Fiddler on the Social Media Roof: "Attention! Attention."

In moving forward with thinking about SAP's Social Media marketing implementations, my thoughts are shifting from tools and strategies (I think I know where we need to go) to the notion of "attention."   

Our internal constituents... like yours have limited cycles to spend and will naturally  gravitate to the tools that deliver the most value.  Thanx @jenrobinson for spurring these thoughts on. 

My concern is that the balance between professional internal use, professional external use, personal external use and personal internal use of Social Media will carve up the Attention pie into so many small pieces as to be ineffective.

I know for me, I feel much more connected and part of vibrant community as twitter.com/stevemann and to our SAPListens experiment on Twitter versus SAP's internal SAPTalk laconica implementation.  I feel my own attention pie carved up into some pretty small pieces. I feel like a Fiddler on the Social Media Roof, balancing my attention precariously among these different efforts.

Where is the point of diminishing returns?  When do we get to the point where the Attention Pie is carved up into so many small pieces that diminishing value from a particular social graph is the result.

These are the thoughts that are consuming my cycles right now.  What are your thoughts on this potential Attention Deficit?

Comments

[Evan Prodromou]

1.

I'm glad to hear about SAPTalk!

[Steve]

2.

Thanx Evan. We just changed the name to SAPListens. I think its more engaging but if you have recommendations on names I'm listening :)

you can follow at http://twitter.com/SAPListens

[Alison]

3.

I'm definitely feeling fragmented & I hardly ever post to my personal blog since starting my corporate blog last year. I'm not sure what the answers are either - but it's a valid concern & not one that's getting solved by any of the lifestreaming tools I've seen. I do think this blog, which balances your work self with your personal self, is better for your sanity and your social media value in the long run than trying to keep those two fragmented as I've done.

[Derek DeMoro]

4.

I couldn't agree with you more. At Jive, we really believe that building out your network is wonderful way to filter out the noise. (I don't want or care what Crazy Larry is talking about. Well, at least, not yet.) It works well too, however.... People don't build their social networks based on JUST the content they create within a community. They build relationships by having a conversation AND and allowing others topassively participate in those conversations (ala Twitter). The barrier to participation is much less because the content/context is more casual and therefore more encouraging for others to develop bonds.

Now, for me, at Jive, I want both. I need my network to filter, but I need to build my network, oh what should I do... hmmmm

[jen evas]

5.

Steve,

Great post. We’ve been thinking about this for a long time. And I have managed to write a response longer than your original post.

We believe:

- Attention will always gravitate toward the useful, and of quality. When we’re so fragmented by social media conversations and distraction that my sister tells me “I quit Facebook because I can’t keep up”, (how many of you actually made it this far in the comments?!?) something about the experience is off. If it doesn’t add something, people won’t spend time using it. And if, worse, we can’t trust the information we get through it, then what’s the point of investing any attention there?

- Content builds better communities with more to offer and greater attention than contextless connections. Listening is one side of a conversation. How are marketers contributing? How are they stimulating productive, focused conversations? How are they better educating their social audiences?

- Social media and social endorsement are powerful channels, though web, email and search may be more powerful for content sharing and attention focusing. We see this already: link sharing, interesting articles, URLs being passed around on Twitter. People tend to share things that they find meaningful, that personally or professionally educates or helps them, that they find funny or useful, or relevant, and enhances their status to share. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol12/issue2/lampel.html. I believe this type of content may be what Hugh McLeod has referred to as ‘social objects’. Individuals can create social objects. So can marketers. And if they are good, they will be shared.

- You don’t have to have content as catchy as JibJab or nearly kill yourself creating treadmill acrobatics to have content that gains attention as a marketer. You just have to understand exactly what your audience needs and wants, and then create content that addresses those needs, desires, interests, aspirations. That kind of content attracts attention because it solves a problem, gets digested, and gets shared ‘locally’ or microvirally, individually or in bulk, out to communities of interest.

- The focus on the technology of SM will end. What will determine lasting popularity of the channel is the quality of the content that SM/SN delivers.

- That content will take many forms, forms we haven’t even dreamed of yet. Today we have video, gaming, long form, branded, diagnostic, instructional, self-serve, user-generated, community-generated, to name just a few.

- This will become a new way of marketing: when you level the playing field and everyone has the same voice, only the quality of the content you deliver can distinguish you and hold attention.

[Steve]

6.

All.. thanx for your thoughtful comments. Sorry for the delay, was atoning for my sins (of which there were many) yesterday).

@jen - great comments. i agree with your fundamental assertion regarding value, what I am concerned about continues to be an ongoing fragmentation of attention with new tools and new content. Whoever solves this attention problem IMHO wins
@alison so what is your personal solution to the issue?
@Derek agree with your assertion about the multi-modal nature of network building and maintenance but I wonder if the choices we have and the resultant attention fragmentation makes it MORE difficult to build networks because we aren't spending the time we need to cultivate those relationships