Archive for the ‘Moment of Zen’ Category
Zen and the Art of Social Media Studies
Thursday, September 17th, 2009
Harvard Business School professor Mikolaj Jan Piskorski has been studying users of social media for years, and he recently shared some of his findings with the Harvard Business Journal. He also shared them with the Internet, which, these days, means he shared them with everyone.
There’s nothing really groundbreaking in any of his findings or conclusions, but to see them all laid out in front of us the way this article does is soothing, to say the least. He (and more importantly in this case, the writer of the article) has taken the sometimes overwhelming facts, findings, and figures flying willy-nilly around in the social media ecosystem and arranged them into a lovely little Zen garden of wonky social media serenity.
Adding to our general sense of tranquility is the simple fact that esteemed old-school establishments like the Harvard Business School are digging into the channels in the first place. When fair Harvard’s academic researchers (and not just its former students) start holding sway o’er old Facebook, it’s safe to assume that when it comes to social media, we’re no longer dealing with some kind of passing fad.
Some of the observations that stuck out:
People Don’t Like Reading: “People just love to look at pictures. . . that’s the killer app of all online social networks. Seventy percent of all actions are related to viewing pictures or viewing other people’s profiles.”
Gender Dynamics on Twitter: “According to the research, there are more women on Twitter than men, women tweet about the same rate as men, but men’s tweets are followed by both sexes much more than expected by chance.”
Well, It Makes Sense When You Think About It: A large chunk of MySpace users are typically from smaller communities in the south and central parts of the country.
“Alabama, Arkansas, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Florida. They aren’t in Dallas but they are in Fort Worth. Not in Miami but in Tampa. They’re in California, but in cities like Fresno. In other words, not anywhere near the media hubs (except Atlanta) and far away from those elite opinion-makers in coastal urban areas.”
Since online music and bands are MySpace’s bread and butter (link that proves this), the idea that people huddle online around music more when they live in places that are interested in music but have a relatively hard time being able to go see/hear it is a completely logical idea.
Here’s our favorite part, from the “social strategy” section:
“For one thing, findings show that people don’t click through on advertising on social networks. ‘A good analogy is to imagine sitting at a table with friends when a stranger pulls up a chair, sits down, and tries to sell you something while you are talking to your friends. You will not get far with a strategy like this. To be successful, you need to shift your mindset from social media to social strategy.’”
This paragraph, if nothing else, is what it all boils down to: social media, and the Internet as a whole, is not something meant to be reflexively observed. It’s not a book to be printed, read, and put back on the shelf when you’re done with it. It’s all part of a living, breathing organism, one that is born and bred for interaction and engagement. The days of simply buying an ad, then sitting back, doing nothing, and waiting for it to do its work are over.
Just understanding your audience isn’t enough- you need to know how to use that understanding in order to effectively interact with not only the environment, but the people in it. It’s all well and good to know your garden, but it’s how you get involved and interact– how well you rake the sand– that’s the real key.
