Yesterday, I was reading this blog post where social media was re-defined as conversational media — or as I am going to call it conversational marketing.

Let’s face it, social media is about conversation. It is about spreading a message, an idea or a story. But at its foundation it is marketing, because what is marketing but spreading an idea, a story or a message.

Unfortunately, most people are spreading manure and pumping up their own egos. How many were not very good at traditional marketing? Ego doesn’t work well in marketing because it isn’t about YOU, it’s about THEM. The Client. The Customer. The Ratepayer. The Prospect.

Marketing is about getting attention. That’s why people talk about eyeballs and the number of followers or some other metric. It is about Engagement and Listeners. Jeffrey Gitomer asks, “Would you rather have a loyal wife or a satisfied one?”

The same with your followers. Sure, 10K people following you strokes your ego, but if no one is listening or responding or re-tweeting or commenting, what’s the point?

There is a story about 1000 customers being profitable. And 2000 customers makes you lots of profit.

There’s also the mental limit of about 250 – that’s about all the people we can effectively remember and engage with. People with a network of more than 5,000 will tell you it’s possible but I’m going to stick with you can have a Rolodex of thousands, but can only maintain a relationship with about 250.

That brings us around to sales: in sales, it’s about the relationship. They have to like you and trust you to buy from you in most cases.

We forget in this digital age that pre-Internet, PR, marketing, advertising and branding were not always done under one roof. There are still many firms that just handle publicity. Still others only handle branding; while others just do advertising. It’s all under the Marketing umbrella, but they are different arms of that octopus.

Remember too, that in traditional advertising, there was a media buy component and a creative piece. The creative piece was the charge to come up with the campaign – whether it was the story board for the commercial (TV or radio) or the billboard and newsprint ads. The firm created the story that would resonate with your target audience. (Unless it was just a cool ad to win an ADDY, which also happened. A lot.)

The firm would do the media buy for a commission to get your ad on the radio – on the right radio station that hit your demographics; or on the right TV channel, on the targeted TV show, aimed at a targeted demographic. Or the same with a newspaper or magazine ad: who is the target demographic and what do they read.

We seemed to have forgotten all that in the online marketing world. We don’t story board or check where the demographic is or target like a sharpshooter. Instead, we aim for numbers and noise and throwing spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks. If you are going to spend the time, the effort and the money, do it right. The Internet has a long memory.

Humorous but true: 10 Questions for the Social Media Expert

Case Studies of Social Media – a collection by Peter Kim. [Master list # 3]

SMB companies are finding that they are losing money on social media because it takes much longer than they thought. (see WSJ article)

On B2B Social Marketing: ‘Asked to rate the effectiveness of specific social media sites in their marketing efforts, more than one-half of respondents said that Facebook was “extremely” or “somewhat” effective. Somewhat fewer said the same of LinkedIn, and just 35% considered Twitter effective.’

Bonus: 48 Guerrilla Marketing Tips.

So I am trying out Google Buzz, which is integrated into my Gmail account. I didn’t pick many folks to follow in my experiment. But it has quickly become like Facebook to me: too much noise to be worth the time spent.

I find that if I don’t carefully monitor my social media time, I can quickly have 30 tabs open in Firefox and be lost for hours replying, commenting, reading, re-tweeting, until the morning or afternoon is gone and I have to get in fireman costume to get any real work done.

And notice that much of that is just following links and reading the feed. There’s a lot of information out there. I’m slowly learning how to scan and move along. While I am not sure what I expected from Buzz, I do know that it is becoming like Posterous. People are using Buzz as an aggregation of all of their social media interactions – tweet, blog, yadda yadda. Whereas I was looking for a filter to get less noise, I know get more noise from each person I follow.

I have to wonder, what are these people thinking?

Sally Hogshead, the author of Fascinate, noted this, “In an attempt to be all things to all people, most brands end up being nothing to anyone.”

Take a moment to think about that.

Why is that? Let’s take a look at Oil of Olay. Back in the day I worked for Richard-Vicks Research just as Proctor&Gamble acquired them. At the time, there was only the pink bottle of Oil of Olay. We were working on the first non-pink version, Young Oil-Free, which was removing the coloring and re-formulating it without oil. At the same time, we were working on a clear, colorless eye conditioner. And so began the expansion of the Olay Brand. Today, there is about 8 feet of shelf space in Publix of Olay products. They have diluted the brand to the point that no one even knows what product to buy. I watched two women look at a few bottles each and end up choosing none.

Social Media is a great platform for Personal Branding. However, I see that people want to be all things to all people. They want their message to be seen by all people. They want that message populated across all networks because someone may miss it.

Trust me on this: most of the messages (blog, tweet, whatever) are not so significant that everyone has to see it. I get to see it for many people at least twice a day – the same tweet or update – and it is tiresome.

Most of this noise isn’t even a conversation, but a broadcast. It’s a news update from your own station.

It’s not even a conversation starter. It’s Advertising. Why do I say that? Because it’s “look at me!” “look at me!” We need less of that.

I know that there is some overlap in my social networks – LinkedIn, twitter, Facebook, Buzz, etc. I do know that my goal on each is very different. On LinkedIn, it’s all business. LI is my rolodex and my resume. Twitter is about news and connecting with others in the industry. It’s a news feed as well as a place to have a fascinating conversation. Facebook is where you go if you want to see a more personal view, but I rarely connect with folks on FB and LI anymore. I push everyone to LI. In most cases, I don’t need to know that much info about someone I do business with. Remember how your mother said not to talk about politics and religion at dinner? There’s a reason for that – even moreso today in our very much polarized world.

So what does all this rambling mean? What is your goal on each network? Is it to be like Guy and broadcast your message across all platforms to every single set of eyeballs?

As Steve Tingiris of Enthusem.com told me, we are at a point when the marketing is getting closer to one-to-one. If that is so, why are people still trying to puke on the masses? They are listening less and less. (See Deanna’s stats from Spike Jones at Social Fresh Tampa: “76% of people think that companies lie in advertising. 77% Percent of people trust companies less than they did a year ago.”)

I would venture to guess that your message could be better targeted as well. It’s easier to broadcast across all streams, but what is your goal? Who are you targeting and why? And where are they? And why are they there?