#SMCQ16 On Measuring Influence

Earlier this week, the SMC Editorial Board posed the question “How do you measure influencers and/or influential social media platforms?” having wondered aloud which combination of measurement and know-how equaled influence. As the community response demonstrated, influence is equal parts quantitative and qualitative. From ‘listening platforms’ such as Radian6, eCairn and ScoutLabs which track and calculate conversation volume, page rank, comments and frequency as well as a host of other data garnered from Sales Force and CRM tools, to  good old intuition, influence is subject to the eye of the beholder. Some notes from the online response field:

“I look for the number of followers and the number of participants who add comments. Equally important is the quality of the content and the comments. They should be well-written, intelligent, supported by references to sources, focus on the positive, succinct, and not reflect a strongly biased opinion.” — James O’Connor, Owner, Clutter Control, O’Connor Communications,

“So effective, efficient messages are key.  Regularly is another.  Transparent, non-promotional communications essential.  Self-effacing humor is nice.  But the most important aspect is just to be a part of the conversation and thought stream.  One person with one comment at the exact right moment in time who we never hear from again can be a profound influencer.” —How Do You Measure Influencers,” by Bob Stewart,

@the_sophist: #SMCQ16 The act of measuriing influence, influences. Especially in the state of social consciousness. u can’t measure u can only approximate

Suggested Reading:

“How to Measure Influence Online,” Mashable, by Micah Baldwin, March 2, 2009

“Do You Know Jack About Social Media Measurement,” MetricsMan, June 15, 2009

“Is PageRank the Ultimate Measure of Online Influence?” Nine By Blue, October 8, 2008

“Social Media Metrics Superlist,” Interactive Insights Group,  by Robin Broitman, February 2nd, 2009

The SMC Editorial Board will be reviewing the responses and talking more about measuring influence, this Friday 10am PST on BlogTalk Radio Social Media Club. We welcome your participation.

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#SMCQ16 How do you measure influence?

Metrics, popularity, comment counts, network buzz or simple word-of-mouth credibility? There are a huge number of factors that go into determining the influence of a blogger or online platform, but how can you tell who or what truly influences both individual and community behavior. What does true influence even mean?  On this week’s Social Media Question of the Week call, our Editorial board discussed how we rank influence in an ever-more-vocal online environment. When do you listen and when do you tune out a blogger’s opinion or other online source of information? How do you choose and rate your sources? We want to know:

#SMCQ16 How do you measure social media influencers and/or influential online communities?

How to join the Social Media Clubs Question of the Week discussion: Our goal with the Question of the Week initiative is to create a truly collaborative conversation within and around the most up-to-the-minute issues affecting Social Media. Each week, the Social Media Club editorial board looks at trends, topics and news affecting social media during a Blogtalk Radio broadcast. During the call, the editorial board forms the question. This is where YOU come in: we’d love for you to post your thoughts on your blog, via Twitter or by commenting on the Social Media Club site. Please tag your blogs and posts with a hash tag, ‘#’, so we can track the conversation. For example, if you wrote a response to Social Media Club Question of the Week 13, please tag your post ‘#SMCQ13’ and we’ll be able to find it, track back, and link the post to the original post. Your answers will all be included in the weekly Conversation post & Blogtalk Radio broadcast review of the answers we received. We also invite you to call in to the shows to share your viewpoint. Instructions about how to call in will be given on this site by the end of each week. Thanks for joining the club!

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#SMCQ15 On truth-finding

This week’s SMCQ15: How do you know who to trust within the social media environment? was especially pertinent given the dramatic impact Social Media had amidst the election and protests in Iran.  The online conversation and direct responses we received pointed out the need for self responsibility and incorporating a journalistic standard for fact checking.

Have thoughts to share on the subject? Please tune into BlogTalkRadio this Friday, June 26 @ 10am PST as the Social Media Club Editorial Board reviews the conversation. We welcome your input.

