The warning in in the headline is accurate because this post is part of a social media experiment. I am playing mad scientist and conducting a very simple experiment to see what happens when I ask you to help me with a couple of simple things.
Here is what I would like you to do:
Circle me on Google+
Follow me on Twitter
Become a fan of my Facebook page.
Why am I Doing This?
Part of is curiosity. I want to see what happens when I ask my readers to do something and part of it is because I am trying to grow the platform. Part of it is because I think Google Authorship is going to be important and I want to use its strength.
There is no obligation to do any of these things. If we are already connected than I will say thank you and even if we aren’t I will thank you for taking time to read this.
If you want to have a serious discussion about power and influence in social media than you have to take into account what happens when people ask for help. True power and influence is tied into it.
The number of followers you have undoubtedly impacts your influence but it is mitigated by how many respond to your call to action. If you have a million twitter followers but only 5 respond to your CTA your influence isn’t as strong as it might be.
I suppose you could integrate reach into this too. Triberr might extend your potential reach into the millions, but reach is a funny metric because even though have “access” it doesn’t mean people are reading or responding.
What do you think?
Okay, I like experiments like this. Let me know the results. I’m very much into networking and social media outreach.
Have you checked out my A to Z Challenge underway now?
a-to-zchallenge.com
Hi Arlee,
I’ll try to keep you posted. Thank you.
May I return the ask? I’m thinkin’ tit for tat, eh?
of course!
Ditto what Hajra said 🙂
It is much appreciated. Thank you!
I already follow you, have you in my circles, am a fan at FB – makes me a stalker?
Hi Hajra,
Nah, not stalkerish, just a friend and that is a good thing.
I generally agree with you Josh, a tightly linked, but close small community may well be stronger than a loosely connected large following. Still, I like to keep my mind open and a recent post on SME about “vanity metrics” gave me much to think about.
Hi Frank,
An open mind is a good thing. One of the best parts of being forty something is not having the feeling that I always have to be right or have the answers to everything. I have been wrong many times and will be again.
I’ll have to look up the post at SME and see what it says. I can see potential for how vanity metrics might be useful, but I would be concerned about their impact on the writer and the reader.
I’d rather have 200 people and 100 of them work with me this year, than 10,000 or 100,000 and no one listens to or cares about a damn thing I say. It’s OBVIOUSLY in the responsiveness.
As time marches on we are being asked globally to get real and be honest. Where we fail to do that we will fall on our own swords. It will take some time to sort itself out, but for the most part if you aren’t transparent (enough) you will not fly.
I’m pretty sure I follow you everywhere but then again, you keep popping up with blogs I didn’t even you know you had 🙂
I would hate to fall on my sword intentionally, by accident maybe, but intentionally I say feh on that. 😉