Like a Gym, Social Media Doesn’t Work Just ‘Cause You Have Membership

I was on a conference call last week with my business partner explaining our Social Media Optimization services to a prospect; the client was afraid he wouldn’t have time to write his blog, to Twitter, Facebook, etc. - even once we showed him how to set up the profiles, optimize, and teach him the rules of the road in social media. Without his active participation, we told him, all the social media sign up in the world won’t get him fan-sumers, links, PR, online reputation management and all the other social media goodness!

To speak to our client’s quandary, my business partner came up with a great analogy; he said “It’s like when you get a gym membership, and then you can’t figure out why you haven’t lost weight…(but, you hardly ever go to the gym!)”

The gift at the end of all that sweaty effort? That trim waist and defined biceps!

It’s a Conversation… a Virtually LIVE Conversation

David Armano, VP, Experience, Critical Mass, observes in a cool, group-sourced white paper about Social social media predictions 2009:

“Each [successful] social media initiative is supported by LIVE people, employees or representatives who will respond to a tweet, e-mail,  phone call, blog post etc. This is what’s becoming known as a culture of rapid response…. The reason organizations will grapple with this is because we’ve become used to “launch and walk away” i.e. sites and e-mail blasts which which don’t require a response…. although it is now cheaper to launch an initiative leveraging Web 2.0 technology—it requires qualified and passionate people to make them successful.”

Amen, social media brother! (Note: that is my bolding on certain words in this quote.)