I’m of two minds about the pervasive growth of social networking. Does that sound strange coming from someone who blogs, has a couple of websites, and is a member of several social networking sites? Maybe.
Social networking started out as a way to find old friends and make new ones. But with interest groups now possible, it has business value too, especially for geographically-dispersed alpaca breeders. Now given that lots of people already have websites and advertise on marketing sites like Alpacanation, you may ask what additional value social networking sites may have.
The single value proposition of social networking is, in my humble opinion, to build relationships. It’s not to find another place to insert alpaca sales listings or thinly veiled ads for that herdsire you’re so proud of. I am always turned off when I find a blatant ad couched as forum discussion or a comment. But real life stories, experience, and sharing really bring depth to the person behind the farm name that you can’t get from flat website content. As I’ve said often enough, the alpaca biz is a relationship industry, not a transactional one. That’s my theory about why so many online auction sites come and go with little interest. People want to buy from people they feel they can trust. Social networking can help you build that trust or at least open the door.
I enjoy blogging but do not participate in forums. Having said that, a lot of people are extremely successful in reaching a large audience through active forum posting. They can establish themselves as a subject matter expert, an enthusiast, a political commentator, or the voice of reason through the consistency in their responses. It’s just my personal choice to abstain from these. I’m more than a tad conflict-averse and writing a blog already takes me out of my naturally introverted comfort zone. Besides, I see some people who must be on their computer or mobile device all the time for the frequency of their responses. Remember I said I was of two minds? Here is the flip side.
To me, social networking is a tool, not a lifestyle. Don’t you just want to groan when you see a group of people furiously texting away while walking, oblivious to their surroundings? Or when your eating with friends, and one of them can’t seem to stop responding to the latest tweet? I am still resisting Twitter. Unless your house is on fire, do I really need to know what you’re doing and thinking right now, this instant? Email me instead, please, or I’ll read it on Facebook.
The other hesitation I have about social networking is particular to alpaca breeders. In general, people are not drawn to the alpaca business because they have high tech, plugged in, multi tasking personalities. I know a lot of breeders who have yet to get broadband and don’t know what a blog is. We’re all fleeing the stimuli-saturated modern world. Alpacas give us a connection to something real and infinite: birth, growth, nurturing, reproduction, death. And usually, we live in places that reflect that all around us in the pastures, the seasons, the wildlife. So many alpaca breeders are really not the social networking types. I see that personally from my blog. I’ve gotten lots of feedback on my posts, but not through comments that are left – I get emails and comments when I see people at events. Why don’t people want to leave it on my blog site? I suspect because it’s unfamiliar and also public, and we are still mostly a generation that is not used to letting it all hang out in cyberspace. However, I expect that will change in the next generation of alpaca breeders, whose first toys were not a rubber ball, but a keyboard attached to a PC.
Where can you go if you want to social network? Besides the commonly known forums on Alpacanation.com and Alpacasite, there are alpaca breeders present at all of the below and a ton of others as well.
Myspace.com
Facebook.com
linkedin.com
The Pacablogger 