Some notes from the online conversation:

“Is Twitter The CNN Of The New Media Generation?,” by Brian Solis, TechCrunch,  June 17, 2009

“Fact checking is a vital part of the news business and is ultimately what separates amateurs from experts. But researching fact from hearsay or even opinion is almost impossible on Twitter for most users. Keen believed that citizen media is corrupting the very institution of news media because most of the individuals publishing information using social tools, he argues in his book, are “grossly misinformed.” While Morris didn’t make the sweeping assertion that Keen expressed, his point is noteworthy and deserves further examination”

“How Not To Be A Social Media Sucker (aka who to trust online),” by Kimberly Turner, Regator, June 25, 2009

“You can guarantee fast or you can guarantee accurate, but you can’t guarantee both. We want things instantly. If a plane landed in the Hudson 30 seconds ago, we want details NOW. Fair enough. But remember, the faster you get your news, the less likely it is to have undergone a fact-checking process. Monthly magazines, for example, often have teams of fact-checkers who verify everything from the spellings of names to the color of a source’s hair if it’s mentioned. This is because monthly publications work several weeks out. There is time for due diligence.”

Iran + Twitter = Trust, But Don’t Verify, by Farel Chideya, The Huffington Post

“So, how do you verify? Well… some people say, just… don’t. It’s a cul-de-sac you can go around again and again. I am not saying don’t follow Twitter (again, that would be useless). I do want to follow Twitter, on #IranElections and all else. What I don’t want to do is give up the idea of verifying information.”

“How Do You Know What Tweets are True? Exactly the Same Way You Source Everything Else” by Sarah Delman, Corporate Memo

“Social media isn’t some separate sphere: it’s similar, in fact, to all other source building. If you don’t know who to trust, online or off, then you’re not doing your job. It’s what reporters do: they figure out who to trust before they need to. You should have built social media sources beforehand in exactly the same way you build offline sources.”

“Twitter and Social Media in Iran,” By Anthony Caruana, Hydrapinion, June 24, 2009

“solely relying on Twitter where particularly poignant or inflammatory Tweets are heavily retweeted doesn’t equate with accuracy.”

Highlights from The Twitter Stream:

@rustytanton There’s nothing in the question to imply that mainstream media or what you hear on the street is superior in any way 

@dwiggins: How different from other sources? Same question. Most folks think answers found on Google correct! Info literacy a core need here.

@znmeb posted twice on the question: I don’t think “social media” are any different regarding trust than any other communication channel”
and, noting need for self responsibility, @znmeb: #SMCQ15 fool me once, shame on you … fool me twice, shame on me

@ baurecom: nowadays you can’t really trust anybody. You have to thoroughly check the validity of the source b4 you broadcast it.

Further Reading

Twitter on the Barricades: Six Lessons Learned, by Naomi Cohen, New York Times, June 20, 2009

“Crisis Communications Online: Social Media Usage during a Crisis with Leysia Palen,” by Eric Schwartzman, On the Record, June 4, 2009

“Thumbs To The News: Public Turns To Twitter,” by Wendy Kaufman, NPR, April 20, 2009

“Finding Truth on the Internet,” Wired, by Louise Witt, September 4, 2004

Have thoughts to share on the subject? Please tune into BlogTalkRadio this Friday, June 26 @ 10am PST as the Social Media Club Editorial Board reviews the conversation. We welcome your input.

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#SMCQ15 Who to trust? Verifying social media information

Receiving retweeted information that doesn’t have a clear source, mail from hijacked email accounts and coming across yet another poorly fact-checked blog post represent the down side of the instant information age. How does one determine the accuracy of information found online? And how do you verify sources to ensure that you’re getting the truth, be it business, personal or political? During last Friday’s Question of the Week call, the Social Media Club Editorial Board discussed the conundrum of finding the most accurate sources of news amid a vast ocean of information. Now we want to hear from you. We welcome your thoughts on this week’s question:

#SMCQ15  How do you know who to trust within the social media environment?

Please tag your response, posts and tweets #SMCQ15.

How to join the Social Media Clubs Question of the Week discussion: Our goal with the Question of the Week initiative is to create a truly collaborative conversation within and around the most up-to-the-minute issues affecting Social Media. Each week, the Social Media Club editorial board looks at trends, topics and news affecting social media during a Blogtalk Radio broadcast. During the call, the editorial board forms the question. This is where YOU come in: we’d love for you to post your thoughts on your blog, via Twitter or by commenting on the Social Media Club site. Please tag your blogs and posts with a hash tag, ‘#’, so we can track the conversation. For example, if you wrote a response to Social Media Club Question of the Week 13, please tag your post ‘#SMCQ13’ and we’ll be able to find it, track back, and link the post to the original post. Your answers will all be included in the weekly Conversation post & Blogtalk Radio broadcast review of the answers we received. We also invite you to call in to the shows to share your viewpoint. Instructions about how to call in will be given on this site by the end of each week. Thanks for joining the club!

