Apparently, 1 Billion birds die each year in America from collisions with windows. Really? A billion? What does that have to do with Social Media? Well, add to that shocker that the leading cause of death in pregnant women is murder. What does that have to do with Social Media? Expectations, both self-created and pundit created.

The bird death number was released to the media based on one scientists report, and rounded-up by the media as well. The comparative report released prior to that stated “roughly one bird died per square mile per year in America” or 3.5 Million; that’s a whole lot less than a billion.

The pregnant women statistic was also exagerated, because, lets face it, a shocker story like that will drive readership. But the journalist failed to show that the researchers included a “pregnancy period” which meant the 365 days after a successful pregnancy, abortion and a pre-pregnancy phase (uh, half-pregnant?) The reality was in fact that there has been a constant decline in homicides of women who are actually, fully, pregnant (mind you, even one death is too many.)

Let’s face it, there’s a lot of hype around Social Media. We’re trapped into big numbers because we’ve been trained to view and accept big numbers from an expert. We intentionally excluded the source of our information above (we’ll email it all if you want, no problem, and you can then post it.) So with the Web, it was much hype that drove the first .com boom. A similar occurrence is happening today with Social Media. Setting expectations too high.

So are we saying there are no big numbers? That Social Media is irrelevant? Not at all. In fact, big numbers may not be of much use. Only 100 readers of your blog or only 80 connections in your Social Networks may actually be better - because they may be the key people you need to develop a relationship with. The smaller number may mean more sales, loyal customers or customers who provide critical product insights that result in a better new product roll-out.

When in engaging in Social Media, manage and understand your expectations at the start. Big is not always better. Social Media is very much about “quality” not “quantity”. This can be a vital reference point when planning your venture into Social Media and determining what success means. If you need a large volume of “participants” to generate a good ROI from Social Media engagement, then that will require more effort.

As for the billion dead birds, the number is apparently, closer to, well, no one really, truly, knows. It would mean 10 birds striking every building in America each year. Apparently though, cats that roam outside are even worse. They kill 4 million birds a day and a billion song-birds a year. So, you can stop feeding your cats so much, since this equates to 14 birds per cat per year…