Noise is a common complaint about social media. We often say there is too much worthless chatter. When we say this, we’re complaining about content. It’s of no value to us; it’s all noise.
For people like myself who work in social media, we’re usually referring to the tsunami of tweets and posts and updates the great “potential global market” generates.
The great “potential global market” is consumers, aka people.
Yet there is a great deal that is worthwhile amid the noise. It’s sometimes hard to realize that because so much is not worthwhile. We have to remove the chaff to find it.
What’s your point, buster?
The problem with noise is that it is misleading in more ways than the simple fact it is often worthless noise (at least to us or our business). Because there is so much of it, and so very loud, we forget there is more to listening than hearing the sounds.
The art of listening is as much about paying attention to the silence as it is about paying attention to the noise. When something is very noisy, it gets our attention, often to the exclusion of everything else.
For example, I saw the news on TV the other night (CBC’s The National). The next night, they did a follow-up story and after it gave a brief sample (two or three) of “the hundreds of comments” made on their web site. It’s “the hundreds of comments” that are important here.
I don’t believe a few hundred people watch The National or that only a few hundred visit their web site. Their audience is considerably larger than that. There were a few hundred people that commented on their story – made noise, in other words. What about the very much greater number of people who saw the story and didn’t comment?
Bamboozled by numbers
As much as we try, as detailed as we get, as sophisticated as we make our research tools, numbers never tell the whole story and can often mislead us into thinking one thing is true when something else is true. Or, they confuse us: something is true because it is, but only in part.
As hard as it is to believe, most people online are silent. At least, I think so – I have no numbers to back me up. There is also a large group of people not online and they are silent too, if only because they aren’t online to make noise.
In the context of social media, it is very hard, if not impossible, to pay attention to, and get a read on, the many who are silent. At the very least, however, we need to keep in mind that we seldom have the whole story. When we forget that, we make errors in judgment.
Suze, at suzemuse, has a wonderful example of this. Her friend Andrea Ross had concluded she had lost the audience she had for a quite long running podcast she had been doing. So she brought it to an end. Later, circumstances revealed to her that what she thought was true was not. In her words, “… I began to see that our audience was large, loyal, appreciative and quiet.”
Take note of that last word: quiet. Better still, hear her whole story:
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