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SMCQ7 Answers: Brand Control? Hah!

Last week, Social Media Club asked readers SMCQ7 In the era of social media, what do you do to control your brand?”

The answer: You don’t.

This revelation can be a blow to the best laid of plans. To whit, notice the current push by the pork industry to rebrand the swine flu epidemic. Talk about a nightmare for an industry. But whatever your product, service, or situation, a surrender of complete control in no ways means you don’t have the ability to influence and craft messages that are most accurate to what you offer.  The good news is, Social Media is perfect for this task:

“It’s not so much about brand control as it is about brand management and appropriate representation,” wrote Pete Codella who also offered some tips for going forward in his “PR & Social Media” blog post: “…once you’ve had your come to Jesus moment — realizing you’re not really in control of your brand — what do you do about it? You become a master at using new social media tools to publish your own content which then competes in the marketplace of ideas for mindshare. The more creative, authentic and entertaining your content, the greater your chances of popularity.”

Justan Kownaki concurred: “No one controls their brand, but social media allows you better manage your brand’s perception in real time. More importantly, it helps you understand what others are saying about you (and why), so you can identify any disconnect between what YOU think your brand stands for and what OTHERS think your brand stands for.”

@mattceni: You can control your product, your service  Then your customers will carry your message

Of course, social media will reveal other truths as Joellyn Detjen reminded us:

@JoellynDetjen: Social media rewards integrity, exposes moral faults. Control of brand is then a result of a company’s inner values.

The sum? Give up control, welcome creativity, and collaboration …and be prepared to revise!

On Friday, the SMC Editorial Board will reconvene on BlogTalk Radio 8am PST to talk further about the results. Tune in, & give us a call. We’d love to hear your opinion.

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SMCQ6 It’s All About Relationship

Despite Ashton, despite Oprah, and despite the countless other Twitter & social site users vying to increase their followers or otherwise inflate their friend numbers, the quality of that connection is the reason for many peoples participation in social media. At least going by views expressed by our SMCQ6 respondents. While TechCrunch pondered whether Twitter should simply remove its counts, SMC readers answered our Question of the Week #6: Is social media a popularity contest or is social media about genuine relationships? on the genuine side of the equation with a resounding wave of relationship-driven answers The common opinion? Past a certain number of followers, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to maintain a real connection — the platform shifts to broadcast mode rather than conversation.

Highlights from the discussion:

“I think the game-changing reality of social media is that genuine and authentic will be the victorious tortoise over the hare of popularity. Doing the right thing by your customers (and making it right when you don’t–even more important since nobody’s perfect) is no longer a “nice-to-have” for success–it is a defining prerequisite.” — Jay Cosnett

“Making relationships still involves an investment of time, effort, knowledge-sharing, reaching out, etc.” —Erika  Kerekes

@gloriabell: SM is about relationships & conversations - celebrity is fleeting - Relationships influence & last

debmarkham: U want to be popular to make $. You want to forge relationships to find like minds, emotional support & make $ too

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SMCQ4 RE: Community-The Reality Factor

com·mu·ni·ty noun 1: a unified body of individuals: as a: state , commonwealth b: the people with common interests living in a particular area ; broadly : the area itself <the problems of a large community> c: an interacting population of various kinds of individuals (as species) in a common location (from Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

Given that the common location is online, and that the Internet makes possible extremely diverse unifying factors, our Social Media Question of the Week #4 focusing on community was ripe for discussion among our readers and SMC members.

Here’s how some of our members asnwered: What makes a community real? When does a web site feel like a place to and be, instead of simply a page of information to visit?

Recurring themes? Some of the most recognizable (and oft criticized) sites (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn), were named more than once as truly communal, as did the need to stay active with connections on and offline. The link between online and off serves as a strong measurement for many:

mercurycomm: Is Twitter your community? Can we call something a community when most people have never met face to face?

