Whenever I attend a conference or event on social media there seems to be a frequent occurrence. Someone in the room gets excited, begins to sweat a little, wipes their forehead, and then begins to babble on about much each additional fan or follower is worth. Apparently : SO MUCH MONEY. You know the deal, this aphinony is followed by a loosley constructed PowerPoint deck that mathematically distills the magical chunk change that each new follower creates. And ooooo eeeee it’s so big! You’d be a fool not to go out and spend 100k on generic- key word here being generic- facebook “friend me” ads.

While I understand a bevy of fans can be a powerful route of corporate communication ( much like an email list), but standard economics tells us there is a point where the return is less than the expense of execution. Furthermore, I struggle to see how one can effectively place a dollar value on a single a fan or follower. It’s not that fans aren’t important, it’s just that social media drive to purchase of a single fan is incredibly hard to measure and to arrive at any number forces analysts to make a series of broad generalizations. These generalizations can cause several major problems:

1. Generalizations hide important subgroups: The problem with generalizations is that they mask fanatics and laggards. So you attribute X additional revenue dollars to a facebook campaign with Y number of fans. Your fanatic population may make up for 70% of that increased revenue attributed to Facebook- it does not makes sense to evenly distribute the attribution to the overall fan base.
2. New Fans may not be as valuable as old fans: Those users who first friend a brand page on Facebook or follow a brand Twitter account are often advocates and potentially higher purchasers. The later waves of fans often are driven to fan based on advertising, promotional activities, or etc. While it’s likely some of the new followers may also be fans of a brand, it’s not guaranteed that their purchase rate is the same as old fans. In some cases, the opposite may even be true, that news fans actually generate higher revenue than old.
3. It’s difficult to attribute all Social Media revenue: Not all revenue earned by Facebook can be back-tracked to the social media site. A user may see a promotion or product on the Facebook page, and go out of the world that is Facebook and hand type the website address to purchase. This user would appear as a standard web purchaser, rather than a social media driven purchaser. Thus, the revenue attributed to the site will always be greater than measured.
4. Traditional media suffers from the same problems: If you run a TV ad it is difficult to say, this ad alone made me X revenue. There are always external indicators that can drive up revenue and create metric bias.

While ROI metrics will always be an important of an business initiative, I do not yet to see the value of attaching a dollar amount to a single fan. In fact as I write about this I am further resolved in my thinking that companies should look at social media not solely as a revenue driven dollar sign, but as a brand building and cost- saving initiative. I also realize as much as I want it to be, data will never be perfect. Le sigh. Such are the Sunday troubles of one Anna OBrien, social media geek and general statistics addict.

Now this “sparkle manifesto” can be applied directly to what’s happening in Social Media right now. Currently we’re suffering from glitter overload.  Every brand is launching a new game, viral video, foursquare badge, Facebook meme, and etc.  There’s just so much glitter everywhere that consumers’ eyes are being singed out by the reflection.  As clever as these campaigns may be, they are limited. The content is only relevant for a limited amount of time, to a limited audience, with a limited purpose. What happens in when the badges disappear, the game come down, and the videos are done? For a lot of brands it means they’re left naked. They’ve gotten so caught up in the glitter that they forgot to invest in the basics.

One of the old adages I use all the time is,  “Social Media is not campaign based, but a campaign can be Social Media based.” In short, you have to keep the conversation going- it’s not a hit and run channel.  I see a lot of brands spending a lot on big bold “viral Social Media” campaigns that have little to no engagement component to them. Many of the day-to-day social activities are left undeveloped.  Strip back the interesting guerrilla marketing effort and there’s no actual consumer dialogue. Perhaps I am wrong, but I thought that was one of the main components of a true Social Media program.

Maybe I am being a selfish consumer here, but instead of trying to be the next big thing, I’d prefer a company that listens to it’s customers. Bonus, if they take time to write clever responses. Double bonus if their business changes as a result of the conversations that they’ve had.  Instead of doling out diamonds like they’re pennies, is it too much to ask companies to focus on building up the basics? Commit to engagement. Share exciting and relevant content. Create a rock solid and informative listening program. Evolve your business practices. Don’t just spam me with sparkle. I hope companies can evolve their thinking beyond the campaign and build real conversations that will endure.

