Interesting Social Media Observations and Psychology
I’ve been playing with social media for about a year and a half. I say playing because I haven’t had any agenda. I just wanted to meet interesting people, build some relationships, have some fun, experiment and learn. Every now and then I promote a little something like a blog post, a tutorial, or a friend. But as far as monetizing Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, I’ve done almost nothing.
I’ve been the kind of user that posts status updates only when I have something I believe people will be interested in and enjoy. I interact as much as possible. I scour Twitter and Facebook for updates I can respond to, and LinkedIn for questions I can answer. I retweet often. I promote projects others are doing. I join groups of like-minded individuals. I believe I’ve made some good friends online. In other words, I am doing what is supposedly all the right things.
So it was a major surprise to me over the past couple of weeks that I finally had something to ask for help with, and I’ve gotten almost zero response. I asked for two things – to retweet/spread the word, and to back a project for as little as a dollar. My request is very personal and requires very little commitment. It’s not a multilevel program or anything else third party.
I’m talking about my Time Travel Survival Guide project on Kickstarter.com. My previous blog post here explains the project and what I was requesting.
With thousands of followers on Twitter, over 500 “friends” on Facebook, and another few hundred connections on LinkedIn, as well as a personal list of 70 people I felt I could email directly, you’d think I’d get at least a few positive responses. What did I get? 15 backers and 2 retweets.
Now, I don’t read every Tweet and status update of those I follow and am connected with, especially lately as I’m spending most of my waking hours helping my best friend’s wife care for him as he’s dying of cancer. So I understand not seeing a single post. But I’ve posted several times and I’ve gotten responses on other posts I’ve put up. Even the click through on the link to the project is low. I don’t get it.
My only thought is the old “outside expert” idea that people you don’t know or who are far away have more credibility than people you do know. It’s the reason friends tend to not buy from each other, or join MLMs with each other, etc. I guess the more you know someone, the more you realize they are not geniuses, and their contributions lose value. What do you think?
12:39 am on November 19th, 2009
Hey Chuck, I guess you are correct on the selling to close friends part. They would rather buy a $50,000 BMW from a stranger, a $1,000,000 life insurance policy from a guy in the yellow pages and a $800,000 house from an expert because they have a snazy flyer. Their friend or a close neighbor, no way . So strange but on the other hand , I would be able to sell the above items to complete strangers using the Tony Robbins think positve sales technique. Maybe you just have to go the law of large numbers and have 50,000 friends (facebook)(preferably strangers) would = 1500 backers, etc. etc. Just a thought.
1:27 am on November 19th, 2009
Yeah, that’s the sad thing. I need to expand out to strangers.
8:51 pm on January 1st, 2010
The flaw in your thinking is that your two brothers backed you.
A list of 50,000 “friends” won’t be the answer. Because friends are truly far and few between. The rest are acquaintances. And acquaintances never come through when you need them; only when they see some reward greater than their expense.
Reality sucks.
9:16 pm on January 2nd, 2010
True, brother – this was more of a post out of frustration – thinking out loud. I didn’t include references to you and Gary because I was referring mainly to people I know via social media.
Amazingly, other than my two brothers, the people who did support my project were acquaintances and strangers. People I’ve supported financially (bought their books, referred new business, hired them for this and that) did not respond in any way. People I’ve known for many years did not support the project. I guess that’s where I was surprised – not that social media “friends,” which really means weak connections, didn’t show support, but that very strong supposed friends whom I’ve dealt with ongoing for a long long time did not come through.
Yes, reality sucks.