The Problem With Social Media Is That I Don’t Care What Most People Think And There's A Lesson in That For Advisors Hot

agluck June 14, 2011

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Social media empowers experts on very specific subjects. If you know a lot about an obscure idea, you’re more valuable. If you use the Web to tell people what you know, that’s valuable.

I know a little bit about technology and financial advisor marketing. People whose interests intersect with mine can easily find me on the Web.

Guys like me make it look simple to make people find you on the Web. But it’s not. Which is why I'm mentioning to you that the problem with social media is that I don’t care what most people think.

My guess is you probably feel the same way.

Let's face it, most people don’t have anything very interesting to say.

In all fairness, they probably don’t know how the Web works, and that the Internet is constantly rating your credibility and trustworthiness based on your every tweet, blog entry, and favorable recommendation on LinkedIn or Google Places. The concept of an algorithm is difficult to grasp for some people.

But the numbers tell the story: Each day there are now 155 million tweets posted on Twitter. Yet just 8% of the population use Twitter.

That’s because the blather on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn far outweighs the valuable information that gets posted about subjects of interest to me.Like me, the vast majority of the population think other people are not saying very much of interest to them on Twitter.

Since it is unlikely a law will be passed anytime soon penalizing people spewing nonsense on social media, the point of my rant is that succeeding on social media requires thought.

You need something valuable to say.

And before that you need to decide where you can add value.

A financial advisor can’t just tweet links or post blog entries for doctors by spending five minutes a day looking for financial news for doctors. You need to spend 30 minutes a day to come up with an original and valuable idea.

When you do that, people will care about what you think. Then, social media works.