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Is Porn Popular or Influential?

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Cheerleader Beach Party

Does your popularity convert to influence? Do your friends actually read your tweets? Converting popularity to influence is integral to your social media strategy.

There is always a battle between influence and popularity.  Popularity is sexier, but influence is a lot more powerful. Porn plays in both worlds. So which is more significant?,

How often do we get caught up in the desire for popularity instead of recognizing the importance of influence? Honestly, fairly often. But these two levels of social relationships can, and do, intersect. In the world of porn, popularity can also be influential.

At what point might you be sacrificing your influence for popularity?

Social media mirrors everyday life, where the popular kids seem to have it all.  The trendy people in social media have the big numbers. We go to their profiles and see 30,000 Twitter followers or 10,000  Facebook fans. They have lots of tweets, everyone wants to follow them, and they seem to be the admired role models.

Twitter, in particular, supports the notion of popularity. When you decide whether to follow someone, you base that in part on how many followers and how many tweets they have racked up.

Social proof is the idea that your popularity proves your influence. Although in a sense this is true, the equation is not that simple. Social proof is not just popularity, it is actually based around influence. Say that you have 20,000 followers and tweet a call to action like “Visit my new website.  If on in ten people respond, and even fewer retweet, your level of influence is low. So what value do your other 19,900 followers have? Very little. However, if you have 200 followers, tweet a call to action and 150 of them retweet and respond, your level of influence and the value of your followers are high.

The biggest mistake people make in social media is that they see people with 30,000 followers and decide that to be successful they need to mimic them. They may get numbers, but they may not be implementing the engagement strategy that creates real impact.

It is easy to get numbers. Anyone can buy followers. I can have 10,000 overnight if I choose, but not one of them will read anything I tweet.

The magic combination is being both well-known and influential. There are tweeters who have achieved this magic combo and create strong and powerful social media campaigns.

If you want to be successful you need influence, built on a solid reputation, more than popularity. That’s the real proof in social proof. Over time, with networking and a good strategy, recognition and status will come. But without influence you are just the lonely head cheerleader who has no real friends.

Social Media Floozy

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Social Media Whore

Are you a social media prude, whore or floozy?

When people start becoming involved in social media they are 1 of 2 things:

1. Prudes

2. Sluts

As with most things, moderation is actually better.  There’s also another option:

3. Floozy

The Prude

The social media prude is the person who barely sticks their toe in the water. They create one account, lurk, and hardly ever post.  Actually, that is the best case scenario.  The worst case is: they create one account, never log in and chalk up social media as a failure.

The prude is on social media because she thinks she has to be there.  She doesn’t like it or understand it and is not truly willing to give it a really good try. Her measly attempts will sour her to future social ventures.

The Slut

The social media slut decides they are going to jump head first into all forms of social media. They create accounts on every network they can find. They blast out messages to everyone, send auto-messages to every new follower, and try to talk to everyone.  Then they are completely overwhelmed and turn their back on all of it because it was too much.

The slut realizes the importance of social media.  She realizes it so much, that in order to utilize it she is convinced she has to access all of it. She spreads herself too thin and wears herself out, generally overextending herself. Because she is doing so much of it, chances are she’s doing none of it really well; she will get burnt out without seeing any real results and quickly abandon all her efforts.

The Floozy

The social media floozy is the one who does not get into all the networks, just a few of them.  She talks to a lot of people, but no more than she can handle.  She does social media because she likes it, not because she has to. The social media floozy understands her limits but is still very active and present.

The floozy will focus on the networks she has the most fun with, and those will be the ones she gets the most out of. Because she is not overextended she won’t get burnt out. She will be able to continue with her social media for the long haul and find success. Consider the virtues of the floozy, and embrace them!