K Street Cafe

I continue to read articles (well, see headlines – as I don’t bother to read them) about the “Top 50” or “Top 100” power Twitter users or online influencers. This concept is ridiculous. Especially when they show up in public relations or advocacy publications. Unless your industry happens to be the entertainment of sports – and even then I question their influence – the top 50, 100 or 1,000,000 mean nothing. Let’s be honest, here are the so-called top influncers:

Lada Gaga

Justin Bieber

Kim Kardashian

The Onion

Ashton Kutcher

Charlie Sheen

Mashable

Hell, even Ryan Seacrest

Identifying valuable influencers to target your audience has nothing to do with quantity. That’s the problem with all of the “influence measurement tools” such as Klout. The metrics of these tools are limited – there is no human analysis. There is only an algorithm which measures quantity. I suspect that the owners of these influence measurement tools would argue otherwise, making a case that the quantity is tied to like-minded social groups.

Not really.

Want to raise your Klout score? Do this: Tweet constantly and tweet about whatever the hottest topic of the day is, regardless if you give a damn about it or not. Tweet about the latest trending topic, scandal, and celebrities to see your score rise.

Determining the quality of a network is not a task for computerized algorithms. It requires human intelligence. It requires a discriminating approach to whom your audience is, and who the most valuable surrogates in that audience may be.

Let’s consider the legal community. If you have a massive network of Twitter followers filled with spammers, product promoters and porn stars, your reach is limited. If your network consists of legitimate individuals that have a limited to non-existent interest in legal theory or practice, but who are trying to build their own networks through use of automated tools, you’re not building an influential network. You might be building a broad network, but one that is untargeted and unhelpful.

Be selective. Know your audience. Weed out anyone in your network that does not advance your purpose for being online. Think of it as compound interest. If you build a small group of in-the-know followers – no matter your industry – then you will be reaching the holy grail of what PR folks refer to as target audience. Each of these finely selected individuals will, in all likelihood, have their own networks of various sizes, with a significant degree of others who follow your issue and care about the topic you’re promoting. They can, in turn, then share that information with their networks of similarly minded individuals. With each circle outward that you go, the value of the network diminishes of course. However, that is the very nature of social networks.

Do the unthinkable: Make your network small. You will be far better off with a smaller network of people whom only you can know fit the profile of infuencers within your target audience. In the old days, these folks were called surrogates. So shrink. Klout will frown on you. All the social media mavens will frown on you. But your audience will smile. As the content you’ll be providing, and the content you’ll be receiving will be relevant.

Why I Unfollow and Unlike Government Social Media (Adfero Group)

Chris Battle, Partner at Adfero Group, provides his view of the best approach to social media. He highlights the importance of engaging your audience and finding the most interesting information to keep your fans or followers coming back, especially when in the government realm.

How Suntrust Uses Social Media to Engage Customers and Comply with Regulation
(SocialMediaToday)

This video interview of Bianca Buckridee, AVP of Social Media Engagement at SunTrust, discusses the perfect balance between risk and reward to meet customer expectations and improve customer experiences in the social media space.

Public Affairs Pulse: Implications for Corporate PA (Public Affairs Council)

Doug Pinkham, President of the Public Affairs Council, explains why public affairs is one of the most important corporate functions by discussing Americans’ views on ethics, honesty and lobbying. He provides analytical insight to why companies need to remain driven in the public affairs industry.

Public Relations in 2012 and Beyond: Integrated Strategic Consulting will Replace Silo-Based Execution (Adfero Group)

Chris Battle, Partner at Adfero Group, provides his view of the best approach to media relations. He stresses the importance of having team members on a client account early on so they share the client’s goals in order to provide the highest quality results.

Gladwell vs. Shirky: A Year Later, Scoring the Debate Over Social Media Revolutions (Wired)
The New Yorker’s Malcolm Gladwell has famously argued that “the media [has] oversold Twitter and Facebook as tools for political action.” But events of the past year – most notably the Arab Spring and the Occupy Wall Street movement – seem to have disproved Gladwell’s assertion.

