Posts tagged social media influence
35 experts weigh-in: How we create influence on Facebook
Sep 30th
In the “real world,” a person might have power and influence through their position on an organizational chart or through some elected position. But on the Internet, we HATE rules. We HATE structure. And we sure don’t need any org chart.
And yet, people do become influential on the Internet don’t they? I’ve written quite a bit about the special opportunity we all have to create influence through our content. But beyond content, I was interested to know what people thought it took to gain influence on the social web. So I asked a few of my friends …
What do you think it takes to become powerful on Facebook?
I think you’ll enjoy their answers:
Be Useful
JAY BAER, President, Convince & Convert: ”Be a Youtility. Facebook forces companies and people to compete for attention pixel-by-pixel. That’s unprecedented. You can have all the cute cats and cool photos you want, but ultimately usefulness and relevancy are the keys to success.”
RANDY GAGE, Author, Risky Is the New Safe: “Influence comes from value – creating a FB community that brings value to the people who participate there.”
IAN CLEARY, CEO, RazorSocial: “Creating influence on Facebook involves identifying your niche and building a personal and meaningful relationship with existing influencers, helping them grow their influence and not expecting anything in return.”
JASON FALLS, CEO, Social Media Explorer: “Be consistently useful. Isn’t that the key to influence anywhere?”
Be Visual
C. C. CHAPMAN, Author, Amazing Things Will Happen: ”Share visual items that instantly create an emotional response from the viewer so that they feel compelled to like, comment or share immediately.”
KERRY GORGONE, Course Director, Internet Marketing at Full Sail University: “Include a photo with every post or, better yet, several. One study indicated that posts with multiple photos increased engagement 1290%!”
BERNADETTE JIWA, of Striking Truths: “I think one of the things that’s overlooked about FB is that you don’t have to have a huge presence there yourself to drive ‘traffic’ back to your blog. We create outstanding visual images that people like to share on Facebook, driving traffic back to our own website.”
Be Generous
LIZ STRAUSS, Founder and Owner, SOBCon, Successful-Blog.com: “Help other people be visible and valued. When you find something great and valuable, don’t just “like” what you see. Tell the people who made it why you like it and pass it on. Share great work and help the people who created it grow. Do that often and with pleasure. You’ll attract generous, powerful people who value great work.”
BILLY MITCHELL, President, MLT Creative: ”If anyone you’d like to do business with takes a second to like you (and your business) on Facebook, don’t blow it. Annoy your new friends with hype and you’re history.”
DJ WALDOW, Founder and CEO, Waldow Social: “In order to create power and influence, it’s imperative to speak like a human, to be helpful, and to share knowledge with others.”
MARGIE CLAYMAN, Director, Client Development, Clayman Advertising, Inc.: “Instead of worrying about creating content, prioritize sharing and commenting on the content others create.”
JENNIFER KANE, Principal, Kane Consulting: “Proactively and strategically build your network, and then lavish those people with attention and empathy so that each one feels like the star of their online life — which seems to naturally compel people to want to make you the star of yours, in return.”
Be Real
SHELLY KRAMER, Founder and CEO, V3 Integrated Marketing: “Just. Be. Human. And to me, being human means being a trusted resource, as well as being interesting, funny, compassionate, interested in others, supportive, informative, helpful, appreciative, etc. You get my drift. And this is where so many people go wrong. They try to do something different online than they do in person. But the brands, large and small, who are successfully using Facebook to connect with their customers are doing just this. They are being human.”
SHONALI BURKE, Vice President, Digital Media and Marketing, MSL Washington, D.C.: “If you know who you’re talking to, you’ll know how likely they are to respond when you ask them for/to do something. So get to know your audience; if it worked for Edward Bernays, it’ll work for you.”
STEVE FARNSWORTH, of The @Steveology Blog: “Have a distinct, candid, and thoughtful opinion/point of view, and be transparent on your reasoning for it. However, if you’re presented with new information that changes that opinion, openly admit your new position and why you changed it.”
SEAN MCGINNIS, Founder, 312 Digital: “Treat Facebook as a channel where you conduct thousands of one on one conversations. Real influence is built one person at a time.”
GLEN GILMORE, Principal, Gilmore Business Network: “Sow influence on Facebook the same way you would in “real life”: show that you care, that you can be trusted, that you listen and share — and that you are a leader both in what you say and do.”
Be Surprising
MARISA PEACOCK, Chief Strategist, The Strategic Peacock: “In order to create power and influence on Facebook, it’s essential to provide fans with an experience that they can’t get from any other company touchpoint — not from your website, or Twitter, or Pinterest. A successful FB page creates a value-added bonus that gives fans a reason to stay connected and engaged. ”
ELIZABETH SOSNOW, Managing Director, Bliss Integrated Communication: “To gain influence on Facebook, create an emotional narrative arc that can be broken down into daily mini-stories. Structure your stories so they satisfy at least one of these four filters: surprise, humor, excitement and inspiration.”
