Social Media Influence – Fact or Fiction

“How do I improve my online influence?” is the question that appears most often in my inbox. My response is almost always the same, “Why do you want to do this? How will it help you?”

Sometimes it feels as though I’m trying to empty the ocean with a spoon because everyone wants to be recognized as a winner. When faced with a clearly defined measurement of success, the prize doesn’t matter as much as the bragging rights. Scoring system bots can’t measure increases in customer satisfaction, conversions, or sales. They can measure tweets, retweets, @replies, likes, friends, and followers. Their definition of influence has little in common with the actions that motivate people to spend their money.

You can have both social media influence and business success if you are willing to devote time and effort to the process. Everyone’s path will be different but there are a few universal truths and myths about influence and growing a community. Which brings us to the point of this post…

How much is a retweet worth? How about a mention? Or a Facebook like? A comment? What’s the best way to improve your online influence? Get people to comment on your blog?

How about a little game of Fact or Fiction?

Commenting on other people’s blogs will earn link juice from the search engines.

Fiction. Like many things in the social media channel, this used to be true but it isn’t today. It changed in 2005 when Google stopped giving credit to nofollow links. Google changed the way links were viewed in an effort to reduce online spam. Other search engine and blog software providers quickly joined in. This means that the default setting on blogs using the major software providers is nofollow. It has to be manually changed for you to get link juice from your comments. Over six years later, people are still telling others to comment on blogs to get the linkbacks. Do they not know that things have changed? Or, are they intentionally misleading people so they get more comments on their blog?

Recommendation: Do not comment with the expectation that you will receive link juice.

Commenting on other people’s blogs will get you noticed by the blogger and other readers.

Fact and Fiction. The issue is whether the return is worth the effort. When I launched my blog several years ago, I tested this strategy for two years. I commented on five blogs a week and measured the response. Approximately 2% of the comments generated a reciprocal comment or engagement outside of the other person’s blog. Some good relationships were started with a comment, but it was a lot of work for a small return. My experience is by not means universal. Test it yourself to see if the there is value in this strategy.

Recommendation: Comment when you have something to add to the conversation. Do not expect anything in return.

Retweeting other people’s tweets increases your influence.

Fiction. It increases the influence score of the other person. If the person replies to you, then it increases your influence, but if they don’t, you get little reward for your effort. Some of the scoring systems do look at retweets (or so they say) but they aren’t as valuable as @replies to you.

Tip: If you want to game the system, when people retweet you, retweet their retweet of you. Yes, it is redundant to your live audience, but the bots can’t tell the difference. You’ll get credit for two retweets for every real one.

Recommendation: Retweet when the tweets provide value to your community.

@replies increases your influence.

Fact. If someone @replies to you, it increases your influence as far as the measuring sites are concerned.

Recommendation: If someone mentions you, respond to them. It’s always nice to say thank you (and you can help them increase their influence along the way.)

Sharing other people’s content is a good strategy for getting your information shared.

Fiction. Your content may not fit their social media strategy. Expecting a quid pro quo is unrealistic. Expecting a “thank you” is reasonable.

Recommendation: If the content is a good fit for your community, share the link.

Here’s a simple description of how influence currency is traded. If you have 2,000 Twitter followers and share a link of someone with 50,000 followers, he gets traffic to his blog. If you include his Twitter handle, he receives a deposit into his influence account. If he thanks you with an @reply, then you get a larger deposit because he is viewed as more influential. If he ignores you, he has received traffic and a deposit and you got zip. The deposits are incremental, but they add up over time.

Social media requires an investment of your most valuable resource – time. Before you spend hundreds of hours posting, tweeting, and commenting, you need to know what you want to accomplish. Once you know what you want, then you can put the pieces in place to get it. If you want to be recognized for your influence, then work to get the incremental deposits. If you want to influence people to buy your products and/or services, then you need to know what motivates them and provide it.

Recommendation: Focus on the revenue stream and let what happens happen with influence rankings.

If you like this post, please share it with your community. You may also like these: