keep the broadcast model for a broadcast medium.

There are limitations to how many people you can read about, learn about, and conduct conversations with.

If you are willing to deal with a fragmented, less social experience, you can increase that number, with drawbacks occurring as the number of people you intend to interact with increases.

  

At some point, you will no longer be able to respond to every question or comment directed at you.  At a later point, you will no longer be able to read every question or comment directed at you.  

After a certain level of growth, you will no longer be able to read enough of the volume of comments or questions to build an understanding of the individuals you are attempting to interact with - you may recognise names, but be unable to have a profile of the person filed away in your head.

At a final point, you will no longer be able to recognise the sub-groups, factions or cliques, within your following.  You will merely have a mass of people who have offered to give you their attention.  This is massively powerful, but it's not the same as building a lasting social interaction with someone (or several someones).

We have platforms that work well for mass non-social outreach.  Broadcast media, and the broadcast model, do this absurdly well, and features such as confining a message of this type to a certain object, or a certain time, help to build a community experience despite the disconnected nature of the messaging.

Why do I keep seeing experts try to use social media for the broadcast model of communication?  Ten thousand people fighting to speak with you via Twitter and being ignored isn't better than the same ten thousand getting a video podcast or one-way mailing list - it's worse, because Twitter comes with an expectation of conversation.

Ignoring the realities of the form, and thinking that more is better in a medium that is optimized for, and defined by social interaction, doesn't help anyone.

I'm not trying to discourage celebrities, thought-leaders, and experts from interacting with social media.  I'm just arguing that they aren't experiencing social media, because social media is about developing conversations and connections that don't play well with fame.

Play to the strengths of the medium.  Or find a medium that plays well with your strengths.