Social Media Scene: The Easy Path to Success on Social Media — The 1% Rule of the Internet

And, as humans, social media users are prone to one very natural, very biological tendency: They forget things. They forget people.

Memories have a biological half-life. If someone sees you or sees something you post, there may be a 50% chance that they'll think about you during the next week. The second week? Maybe a 25% chance. The likelihood of your connections thinking of you drops dramatically from the point when you last communicated with them, unless you give them a new reason to think about you.

At any given moment, you can be sure of one thing: Either your prospective clients are thinking about you or they're not thinking about you.

Well, duh. Consider the importance of this fact for a moment. If they're not thinking about you, there's a zero percent probability that they will reach out to you when they face a problem.

Social media is a great way to compel your clients to think about you. Prior to the social media era, this was much more challenging.

Previously, I worked in sales for a major financial services company before social media had taken off. I lived in Madison, but my first sales territory was Indiana. Eventually, I graduated to Chicago, and finally I returned home to Wisconsin. I kept the same phone number with each jump. I made a habit of calling the financial advisors with whom I was working on a regular basis, and through my time in each territory, I developed many positive working relationships.

But each time I moved on to the next territory, I rarely — if ever — heard from those connections again. My contact info was the same, but since I wasn't calling them, they forgot about me. Since we didn't have social media yet, the only way for me to contact them would be to use work time that was reserved for my current territory, or to use my personal time that was reserved for my family and friends. Had social media existed back then, it would have been a lot easier to maintain those business relationships.

Additionally, social media offers the chance to become “famous.” Consistency in showing up is key.

I'll explain. When I was a kid, if you had asked me to name five famous people, I would have listed a couple actors, a few major league baseball players and the president of the United States. And, a lot of people my age would have named the same celebrities. At the time, the number of people who could become famous was finite. Either you were in the movies, a professional athlete or a politician.

Now, however, we have massive numbers of micro-celebrities. Ask 100 12-year-olds who their favorite YouTuber is, and you'll receive a hundred different responses. The most niche of audiences can easily find each other, and among that niche emerges a leader.

Because of the sheer scope of social media, you do not need to become famous in the traditional sense — CEO of a Fortune 500 company, NBA player, movie star — before you begin impacting people that you've never met. Social media gives you a path to earn fame by producing great content, consistently.

Everyone thinks, “Why me? Why would anyone care about what I have to say?”

My reponse: “Why not you?”

Keep the 1% Rule in Mind

Have you heard of the 1% Rule of the Internet? It's a phenomenon that applies across any digital network. Internet users are divided into three categories, and you're going to recognize yourself in one of them.

Ninety percent of users are only observers and consumers. You'll hear the kids these days call them “lurkers” or “creepers.” They read, watch, listen, laugh, cry or rage, but they don't engage.

Nine percent of users engage. They like, comment and share. They show other people they're listening while also furthering the conversation.

One percent of users — only a fraction of people online — create.

Which category do you fall into?

Let's talk about that 10% (9% plus one).

If you publish content on the Internet and you track the engagement metrics because you're obsessed with knowing the return of investment (ROI) of your effort, you can only ever track 10% of your potential impact!

If you know there are people out there watching, even though they're not engaging, it's incumbent on you to keep serving them, knowing that they are, in fact, paying attention.

The first excuse I hear as to why someone is not on social media is that no one is listening. What's the point? What's the ROI?

Consider your own behavior. How many posts, conversations, videos and tweets do you read without engaging at all?

People are listening, and simply by creating content, you have the opportunity to distinguish yourself as part of the 1%.

The key to hacking the biological platform of social media is consistency.

It's better to provide snippets of value every few days than to let months pass by between posts. It goes back to that biological half-life. Consider binge watching a show on Netflix. When Netflix releases an entire season of Orange is the New Black at once, everyone talks about it for a week. They're obsessed with the complex story lines and characters. But three months later, while waiting for the next season to be produced, nobody is thinking about Piper.

All it takes for you to stay at the top of your connections' mind on social media is to post valuable content consistently. There's no mathematical formula. It's just human nature.

Spencer X. Smith is the founder of spencerXsmith.com and AmpliPhi, and services law firms throughout the country. He is a faculty member for the State Bar of Wisconsin's Business of Law Conferences, and is also an instructor at the University of Wisconsin and Rutgers University. He may be reached at spencerXsmith.com.