JESSICA NORTHEY, Digital Host and Strategist, FingerCandyMedia.com: “No matter what you think, YOU will not be relevant and/or liked by EVERYBODY so shoot straight from the hip, get to know and learn about YOUR audience, find out what is important to THEM and never ever ever be boring.”
JAYME SOULATI,, PR and marketing strategist: ”Facebook requires filters to target the audience with whom you want to engage. Much like LinkedIn groups, creating specialized communities, or better yet, joining them, provides more powerful relationship building with those who have the same/similar objective. Use those groups to show authority and balance that with smart questions, too. ”
JON BUSCALL, Communications Consultant, Jontus Media: “Surprise your audience with something different. Familiarity can breed contempt.”
BILL STRAWDERMAN, “The Marketing Bard” and Executive Director, AT&T Digital Marketing and Social Media:
“Serve at the pleasure of friends,
Inspired by what your care lends.
In the kitchen of minds,
Your ideas further bind
The weak ties – which grow strong in the end.”
Be Consistent
LEO WIDRICH, Co-Founder, Buffer: “There is one key thing we have seen from our data analyzing 1 million Facebook updates: Whenever the frequency of daily postings goes over 5 posts per day, the reach and engagement drops significantly. The best results were achieved with 2 daily updates, one being around 11am for the most important timezone your fans are in and another posting being at 5pm.”
NATE RIGGS, of Social Business Strategies: “Lots of bigger companies who are building and managing fan pages stop responding after 5 pm. This is dumb. To create real influence on Facebook, community managers need to be present when the fans are ready to talk. Influence is created when you can solve a problem or answer a question when it happens.”
NAVEEN KRISHNAMURTHY, CEO, RIVA Solutions, Inc: “The key to creating power and influence on Facebook is to have a consistent message over longer period of time that is infectious to the targeted community. Thus the audience wants to move past window shopping and open the door and come in!”
GREGORY POUY, European blogger and digital strategist: “Focus on one subject/community that is relevant to your company and to create and give useful content for these people, respecting their own code, meeting them in the real life as often as possible and to take time, not expecting a short term financial ROI.”
KATHI KRUSE, Automotive Social Media marketing consultant at Kruse Control: “Know what your customer wants and give it to ‘em.”
Engage Thoughtfully
MICHAEL A. STELZNER, CEO and Founder, Social Media Examiner: “If you want to have raving fans on Facebook, simply reply when they post on your Facebook wall. You’d be surprised how far a human response goes in building brand loyalty.”
MITCH JOEL, President, Twist Image-Blogger, Podcaster, Author, Six Pixels of Separation: “Let keep this short and succinct: instead of getting people to “like” you, why not go out and “like” people? It’s radical I know, but it’s true. Power and influence won’t come from the amount of people who like you. Power and influence will come from being real with the people you’re truly interested in connecting with.”
TOM WEBSTER, Vice President, Strategy, Edison Research: “*Ask* your Facebook followers what kinds of content they would expect/need to see from your company (or your vertical/industry) in the future on Facebook, reward them for answering, and then do that thing.”
DANNY INY, The Freddy Kreuger of Blogging: ”The key to success with Facebook is investment; giving the people you want to reach repeated opportunities to engage in a way that is fun, and habit-forming.”
ROBERT ROSE, Strategist in Residence, Content Marketing Institute: “In my work with brands on both the B2C and B2B side, “active listening” is one of the keys to success on Facebook. Too many brands treat the platform as a publishing platform. And, it’s not just monitor/response. That, frankly, is just “hearing”. Active Listening is consciously hearing, understanding and responding in a way that communicates to the person that they are actually being heard.”
GINI DIETRICH, Founder and CEO, Arment Dietrich: “Ask questions! People LOVE to talk about themselves so if you ask them questions, you’ll find some serious engagement. The questions can range from “what’s your favorite Thanksgiving side dish” to fill in the blank questions. For instance, on our page, we recently asked, “The most overlooked marketing tactic is… ” and “What was the best thing that happened to you this weekend?” While not everything we ask is business-related, it definitely keeps us top-of-mind with our clients, prospects, and candidates.”
Wow. Some great ideas here! Many thanks to these friends who contributed so generously to this project!
I conducted these interviews as part of my research for the upcoming Facebook Marketing Success Summit. If you’d like to hear the presentation as well as insights from marketing stars such as Mari Smith, Dave Kerpen and Amy Porterfield, click on the link and check it out. Should be awesome.
What intrigues you about the insights in this post? Do you agree? What would you add?
