We shared, you came: the power of social media
BostonMediaNext.com has been online for all of four days. As expected, our traffic started slowly, with 20 – 50 page views per day. But on Sunday, it spiked to 350 views. How is this possible for a nascent site? Social media. On Saturday, I wrote an entry about Prof. Jay Rosen’s NYU course that could be the next model for J-schools. I linked to it on our Twitter page, @bostomedianext. Rosen appreciated the link and re-tweeted it. He has 28,000 followers. (BTW – add him to your list @jayrosen_nyu.) In turn, his RT was tweeted at least 15 times, including by the popular @themediaisdying.
I could have been content to post my entry here and leave it at that. But by mentioning it on Twitter (our Tweets can be found @bostonmedianext) we took off. We added new followers and, more importantly, the message about Rosen’s class spread.
The new local Boston model must integrate social media from the get-go. But we have to remember that not every story is “Tweet-worthy.” I try to keep this question in the back of my head when Tweeting: is this worth someone’s text message? Because a number of Twitter followers get their updates via text message (each of which costs a dime for some people), we have to be worthy of their money and time. In this case, I thought people needed to hear about Rosen’s pioneering class. I’m proud that a number of people agreed.
One other point – and that’s the power of second- and third-generation social media followers. As in
1st Generation: My friends
2nd Generation: Friends of friends
3rd Generation: Friends of friends of friends
You get the idea. These are circles of relationships, and once you do the math, the potential reach for your message is staggering. The average Twitterer has about 70 followers. So multiplying those numbers, we see that three generations of average followers is an impressive 343,000 people. When you multiply Rosen’s 28,000 followers just by an average second generation, his reach is almost two million people.
This is the power of Twitter and social media. When we share, the reach is exponential.