If you are focused just on one or two social media channels, such as Facebook or Twitter, you need to rethink your approach.

Ever since the demise of platforms such as Friendster and then MySpace, the social media landscape is littered with the corpses of once-great leaders. More recently, the popular blogging platform Posterous announced it was closing its doors.

The moral of this story is that brands run a risk by focusing only on Facebook and Twitter. Most of my clients come to me with just a Facebook profile. Some might have a Twitter account. Few of them have a presence on other social channels. This singular focus is a big mistake!

While Facebook and Twitter are undoubtedly the leaders of the pack, equally undoubted is the fact that other platforms are emerging to establish their market share, and trends among audiences are shifting like desert sands. It is perfectly possible for Twitter or Facebook to go the same way as Friendster, as a recent MIT analysis concludes: “It’s far from unlikely that Facebook itself will one day be a victim of a similar set of circumstances.” (An Autopsy of a Dead Social Network)

According to a new Piper Jaffrey study, popularity among teens of the leading social platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and even YouTube (gasp!), has declined from two years ago (reported in the UK’s Daily Mail: The social networking teen turn-off: MORE evidence chat apps are set to take over from Facebook and Twitter).

Compared to a year ago, ten percent fewer teens named Facebook as their ‘most important’ site. Teens are ditching legacy sites in favor of lesser-known chat platforms such as Kik, Snapchat and Vine.

What does this mean for social marketers? The bottom line is that embracing only the 800 pound Facebook gorilla will hurt. It’s important therefore to spread your eggs among several social media baskets. 

For instance, Pinterest is the only big social platform showing growth among teens, so it makes sense to include it in your strategy, especially if teens are an important demographic. The challenge is to spread your efforts (risk) without diluting your presence in any of your platforms. Inevitably, this means higher costs as more investment is needed to maintain an effective presence in multiple platforms.

More importantly than jumping on the latest bandwagon is to monitor technology trends and to strategize around those trends. Also, your digital strategy needs to consider if trends among teens will translate to other demographics. And how does your strategy include engagement on chat platforms (if that is even tenable)?

A comprehensive strategy that incorporates multiple social platforms really is the only way to ensure the competition doesn’t crush your precious social media eggs.

Hiroshi Mikitani, founder and CEO of Rakuten, the largest e-commerce site in Japan and among the world’s largest by sales, poses an interesting question on LinkedIn: Does social media pose a threat to e-commerce?

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How can you become the 800-pound gorilla in the social media cocktail party? (Image courtesy of Wikipedia.)With so many social media hints, tips, tools, and apps it’s tough to keep focus. Should you tweet today or focus on Facebook? Maybe you should post on Linkedin, or Google Plus? Sometimes it just seems too much and you end up doing nothing.

So how do you become the 800-pound gorilla in the social media cocktail party?

Empire Avenue is a great way to motivate yourself while building your social media audience and increasing your influence.

Essentially, Empire Avenue simulates a stock market, in which you buy and sell shares in other users. It’s pitched as a game, but it is far more powerful. Unlike Farmville or Battlestar Galactica, it’s not just about playing for the game’s sake. By playing, you expand your social media connections and increase your engagement. The payoff? You start to rise in rankings in other social channels. For more info, check out the Wikipedia article.

Business and brands can benefit by incorporating Empire Avenue into conventional step-by-step strategy. It also has simple metrics that enable you to gauge the effectiveness of your social media efforts.

Right now, Empire Avenue is the best attempt at gamification of social media activity. It’s free and has been open to the public since July 2010. I had stopped playing Facebook games since they just seemed like a time sink, and I didn’t see a whole lot of benefit. So I was a bit reluctant to start Empire Avenue — uncharacteristically, since I’m usually an early adopter.

Empire Avenue gamifies social media engagement.
But pretty soon after starting the game, it has worked for me. Here’s a screenshot of my Klout score since I started playing Empire Avenue. It went from a little over 48 to more than 51 in less than a month. This may not seem like much, but each incremental increase in your Klout score is exponentially harder to get, so it is significant.

 Roger Harris’s Klout score impacted by Empire Avenue activity.

So if you want to increase your social media influence, Empire Avenue is a fun and interesting way to do. And you can find me there of course. http://www.empireavenue.com/rharris

Coming up for air from the PR world (after an exciting year spent at Capstrat, a PR firm in Raleigh), I now have the chance to pause and reflect on the role of social media in public relations. 

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A few days ago, Stephen Nold on LinkedIn posed the question “Social media is ________? (fill in the blank)”. A word cloud of the 68 responses reflects the business orientation of most LinkedIn users. From the cloud of  responses, social media looks to be “marketing communications that reach people as individuals.”

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