The Invisible Hand of Social Media

Have you ever explained something to a child or a person with no knowledge of the subject matter, and through the process of explaining you come to understand the subject matter better than before?

This happened to me recently while trying to explain what makes social media "work." What makes someone good at tweeting? Anyone can create a Twitter page, Facebook page, Instagram profile, et cetera. But what are the people doing that creates huge followings, multiple retweets, numerous likes and comments?

One of the first people to really "get" Twitter was Ashton Kutcher. It's odd when you think that he never took a marketing class or attended a social media webinar. And yet he had a huge following. Sure it helps that he's a celebrity, but there are many celebrities who don't come close to his Klout score.

And then there are so-called social media gurus that give presentations to amateur audiences where they basically explain what a hashtag is and how to make a Facebook profile private. They claim to be experts but most of them do a terrible job of engaging with their audience on their own social media pages—which is really what social media is about. Who cares how many friends you have? How many people comment on your post–that is the true measure of engagement.

It's the successful social media mavens like Kutcher whom are studied by those in the budding social media industry. They set the tone for what social media webinars discuss as best practices. It's difficult to sort them out since so many people are on social media—there is no gatekeeper filtering out those who are not "good" at it.

That's when I realized that social media is a free market. There are no rules for what a person must do to start a Facebook page or Twitter handle. Just like there are no rules from what a grocery store puts on their shelves, it just works by trial and error. Social media simply allows everyone to post whatever they want and users naturally gravitate toward people that share a similar set of practices. Ashton Kutcher didn't develop a strategy and implement it into his Twitter feed, he just used it in a way that made sense. The free market of social media chose him.

What are the practices that successful users implement?

• Be humorous, but keep it PG.
• Be informal and friendly, but use correct grammar and spelling.
• Keep it conversational, social media is a telephone and not a megaphone.
• Be pithy. No one wants to read multiple tweets to get your point.
• Say it with a photo. Pictures are more pleasing than words.

It took a number of years, a lot of poorly executed profiles, and Adam Smith's invisible hand to formulate these "rules" but that's what an open market does. People flock to a business that puts out a good product. We know the product is successful based on sales. Likewise, people flock toward social media brands that follow the above rules.