Social Media Is About ‘Playing the Odds, Isn’t It?’
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A couple weeks back I published a column titled "Does your social-media strategy involve wasting time on idiots like me?" It turns out that when I pose a question in a headline, you, dear readers, are more than happy to answer it.
First, a quick flashback: In that column I wrote about a recent exchange I happened to have on Twitter with @IHOP, the International House of Pancakes restaurant chain. It was a wry back-and-forth in which I sort of acted like we were having a lovers' spat. @IHOP played along, to an extent, which was both mildly amusing and, for me, thought-provoking — because I wondered about the ROI of a big brand interacting in social media with a goofball like me. (You can read the full, brief exchange here if you missed it the first time.)
First of all, a bunch of readers, including Drew Neisser, CEO of New York agency Renegade — he's @DrewNeisser on Twitter — thought maybe @IHOP engaged with me on Twitter because of who I am. As Neisser tweeted, "just guessing here but I suspect @IHOP knew u were a writer and treated u accordingly. #influencer." While I'm always flattered #when #people #talk #about #me #in #hashtags, the truth is that when @IHOP surprised me by writing back to my first tweet, I took a look at the account's history and saw that @IHOP frequently interacts with regular people — i.e., everyday pancake eaters who are not part of the media-industrial complex.
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