Is It Too Crowded to Be Social?

Andy Beal’s Marking Pilgrim reported earlier on some information it read on eMarketer about the participation levels of businesses in social media for marketing.  Ninety percent were in social media of some kind for a marketing purpose.

Can’t be many law firms in that number. They must be in the ten percent, because if you look around, you have to search far and wide to find integrated marketing campaigns among law firms that include a load of social media. O, there will be some legal blogs. Kevin O’Keefe has made sure of that. And there seem to be plenty of lawyers on LinkedIn.com. But Twitter? Facebook? Digg? Precious few. And the rest of the social utilities (Instagram, Google+, Pinterest, and on…) Isolated early adopters. And thought leaders like Nancy Myrland.

Strong recommendations for participation exist. Jayne Navarre and Adrian Dayton have written books about the practice. The firm I serve has its @SocialLawyers channel on Twitter. Information abounds.

At Marketing Pilgrim, Frank Reed poses the question of whether there is any room in social media for more businesses to enter. eMarketer observes that the percentage this year is only one percent higher than last year, whereas five years ago there were only 20% of businesses using social media for marketing. The thing is, social media is not about comparative data. Each entrant brings their own space to market, that is, their own community of interest and engagement.

The potential for using social media is therefore both finite and infinite. Space to join is the infinite quantity. Bandwidth notwithstanding, there are utilities and containers for social activity aplenty. The finite is both the level of interest (anyone have social media fatigue besides me?) and the network for engagement (how many people do you know and do you want to know?). I find it relatively easy to enter the social space, or to persuade lawyers and business people to enter the social space. The relatively difficult thing, in my experience, is to achieve a level of personal activity that sustains and feeds the interest of the community I want connected to me. And, while it is somewhat difficult for me, it appears nearly impossible for most of the lawyers I know to form the activity habits that engage their connections and generate conversations.

What are you doing to develop the right habits that foster social media engagement and bring in conversations about business? What are the right habits?