For instance, when you say “the value of the blog post is the same whether one person reads it or one million people read it” I'm not so sure. The value of the post to readers will drive comments which taps into the power of network model you mention. The post is the spark that lights the fire. For a well known blog like yours or Chris Brogan, you can see that some posts really spark a big fire. If one objective of either blog is brand building as a precursor to business development, the bigger the fire sparked, the more valuable the post in the long run.

The fun we are having now is sorting out how these tools can be used best. Our human nature drives us to create labels and categories for them. Working in Loyalty Marketing for many years, I tend to view the entire tool-set as new communications channel options that are replacing direct mail & catalogues, especially when aiming to engage with Gen Y.

I recently used a sports analogy (my apologies in advance for that) to put the tools in perspective on my blog here: http://cli.gs/LTMLSM. It is probably not perfect but adds another viewpoint.

Social Media to me: the tools which enable engagement and two-way conversations as never before. Twitter and Facebook count in that column, but so does a beach volleyball tournament. Creativity will decide on how best to put these tools to use.

Thanks for sparking a good fire!

For instance, when you say “the value of the blog post is the same whether one person reads it or one million people read it” I'm not so sure. The value of the post to readers will drive comments which taps into the power of network model you mention. The post is the spark that lights the fire. For a well known blog like yours or Chris Brogan, you can see that some posts really spark a big fire. If one objective of either blog is brand building as a precursor to business development, the bigger the fire sparked, the more valuable the post in the long run.

The fun we are having now is sorting out how these tools can be used best. Our human nature drives us to create labels and categories for them. Working in Loyalty Marketing for many years, I tend to view the entire tool-set as new communications channel options that are replacing direct mail & catalogues, especially when aiming to engage with Gen Y.

I recently used a sports analogy (my apologies in advance for that) to put the tools in perspective on my blog here: http://cli.gs/LTMLSM. It is probably not perfect but adds another viewpoint.

Social Media to me: the tools which enable engagement and two-way conversations as never before. Twitter and Facebook count in that column, but so does a beach volleyball tournament. Creativity will decide on how best to put these tools to use.

Thanks for sparking a good fire!

“For example, is a blog post a form of social media? No. The value of the blog post is the same whether one person reads it or one million people read it. Its value is inherent in and of itself. The same is true for a podcast, a TV show, a commercial, a newspaper, etc.”

If TV shows and newspaper articles have inherent values, why do ratings matter so much? If the value of any kind of media is “in and of itself”, I'd have to question why there is so much mindless dribble on television. Although it is unfortunate, “value” seems to be placed on certain things by members of our society whether those things actually HAVE such value or not.

It seems as though you're using a different formula to compute the value of a form of media.. I guess you could call it “I”, for inherent value.. but if that's the case, how is I measured? In other words, if you had to value your own blog post about this topic, what would you use to get an answer? Is the value of the post correlated to the number of readers/commenters (obviously making it dependent on something other than its own value)? You seem to believe that it isn't, but I'm not yet convinced. A hammer that has hammered down 30,000 nails has produced more than one that has hammered 3 nails. I can see the case where you could sell the hammers for relatively the same price, however, the value of what they have produced is very different.

This is also similar to “if a tree falls in a forest and nobody sees or hears it, did it happen?”. If you wrote a book on economic theory that could change the world but nobody else in society valued it and it got thrown aside, what is its value? It produced nothing.. although maybe its value is still hidden inside. I'm no philosophy major so forgive me if this post is elementary.

Thoughts?

@russelcrowebar on twitter.