Social Media Strategy in 2015

A recent piece in the Sunday Times Style Magazine made me roll my eyes in a silently ironic "No! Really?" sort of way...

On the subject of social media strategy, it said "If 2014 saw us all building our own personal brands via Instagram and Social Media, 2015 sees us pulling back.  Forget collecting thousands of followers: the power is in who, not how many"



So has peer pressure/ "expert advice"  seen you turning into some sort of social network tart?  That way lies madness, if social media success relies on good quality engagement - which it does - you cannot possibly keep that up with thousands of people.

If you're not engaging aren't you simply "mass marketing"? Why drag bad old practices into bright shiny mediums?  Shouldn't you be looking at what I've seen described as "personalised targeted interactions" - or PTI's?

I was recently described by a local business as a Thought Leader - which was all very nice but felt a bit overly complimentary.  However perhaps they're right after all!  Sorry Sunday Times, I've been talking about building quality lists on social media since I first delivered a Twitter Workshop in 2012. 

This was based on me reading about something called "Dunbar's Number" after British Anthropologist Robin Dunbar who found a correlation between primate brain size and average social group size.

Dunbar's number is 150 - if you'd like to look at the research to find out why - pop onto wikipedia

Let's look at the practicalities, even if you have a network of 1,000's how many are you actually interacting with on any given day?  I'm betting it's no more than 20 - you have got a business to run right?   At that level you'll  manage to get through all 150 every 7.5 working days which means regular contact is do-able.

If you still think you can manage more than 150 contacts ask yourself when you last found the time to actually speak at length to your closest friends...

I'm not suggesting a mad cull, but given that it's not possible to please all the people all the time I'm suggesting a judicious prune from time to time to make sure your generic messages are at least consistently relevant. 

You might even consider creating a Twitter List/Google+ circle of your "Golden 150" 
If you're not sure how to make a Twitter list - this post will help 

So what do you think?  Are you going to be a collector or an engager during 2015?

By the way, do follow my blog to read my next post about what marketing professionals are predicting in 2015...