Illustration courtesy Bigstock.com
Social proof and your battle for credibility
Mar 8th
While researching my new book Return On Influence
Social proof is a critical concept behind influence in both the offline and the online worlds. In the absence of enough information to make our own decision, we turn to signals from others to help us find a way forward.
Here’s a simple example — Let’s say you are at the site of a terrible car wreck and two people are shouting orders. One is wearing a doctor’s lab coat and one is wearing a pizza delivery uniform. Which directions are you likely to follow?
A social proof “badge” can bestow authority whether it is deserved or not. Somebody who wears a doctor’s lab coat, has an office decorated with diplomas, or drives an exotic car is communicating “power” — even if they are a fake. It’s a type of herd mentality, and it can be both dangerous and useful, depending on the situation.
Social proof is even more important in the online world
A badge like number of Twitter followers or a Klout score may be the ONLY mechanism we have to determine influence in the online world. Offline, we may have the chance to meet people, or ask a mutual friend to help us determine credibility. But this type of validation is often not possible online, so we seek a shortcut, and on the social web, there are plenty of them!
We are all suffering from information overload in this data-dense online world. We simply don’t have the energy to do any more digging and will gladly accept a “badge” as proof of authority.
When establishing online influence, social proof matters … even more than real achievement. I’m sure more people know how many Twitter followers I have than any aspect of my career, education, or charitable work.
Driving the wrong behaviors
So it probably doesn’t make sense to you when I tell you that I have eliminated many typical elements of social proof from my blog. Look around at other social media blogs and they are decorated with more badges than a five-star general. It makes good business sense to do this. And while {grow} has been on its fair share of “Top 10″ lists (I was recently named on of the “Top 50 Power Influencers” by Forbes), I have decided to take down the badges.
The reason is simple. Like any good business person, I’m competitive. And these often meaningless numbers were driving the wrong behaviors for me and my business.
Here’s an example of how social proof can be important and meaningless at the same time.
The AdAge blog ranking has been rendered virtually useless after the changes they made last summer but it remains the most popular “badge” you see on social media blogs. But the ranking has nothing to do with the quality of your content or the vibrancy of your community. You can climb the list by buying backlinks and gaming StumbleUpon. 20 percent of the ranking is an arbitrary rating given by a guy named Todd. One blog in the top 100 has not even been updated since 2009.
So this numerical ranking is just plain dumb. Social proof like this is fool’s gold — sparkly but meaningless. It can’t buy you a cup of coffee. And yet, due to my competitive nature, every time I dropped a few spots, I started to scheme about getting more “Stumble votes” or whatever. This is absolutely the wrong thing for me to be focusing on! This is gaming a number to establish social proof, not engaging in an activity that is directly serving my customers and driving income.
I need to focus on three priorities in my business: Clients, Content, and College Classes. Anything beyond that is a distraction. I don’t have the resources to game social proof badges like the silly AdAge system every week.
A personal decision
Social proof is important, but it was driving the wrong behaviors in me personally. So I have simply decided to ignore the numbers … for the most part. I literally have no idea how many Facebook, LinkedIn, or YouTube followers/friends I have. I have a rough idea of the Twitter followers because it is so prominent on my profile. I only check the number of blog readers I have once a month or so. I have not looked at my AdAge ranking in three months. And the blog? All the “buzz badges” are gone. The one number I do pay attention to is the social shares for each blog post because I think that is a good sign of feedback — those are your “votes” on what content is working for the community.
So I’m not following my own advice around social proof — but it is the best advice for me at this point in time of my life. I’m hoping that if I put that “social proof energy” toward delivering consistently great content that the results will follow.
At least that is the theory. Maybe someday I will eventually re-join the crowd and focus all my attention on “likes,” followers and popularity contests! After all, isn’t that what really matters these days?
Ascent of the social media climbers: Klout goes mainstream
Feb 18th
I’ve never done this before, but today I’m reprinting an entire article from another publication on {grow}. Why? Because this excellent piece from Boston Globe reporter Beth Teitell represents one of the first times the concept of social scoring systems like Klout have jumped into the mainstream media. I think this is significant.
I started writing about social scoring a few months ago, predicting that this trend would become mainstream and that we need to be aware of and embrace these systems as marketing professionals — whether we love them or hate them. Here is Beth’s fine article:
Ascent of the social-media climbers
Klout score? Learn it or, as Monte would say, be judged. Klout.com is one of a number of new status-measuring tools aimed at making social networking more like high school than it already is. Sites such as Klout and PeerIndex.net take public information from Twitter, and sometimes Facebook and LinkedIn, to determine a person’s influence on social media. Anyone can check her score or a rival’s by going to one of the sites and putting in her Twitter handle.
The companies use secret algorithms that go beyond simple numbers of followers — which can be bought in bulk — or friends or fans, and count retweets, the number of links clicked, and even how influential one’s followers are, among other indicators.
“A credit score for your reputation,’’ is how Dave Wieneke, director of digital marketing at Sokolove Law, in Boston, describes the Klout score.
Although many don’t know enough to worry about their Klout scores, for those keeping track, it can be one more ego boost or slap. “There’s a lot of emotion around this,’’ said Mark Schaefer, author of the “Tao of Twitter: Changing Your Life and Business 140 Characters at a Time.’’ “Generally it comes from people who have a low Klout score.’’
Garth Holsinger, vice president of global sales and business development at the San Francisco-based Klout, sees the desperation on a daily basis. “People call and say, ‘I work in social media, and I’m going to lose my job if my score doesn’t rise.’ We get celebrity managers asking how they can get their clients’ scores higher. We get people who are literally crying because their Klout score went down.’’
The stakes may only rise, Klout-wise. The company, which was founded in 2008, recently raised $8.5 million in new funding and said it plans to measure influence in more social networks — and beyond, to capture industry leaders who don’t bother tweeting or friending people.
Schaefer, an adjunct professor of marketing at Rutgers University, said the new score-keeping tools create a “disturbing’’ social media caste system that he dislikes. But, he adds, “from a marketer’s standpoint, they’re a dream.’’
Indeed, the Klout score has already jumped from the online world into the real one. As Advertising Age wrote in September: “Need a Reservation? That Could Depend on How Big You are on Twitter (Really).’’
During the Consumer Electronics Show in January, the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas hosted an event with free food and chair massages for guests with good Klout scores. When Disney debuted the movie “Tangled,’’ it asked Klout to find 500 mothers for exclusive Klout screenings and sent their children a “Tangled’’ kit with merchandise.
Holsinger said the company has 40 similar promotions waiting to launch, including one for the new BlackBerry tablet PlayBook: “We’re giving those to 100 super-high-scoring people before they come out.’’
The companies that partner with Klout are paying customers, Holsinger said. “About 1,500 companies use our data.’’
Of course, no one enjoys being kept behind the virtual velvet rope. When the corporate sponsors of a holiday party hosted by social media entrepreneur Peter Shankman invited many guests based on Klout scores, the snubbed were not happy. Shankman expected “whiners,’’ he wrote on his blog, and he did get complaints. “They’re stomping their little feet.’’ If they want to be seen as more influential, he said later, “they need to post more interesting, more engaging things.’’
Even as the low scorers complain about unfairness, Augie Ray, a senior analyst with Forrester Research, predicts an increase in both the number of firms doing social measuring and the number of places where one’s ranking will matter.
“Companies have always provided different levels of service, depending on how much money a customer spends, or how recently they’ve bought something,’’ he said. “Now we’re seeing a change where an individual’s level of influence also has to be taken into account. There’s a lot of buzz about whether it’s fair or not, but I don’t know how much fair has to do with it. A company can afford to anger a customer with a Klout score of 15 but probably can’t anger someone with a Klout score of 95.’’
Indeed, with more hotels interested in Klout scores, Holsinger said the new question upon check-in will not be: “May we have your e-mail address?’’ but rather: “What’s your Twitter name?’’ “If your score is 60 or above, they will upgrade you.’’
But even those who criticize the measuring sites as imperfect still want a good score. Wieneke, who blogs about the future of digital marketing, has serious privacy concerns about giving Klout access to his Facebook and LinkedIn accounts but he’s tempted to allow access in hopes that it will raise his score by providing a fuller picture of his influence.
“Ten points would be pretty nice,’’ he said, speculating on a potential boost. “It counts as social proof.’’
The question of gaming the system or raising one’s score legitimately is the Twitter user’s version of an author trying to raise his Amazon ranking. Beyond buying followers, some people ask friends to retweet their tweets, or follow people just so they’ll be followed back.
Azeem Azhar, chief operating officer of the London-based PeerIndex, regularly hears from users eager to do better, with competition a big motivator. “How come I got a score of 35 and my friend got 45?’’ a user will write as he asks for tips.
“The advice is always the same,’’ Azhar said. “The system is designed to reward good behaviors that suggest you are building your social capital. Those are, do others share or retweet your tweets? Another signal is how many people try and start conversations with me?’’
Perhaps the best thing about having a high Klout score is that it allows one to be blasé. That’s the approach taken by Internet marketing guru Chris Brogan, coauthor of the bestselling “Trust Agents’’ — and a man with 170,000 Twitter followers.
Brogan has one of the highest Klout scores in Boston — 76.4, only about two-tenths of a point behind Shaquille O’Neal. When he meets someone who’s impressed by that score, he feels bad for the person, he said. “I’d rather be measured by something other than a set of numbers a software company thought of one day.’’
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