a town where the people who run the businesses and have the money are almost all over 50, and some are just getting around to using email. In order to implement social media effectively, it takes a LOT of time. You may be better off allocating that time elsewhere.

    As for the score, I wouldn’t rely on any scoring system. Marketing is so subjective, any quantity that isn’t ROI usually doesn’t make sense.

  4. Crayne says:

    Social media, for me, will be bigger than ever for 2011. With Matt Cutts admitting that they are indeed using social media as ranking signals, social media score might just be the new pagerank. 🙂

  5. Thos003 says:

    @Vert Studios
    Social media isn’t for everyone. Internet marketing doesn’t perform the same in every town. Coupon books and yellow pages carry varying value based on location. And absolutely…. ROI/profit is the bottom line.

    Thanks for commenting.

  6. marketing windsor says:

    I agree with Crayne. Once Matt Cutts mentioned that they’re going to be referencing social media in their algorithm more frequently, you have to learn and adjust. Although, I have to say I like Phoenix. I live near Detroit, trust me, you’ve got it nice by comparison.

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