@wordspring What makes an online community real is when you really *want* to meet your online friends for coffee

Nonethless, many consider these online sites alive with communal aspects:

“I know if I ask Twitter a question, someone will answer it” Francine Hardaway commented, going on in her blog to expound on the multiple ways and meanings of ‘connect.’”LinkedIn, however, is not a true community, as Twitter is, or Friendfeed. Or even Facebook. If you lose your job, your wife, your 401(k) these communities offer empathy, help, alternatives. LinkedIn only offers a chance to do the “work” in networking. But what we really need is the “net” — the circle that draws us in so we don’t feel alone.”

“For me, a community becomes real when the communication flows both ways,” –Catherine Novak

ltbeyer: When members are interacting - creating, managing and sharing content & ideas through conversation - online & off

JGrossman_PRPro: I think the importance of keeping community within the social sphere is making sure that everyone is engaged and promoting activity.

Other examples of sites that work included Yapstar (now 500 members strong), and Ning groups (such as TechHui).

But what makes them truly useful? Diverse (i.e.: customizable) user experiece (Gravity7), banning automation (Carl Beckelheimer), clear leadership (Roxanne Darling), skillful collaboration (Joerg Wittkewitz) were some top picks for a sites ability to stay active and engaged.

Nate at Big Bags defined community by flexibility:
“When you have people of common interests gathering in a common place, and you facilitate their ability to share information and ideas, your website is no longer a static page lost in the endless ocean of interwebs. It becomes a hangout, or a second home for web surfers.”

How did our members think these interactions will change in the future?

Kyle Austin did some prognosticating:

“To the next generation of Web goers, real-time connections seem to be more important than the amount of connections possible. At the same time, Twitter’s growth is beginning to make those real-time connections more wide-ranging and meaningful. A combination that appears to be the holy grail of future social communities: Communities with seemingly endless connection possibilities and second-by-second interaction.”

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How do you know if your social media vendor gets it?

As Social Media Club gets set to present the result of its Social Media Buyer’s Guide Survey at Web 2.0 on Friday, April 3, the SMC editorial board convened to mull one of the questions that wasn’t quite asked: How do you know that people know what they’re talking about with social media? In the spirit of our motto: If you get it, please share it, we’d love your thoughts and examples:

Social Media Club Question of the Week:

Does your vendor understand social media? And how do you know ?

Please tag your response #SMCQ3

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SMCQ2: Weighing in on the Responsibility of Social Media Services

In light of fluctuating terms of service and questionable archiving policies by some popular social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo), the SMC Editorial Board posed the question What are the responsibilities of Web 2.0 services to engage with and respond to the community it serves and what are the responsibilities of the community to the service? to discern how much content was being shared versus given away, what was being stored or simply abandoned, and who perhaps gets to do the giving away.   Free, as it turns out, often comes with a price tag and the deeper communities get in with their use of social media tools, the clearer some of the ambiguous terms of service become. As the following comments demonstrate, the question regarding responsibility of both service community spawned as many questions as real answers:

“the real question is whether  it’s reasonable to expect a certain level of service or % of uptime when you’re not paying for a product?” wrote Kai MacMahon http://kaimac.wordpress.com

MacMahon’s comments were echoed by Chris Dickens (@CravenDickens) in a comment to the original post: “The terminology we use (social media) is misleading and oddly seductive. We use these channels with a greater sense of ‘ownership’ than email and IM tools yet that is all they are - tools. And we have no ownership.”

“Archiving, maintaining, making accessible/findable, and distributing appropriate/relevant content contributed by the membership comes first.’ — Rich Reader (@Rich Reader)

“the responsibilities by web 2.0 services include uptime and modernized features. Be open to hearing feedback & also to communicate constantly with community so they know what’s going on with the service (eg not like how Facebook handled the Terms of Service fiasco).” — Ken Yeung, http://blog.thelettertwo.com/

” Community is not something that will necessarily be efficient, the metric for success should be quality and impact. Social media companies need to understand how to add value through their systems, not how to extract income. And if they can add value, the numbers will follow.” — Brian Reich, http://thinkingaboutmedia.com/

Will Social Media providers take note? Our board will be reviewing our findings on Podcast Radio, Friday, March 27, 2009 at 8am PST. Tune in and share your view on how terms of service are being defined, conflated, changed, negotiated and renogiated. We welcome your views and experiences!

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Question of the Week: Responsibilities of web services & their community

Once again, our Editorial Board convened to discuss one of the more compelling questions the Social Media community is facing as it contends with archiving, owning, distributing and maintaining its ever-growing archive of content. To whit, the hugely popular Facebook has suspended accounts if it ‘thinks’ users have misused the services based on what an algorithm finds and changes friend feeds at will. With millions of users, Twitter is noticeably absent in the customer service department, is in dire need of a functionality upgrade and its archiving protocol is subject to debate. Is this ‘fair’ to the community it serves? And how, in turn, should the user community really behave? What do you think? Please let us know your thoughts, experiences and examples of the social media community and social media service working both in tandem and NOT. 

Social Media Club Question of the Week:

What are the responsibilities of Web 2.0 services to engage with and respond to the community it serves and what are the responsibilities of the community to the service? (Twitter, Facebook, etc)?

Do you have examples to illustrate this? 

Listen in to the very short podcast discussion and contribute your perspective.

We welcome your comments, tweets and blog posts. Please tag your responses with the following tags:

#SMCQ2, #Responsibilites

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Be Common on October 15, 2008

Ever since the original launch of the interim board, the group has actively been working to move the goals forward for the Social Media Club, it’s members and the industry.   As part of the outreach to the community, members of the Social Media Club have engaged numerous groups to see if there are opportunities to align activities and initiatives to encourage best practices social media.   Creative Commons, a non-profit organization, who focuses on providing a standardized way to manage the netherworld between copyright and public domain content represents a key standards focused organization for encouraging best practices in social media.  The licensing provided by Creative Commons allows creators to share content which can be remixed or even used for commercial purposes while providing the necessary acknowledgment and controls for the author/creator.

As stated in Chris’ post on the Social Media Club’s 4 projects, increasing awareness and adoption for industry standards is central to the mission of the group.  To that end, October 15, 2008 represents the first opportunity to evangelize the importance of standards and move this mission forward in partnership with Creative Commons.

So what can YOU do to help create more awareness around the important service Creative Commons provides?   There are 3 ideas which certainly would help which have been bantered around, but I suspect the community can come up with more by October 15th.  The key theme is just to identify a way to let folks know about the best practices around the sharing/creating of creative works leveraging a Creative Commons License.  So which one of the below are you going to do?

1. Post an article describing the services Creative Commons provides to content creators and why YOU think that is important.
2. Add a widget to your blog to encourage financial support.
3. Create and/or focus a creative commons licensed work via your preferred social media channel (Twitter, blog, facebook…)

There is definitely the opportunity for you to do all three if you like.  The important part of this initiative is to find a way to highlight the benefits of Creative Commons licensing and leveraging best practices in social media.  Ultimately, a standards based approach to rights management is needed for both creators and consumers alike –  so spread the word — October 15, 2008 is Creative Commons Awareness day.

It’s not very often you have the chance to be common and that actually be a good thing, so take advantage of it.  Dare to be common!

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4 Missions, 4 Projects: Social Media Club Gets to Work

With the creation of the interim advisory board/group, it was my hope to gain some new momentum and secure a real commitment from industry leaders to collaborate for our collective benefit. From the coverage and feedback we received, it seems that we did that part well.

Now we need to turn that energy and attention into some collaborative action. So a few people in the interim advisory group have agreed to step up and help lead some initial projects. In looking at what is most important to us, it would seem most appropriate to focus our efforts on the four areas of our core mission:

1. Expand Media Literacy
2. Share Lessons Learned Among Practitioners
3. Encourage Adoption of Industry Standards
4. Promote Ethical Practices through Discussion and Actions

From here, it is important to note that anyone in the advisory group (and any member of the community) may propose projects for the club to support. Over the next few weeks we will need to formalize the governance on how we choose which projects get our formal support, but for now we are going to keep it simple and ask for your help in making these first 4 projects, that support our 4 missions a success. You can stay up to date on them here on the blog or over on the Social Media Club Special Projects page on the wiki.

Media Literacy

Michael Brito is leading an effort to find and organize all the best Introduction to Social Media presentations, classes, discussions, cartoons, videos, blog posts etc… There are a lot of ‘here is what you need to know about social media‘ lists out there as well - where are they, which ones are the best. If you have some materials to submit, or if you run across some good material, can you please join this project by submitting your introduction to Social Media materials on the Social Media Club wiki.

Sharing Lessons Learned

This one is a bit self serving as well, but important, and open. As part of The Social Media Playbook, we are building a section on Social Media Champions - the people inside of organizations who fought for engaging customers, employees and the broader market through Social Media. We are looking for champions to fill out an online interview form and will be publishing the findings on the Social Media Club blog and some of them in the book. In short, we want to discover how you overcame the objections of management, what worked for you and what didn’t. Or more simply, how did you go from weird outsider to welcomed champion? Go to the Champions project page on the wiki for more information.

Encourage Adoption of Industry Standards

John Gatrell is leading our efforts to leverage our collective expertise to further promote key industry standards such as Creative Commons, Open ID, Data Portability, the Open Web Foundation and others. He will be posting more on this project in the weeks ahead. In principle it would be great if we could do work along the lines of what Chris Messina et al did with Spread Firefox - find ways to expand awareness and explain these key standards to more everyday folks, business decision makers and others.

The first project will be in support of Creative Commons. We would like to propose a Creative Commons Awareness Day, where everyone participating writes a quick blog post about what CC means to them, how to explain it to others, what are some examples of things they have been able to do more easily because of having access to creative commons content and the challenges they have faced by people not honoring their requests for attribution etc… (there is some bad with the good, lets be honest). We have also put together a fundraising widget to help raise money for their efforts from Social Media Club Members - if you want to help us spread the campaign and start other efforts, please go to the wiki page for this project to stay up to date and contribute.

Promote Ethical Behaviour

This is tougher to get a project going in this area since it is more of a matter of discussion, but from that principle, comes the idea for our first project. We are starting a discussion about how membership in Social Media Club can serve as a ‘trusted mark’ for people to know that someone is ethical, understands social media and is committed to the advancement of the industry. There are more and more people claiming to be ’social media experts’ while more and more of us are shunning such titles, realizing we are merely practitioners who are learning more each day.

Everyone I know is concerned with what we do about the schemers and con-artists who are getting into social media with a ‘get rich quick’ mentality. How do we help people avoid those who are selling the snake oil and find those businesses, service providers and people who are really doing good work? Go to the Project Page on our Wiki and join the discussion. You should also check out this recent blog post by Kristie Wells aggregating some of the biggest ethical issues in Social Media today.

Other Projects

We are open to supporting other projects, collaborating with other groups and taking ideas for new projects related to our mission. If you are a member, we especially want to hear from you. What can we do to better serve your needs. But even if you are only an occasional reader of this blog, we want to hear from you too so we can address your needs and serve the community of social media professionals and enthusiasts.

Besides visiting the special projects pages on the wiki to get more involved, please help us get more people involved by sharing your perspective on these first projects on your own blog and helping get others involved. What it is, is up to us…

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Social Media Club - Phoenix

Social Media Club is officially launching in the lovely state of Arizona this month.

Francine Hardaway has offered to lead the group and will be digging into topics covering disclosure/ethics, the new media press release and what is needed to grow the local community. NOTE: If there is a specific topic you would like to put on the table, please let a comment here and we will make sure Francine is aware of it.

Details are as follows:

Where: La Madeleine - in the wine room, 3102 East Camelback Road (Camelback & 32nd), Phoenix
When: Thursday, November 16th from 5:30pm - 8:00pm
Cost: FREE to attend (all we ask is that you pre-register so we may know you are coming)

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Social Media Release Blog & Requirements ‘Released’

Just a quick note here that we have started a new Blog to address the progress of the Social Media Release and help practicioners to better understand best practices - ultimately making the most of the emerging standard for the PR industry. Check out the Social Media Release dot org Blog if you are interested and subscribe to that feed to follow updates. While we will still be talking about it here from time to time as a project of Social Media Club, the meat of the conversation will be happening over there and on the related Wiki.

[updated title - 3am typo]

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