Metcalfe’s Law and Marketing

Ian Dainty recently published an article on EzineArticles.com on Metcalfe’s Law and Marketing. He muses:

Mr Metcalfe (Photo credit: DanieVDM)

If you aren’t using Social Media to its utmost, and posting messages at least once a week, you’re missing out on thousands of potential clients. And the more messages you post, the more your network, and their network, gets to know you and believe you and trust you, because they see you know what you are talking about.

Metcalfe’s Law claims the potential value of a communications network increases exponentially with its size.

Specifically, it proposes that for a network with ‘n’ endpoints (think of these as devices, or people), the inherent usefulness of this network is on the order of ‘n’ times ‘n’ or n².

Are you clueless when it comes to integrating social into your website?

Image via Wikipedia

A recent non-scientific poll done by Jeremy Victor, which he published on SmartBlog is titled “Are you clueless when it comes to integrating social into your website?.”

He reports as results:

• 42.86%: “Our website has “Follow/Fan Us” links to our social presences but with no strategy”
• 22.08%: “There is no integration between our website and our social presence”
• 18.18%: “Our website is a fully integrated component of our social activity, with the goal being to bring users from the social site”
• 12.99%: “Our website displays activity from our social presence and has Follow/Fan Us links”
• 3.90%: “Our website has “Follow/Fan Us” links that encourage users to promote our brand after following”

He concludes that: