I recently hosted a Social Media Marketing workshop and attendees tell me that one of the biggest takeaways was a concept called “content decay” in social media – the time it takes for posts and tweets, etc. to lose power and literally become invisible (for Facebook and Twitter – it’s mere minutes).

I think we’d like to believe that our Social Media Fans and Followers are poised in front of their screens or waiting with smartphone in hand for our next information packed posts or tweets.    

There’s also a wide belief that it’s our FAN Pages that they are looking at when really the information we push out is one of right around 25 different posts on their news feeds and in a matter of minutes that entry has fallen off to page two – never to be seen again.

Not so. Facebook algorithms, in particular, filter upwards of 95% of content intended for any one Facebook user – all based on affinity, profile, and interaction. While on one hand that sounds really scary but on the other, it’s a golden opportunity for content to be delivered as long as we have a “relationship”. A key point is that there are 500+ million Facebooks – not just one as we would believe – customized to each individual user.

Coming from a radio background, I immediately go to that old radio advertising adage – reach and frequency- which has become the key to success in social media too. The difference being that it’s no longer enough for us to put information out to those platforms- it has become a two-way street or rather a bi-directional super highway that requires both lots of relevant info being sent out as well as us reacting or “commenting” and “liking” and “replying” or “retweeting” information coming to us. We can’t just broadcast – we must have a conversation.

Recent changes to Facebook Pages such as switching back and forth from individual to Page gives us great opportunity to capitalize on building these relationships.

It has literally become a 24/7 Facebook Twitter cycle and through the use of great tools like Hootsuite and Tweetdeck consoles we can harness those relationships and be part of that 5% – 24 hours a day – all on auto-pilot.

By the way, the good news about that 95% of stuff that doesn’t make it is that a lot of that is spammy stuff that no one wants to see anyway or is just not applicable to how Facebook sees us via our profiles and interactions!

My experience from watching the comments and likes on the content we are serving up, it is getting through and it is relevant. We just need to do more and most of all, reach out to our fans and Like and Comment on their stuff as well. That’s the true definition of Web 2.0

I have two personal examples that point to how, when relevant to the audience content can become viral and money can be made via social media.

I point to Dennis Prager’s (one of our daily talk hosts at KNUS) 8:00 minute YouTube piece YouTube – Dennis Prager Q & A At University of Denver at an event in May 2010 – nearly 3 Million views with just over 100 dislikes – shared on Facebook via the Share button over 40,000 times (doesn’t take into account how many people just posted it on their pages and tweeted the link on their own) – was clicked on primarily in the US – not the Chinas and Koreas.

Along that same vein, a carefully targeted ad on Facebook advertsing this event garnered over a million views in less than 10 days and probably accounted for 25% of the people in the room for that event for 1/10th the cost of a single :15 TV ad and a return on the investment of nearly $50 for every dollar spent.

I’m going to be hosting more of these types of workshops on an ongoing basis to help businesses and individuals get a better grasp on both Social Media as well as e-Mail marketing. If you are in the Denver area, drop me an e-mail and I’ll send you an invite for the next one coming up.