In the email business we talk a lot about 'Capacity'. What we are talking about is someone's capacity for email relationships generally and more specifically, "Commercial Email Relationships". According to a recent study from Merkle that capacity is 10. Basically, this means that if you want to get into my inbox and have a relationship with me, you better be one of the first 10, or displace someone who's already there.
Moving on to blogging, the most recent data is from eMarketer (about 15 months old) tells us that people have the capacity to follow about 2 blogs regularly. Proof positive that for most corporate blogging strategies, measureing success based on RSS feeds or regular readership is the wrong metric.
Today I read a great study from the Economist called Primates on Facebook, talking about human's capacity on facebook. There is a primate theory they go into and it's worth reading the article, but the reall data tell us what we need to know.
"....the average number of “friends” in a Facebook network is 120, consistent with Dr Dunbar’s hypothesis, and that women tend to have somewhat more than men. But the range is large, and some people have networks numbering more than 500...."
"Thus an average man—one with 120 friends—generally responds to the postings of only seven of those friends by leaving comments on the posting individual’s photos, status messages or “wall”. An average woman is slightly more sociable, responding to ten. When it comes to two-way communication such as e-mails or chats, the average man interacts with only four people and the average woman with six. Among those Facebook users with 500 friends, these numbers are somewhat higher, but not hugely so. Men leave comments for 17 friends, women for 26. Men communicate with ten, women with 16."
"Put differently, people who are members of online social networks are not so much “networking” as they are “broadcasting their lives to an outer tier of acquaintances who aren’t necessarily inside the Dunbar circle,” says Lee Rainie, the director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, a polling organisation. Humans may be advertising themselves more efficiently. But they still have the same small circles of intimacy as ever."
My point to all this is that in spite of anicdotal stories of limited success in social network marketing, It's never going to be meaningful. People have too little capacity. They are not there for Commercial relationships anyway and if they are, once they joing the (BMW, Zappos, Dell, Comcast) group...they don't have any room to join yours.
Again, I'm talking about meaningful....as in scale that makes a significant impact on your business. There are 3 million searches on Google a month by people looking to buy toasters. Where is the best use of your time? Hoping to get 100 people to join your toaster group....or building a blogging strategy to target and engage a big percentage of those people expressing an intent to buy toasters.
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