I’m starting to get geared up for more social media activity (who isn’t, right?), but I’m also trying to find a way to hold on to the core of what I feel this is about. Like so many important tasks in business, I can see some people  making social media a purely numbers game and they end up just going through the motions.

I believe those participating in social media need to make a choice: value or noise. It is akin to the classic quality versus quantity struggle.

• Do I spam ten million people and hope that I get a 0.025% conversion or do I target my efforts with a quality effort on a thousand prospects and hope to get a 25% hit rate?
• Do I retweet 10 different irrelevant news feeds just so I’m in front of my followers all day long? Or do I find the one hidden gem that a few people find truly interesting.
• Do I introduce myself to 20 people a day on LinkedIn hoping to build this massive, but disconnected list of strangers? Or do I connect with people in the real world and then leverage the technology to build on those real connections?

As these bullets might suggest, I think in the long run, value wins. Anything else is a just commodity and to win there, you need to be the cheapest. No thanks.

So forgive me if I’m a little quiet at times. I hope I make up for it by sharing something of real value that changes something in the real world.