On measurement…thoughts…

Perhaps we might consider the application of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle?

Might it also be worthwhile to look at the social capital or potential energy our visitors wield?

e.g. could we look at a visitor’s keyword query to find one’s resource in context of network location (hyper local implications) or network location (enterprise client)?

Perhaps a mention or “hit” on another property is actually worth ten times (depending on intent) that of a hit or visit that is measured because it recurses back to a log.

regards,
Wayne

For businesses, the best measures tend to be outcomes, even if that outcome is related to developing a personal brand. One of the better posts I’ve read on the subject, truly.

Rich

In this instance, with my friend and his unpublished book - the blog (or ‘platform’ as it was euphemistically called) was meant to be nothing more than evidence of a following. A ready-made audience to guarantee a base to begin promoting the book.

In fact, it was strongly suggested that he start harvesting email addresses from such a ‘platform’, with the idea of getting as many as three-to-five-thousand!

This sounds to me like book promoters and literary agents are getting a touch lazy, and are wanting ready-made communities before starting the process they used to own.

Your last question speaks to a more generalized notion. Yes, I believe that giving away content and insight can build a community that will eventually be willing to pay for additional access and support. It may not be within the original medium. In my friend’s case, an online community isn’t there to sell online content, but a book. In my personal case, I’m not hawking anything, except maybe a personal brand that might one day provide value in a now-undetermined direction.

The angle that I’ve been coming at this is that social media is creating commodities out of some things that used to be valuable. Both on the side of the audience and the producer.

First is that the Internet provides so many ways to interrupt people that Attention is easily captured — in bulk. You’re example of creating a splog sums up well what I’ve been trying to articulate for myself. Getting traffic, even traffic by real people, is not difficult to do. Through some money into AdWords, display advertising, buying links, etc. etc. etc. and you can get people to land on your site.
Maybe I should re-cast that as Interruption instead of Attention because you can’t make someone stay if you aren’t offering them something worthwhile.

Which brings me to the second piece I’ve been pondering. To the eyes of the consumer, content is becoming a commodity. I just posted on my blog about social media’s potential to emphasize content over people when the ’social graph’ grows large enough. While truly exceptional content will stand out, for most people reading one blog rather than another isn’t about ~what~ they write.

Sneaking another thought into the above idea, are the channels for distributing content are also becoming less meaningful? Does it matter if you pick up an idea from a blog, podcast, video, microblog, etc?

In this context, what differentiates both audience and publisher is the ability to create relationships. It’s the connections that people can build through social media that matter. This is the aspect of social media that cannot be sold as a commodity. It’s the value proposition of using social media but it’s a long-term investment. I could veer off into talking about current marketing/PR practices in social media that seem to focus on short-term gains but I won’t.

I liked this quote in your post:
“Those are the people who’ve already indicated they don’t want to miss what you have to say… and they will be the people who might just pay for a few of those words.”

But I’d be very interested to hear thoughts on the idea that social media is creating commodities out of some things. Am I missing a piece of the puzzle that’s skewing my perception?

Suggesting that social media may not be the liquid asset that the marketing world wants it to be may seems like an ingenious statement to some, but to average users its just plain common sense. What is going on is that these social networks are being valued in such a way that the potential reaction of the users to the ‘monetization’ of these networks is being overlooked. Facebook’s valuation in past years to me is utterly absurd. People can migrate off the network just as easily as they came- and someone else could just as easily wriggle some new technology onto the scene and steal away all of Mark Zuckerberg’s users. The point is that understanding, managing and fostering the value behind things like Myspace or Facebook is much more difficult than the dominant voices in the marketing world make it out to be.

Remember, most people on Facebook are really just fooling around and having fun. If they get a whiff of greed or exploitation, they’ll just do something else to pass the time. Running into some creepy marketing program is enough to scare away a large portion of Facebook’s user base.