NB: A little well placed sparkle never hurt anyone- just make sure you have a killer dress to wear it with.

We’ve seen this before (there was the breast cancer memes of 2009 and 2010) and sure, it has some results. In this case, people are thinking about their childhood or perhaps thier favorite cartoons. Plus, it does seem to get some press. However, most of this publicity is just used to explain to those out of the loop what the hell is going on.  What they aren’t thinking of or really talking about, is child abuse.  Sadly, the causes themselves- in my opinion- don’t benefit that much from this type slacktivism. There’s no  significant influx of new volunteers or substantial increases in donations. There’s simply a mass population who is patting themselves on the back for being cool enough to know that “child abuse” is the cool charity of the month. (unless you’re a hipster- then child abuse is so last week).

The problem with slacktivism is it teaches future generations that social change is obtainable with the click of the button. This mentality in many ways cheapens the work that is done by committed volunteers and propagates  a warped view of volunteerism. Furthermore, this type “of the moment” social action is rarely prolonged. That means while the charity might be thrust into the spotlight for a few days or a week at most, within a month they are right back where they started. The slactivists are onto saving the whales by liking Shamu. And thus, the trendy piece of social slacktivism did little to really help the long term success of a cause.  Moral of the story: We should stop doing cheesy status updates/ photo changes for the charity du jour and instead encourage each other to find a cause we believe in and get involved.

***Updated***

I wanted to add that the reason this incident drove me to write this post. Child abuse has affected people I love and care about. It is not a laughing matter and is something that no child should ever have to endure. Almost five children die in the US everyday as a result of child abuse. More than three out of four are under the age of 4.  Plus, abused children are likely to have criminal or abuse habits in the future.

If you see or sense a abuse in a household, please say something & report it to social services. The biggest problem with abuse is people’s comfort in turning a blind eye; it’s just easier.  If you want to help stop the cycle & get involved- please visit Child Help. (or any other similar org). Also, please feel free to leave other non-profit suggestions in the comments.  ( Thanks @Sue for the suggestion to add this. )

Taking all this into account i really think everybody just needs to calm down.  Literally I feel like today might have been the Twitter communities “Chicken Little” moment. OMG Twitter is crashing. Our whole universe is fading away. We’re all going to die!!! Really people, you just got hit in the eye with a pebble and freaked out over nothing.

And why am I so sure I am right on this? Well we’re in business, we all love executive summaries. I’ll give you three reasons:

1. Twitter didn’t invent @replies. Really credit for this  came from forums users and bloggers, who carried it over with them when they started using twitter. That means facebook isn’t copying twitter. It’s copying some guy who thought he’d be nerd chic and pull out some awesome by slapping down an @ sign on a blog to call someone out.  Who he is? I don’t know. That’s why they invented google.

2. Just because something has a cup holder doesn’t make it a car. Facebook adding @replies does not automatically make it a twitter substitute.  It’s adding one feature guys. And yeah you can reply to peoples wall comment on FB now, but you can also do that on all sort of other sites…So who cares?  If facebook were to strip down and focus solely on status updates, limit the number of characters, and make it possible to have one way relations (IE follow/follower paradox) then maybe I’d be a bit worried. Right now. I just don’t see where the fear is coming from.

3. @replies are going to make Facebook an even bigger Hot Mess. Here’s a point we probably can agree on:  facebook is a hunka hunka burning mess. There’s an excessive amount of crap and it’s like an information overload just visiting the site.  Facebook’s  that girl in seventh grade who let make-up explode all over her face before coming to school. Key insight she never learned–> less is more kids.

At the end of the day, I think this is a really good thing. Facebook adding @replies is creating a consistent form of communication. The social world is beginning to create some standard etiquette across sites. You should be excited, the internet is growing up.