Occupy Facebook: Social Network for Protesters in the Works (Mashable)
The new site will be called The Global Square, and it is intended to unite Occupy protesters across the world. The hitch? In order to join, you have to have a sponsor to “ensure you are trustworthy.”

Several years ago our Innovate to Motivate conference hosted then Gallup Managing Partner Ron Balmer to talk about Gallup’s research on customer engagement and how it applies to grassroots organizations. It was one of our most highly rated workstorms. Gallup has been at the forefront of engagement research; they define it as the degree to which people will work for or against your organization or brand. I think most of us would agree that definition of stakeholder engagement is worth pursuing. They have published recent research which reinforces Ron’s prescient admonitions.

Engagement matters because the world is driven to distraction. With engagement, your stakeholders give you the benefit of the doubt when you screw up. They also have your brand as a part of their own identity. They can’t imagine a world without your organization or cause, and criticizing your organization means criticizing themselves.

Gallup conducted research with over 17,000 social media users to determine how people interact with social media and its effectiveness as a marketing tool. Gallup doesn’t conduct shoddy research, so I think it’s worth our time to see if there are applications for those of us in the grassroots persuasion business. After all, we are marketers of ideas and action.  (more…)

A Million Little Klouts (Adweek)
Several competitors are moving in on Klout: if you use the popular social media ‘influence measurement’ service, you may want to check out these new (and improved!) tools.

18 Ways to Promote Your Blog Offline (Business2Community)
“The traditional idea of a website is turning into a changing, content rich environment where visitors can learn and interact with your business or nonprofit” – here are some easy ways to promote your blog offline.

Facebook Timelines Being Considered For Brands (WebProNews)
As of today, all individual Facebook users can transition to the newly-designed “timeline” format. Though the timeline is not currently available to brands, “Brand timelines, for those companies who choose to utilize them to their full potential could provide limitless information and knowledge about brands in a way that we just haven’t really seen in the past.”

Learn How to Leverage LinkedIn, or Fall Behind (Fast Company)
LinkedIn is far behind Facebook and Twitter in terms of popularity, and many people wonder if having a profile on LinkedIn is worth all the work. Douglas Crets explains why (and how) to embrace LinkedIn today.

Stop Online Piracy Act: Can Google, Facebook, tech wonks, and Web activists kill the Stop Online Piracy Act? (Slate)
The Stop Online Piracy Act, otherwise known as SOPA, was one of the most popular bipartisan bills of the year. But a flurry of opposition grew among a number of open-Internet groups and now thousands of people and many major organizations have joined the campaign to stop the passage of SOPA. Slate’s Will Oremus calls them ‘the geek lobby.’

Poll: Obama Top Among Tweeters (POLITICO)
Plus: “Twitter users tend to lean more to the left: 13 percent of liberal Democrats say they use the tool, compared to 8 percent of conservatives and 6 percent of tea party supporters. Black adults are more Twitter-savvy than whites – 14 percent of African-Americans say they tweet, double the percentage of whites who are fluent in the 140-character messages, the poll found.”

Twitter Launches @Gov Account To Track Unique And Creative Political Uses Of Twitter (AllTwitter)
Twitter is using the new account to tweet about ‘examples of engaging political campaigns and government initiatives.’ The Twitter Government and Politics Team promises to use the handle to promote creative uses of Twitter for civic engagement.

Twitter.com Gets a Complete Redesign (AllTwitter)
Perhaps you’ve heard about (or seen) the ‘new’ Twitter; this article breaks down all the changes you can expect. For more info, check out Twitter’s info page.

Google+ Released Guide for Politicians and Candidates (Mashable)
The young social network recently released guidelines for politicians (as well as activists and campaigners) to help them promote their issues across the web. “The post highlights five ways politicians and campaigns can use Google+: to share content, express support, tailor content through circles, host hangouts and share photos.”

In #HackWeTrust – The House of Representatives Opens Its Doors to Transparency Through Technology (Sunlight Foundation)
Last week, the House of Representatives hosted a public discussion on ‘how to give the public better access to congressional information.’ Check out this post to learn all the ways that the House is working to ‘open itself up’ to the average citizen.