John Blatter
@impactbusinesss
@bizrevolutions

But it demands resources and time. That´s why I’ve referred to content quality as part of this general issue of SMM: to have the required resources or to find somebody – your audience – to do the work for you.

Great posts and great conversations you´re having on your blog. Congratulation!

I’ve also tracked the stats on peer recommendations for a while, and I find that a very interesting area. I think there are some real opportunities for tools and sites to make it easier for us to find and leverage peer or trusted people’s recommendations. Though, as bloggers and others become intertwined with advertisers, it may be harder and harder to figure out who to really trust.

It actually doesn’t take me that much time to write my posts, but I’m a professional writer. I do agree that SMM takes time. I certainly don’t agree that quality content is part of the problem. But leveraging others to provide good content, because they care, is an excellent idea. Content isn’t going away, though. Conversations aren’t going to replace content. There is a role for both of them. Both strategies need to be used and which one you weight toward depends very much upon your particular business, products, and customers.

Thanks, very much, for taking the time to contribute!

Even if most of your audience is aging, and don´t have so much time to discuss with you on Internet, the name of the game is still to engage with the 5% of your audience that is active on social media, and that have the biggest influence on line. With them you need to have a conversation. Because they have the power to amplify your message, or to create their own message about your brand, with such a big reach that it can make a big difference for you.

According to the “Is social media a fad” presentation:
“There are over 200,000,000 Blogs.
54% of bloggers post content or tweet daily.
25% of search results for the world’s top 20 largest brands are linked to user-generated content.
34% of bloggers post opinions about products and brands.
78% of consumers trust peer recommendations.
Only 14% trust advertisements.”

That´s why conversation is that important for SMM, and that´s why marketers are so excited about it.

But I also think you´ve make a great point: that the biggest issue is that SMM takes a lot of time. It takes times, resources, skills and a lot of patience to listen to your customers, to generate and communicate value through quality content, and to begin to see results. It is a big challenge to find a cost effective way of doing it, if you´re not a big company and are lacking of skills, resources and budget.

To provide quality content is not the solution, is part of the problem. Look at the time required for you to write your posts. That´s where listening and having a conversation will be the solution. If I am listening, and my customers are talking to me, not only I´m developing a great relationship with them, but they are doing all the hard work, they are generating quality content, and they are spreading the word in my place. Let your customer make most of the talk, and focus on doing most of the listening. Listen more, talk less.