Some of the buzzwords that float around the linkedin advertising groups often make us laugh. So they got lucky and were actually able to sell something by “social marketing”. Now they are “the experts” and “know everything” about “improving your ROI” blah, blah, blah . . . .

What we are doing right here and right now is how to establish ourselves in an Internet Community. Because we are talking to each other, just like we were at a real life networking event, bar, or coffee shop.

A “social network” is nothing but hardware and software connect to the Internet. Thinking of them as Internet Communities is thinking about the people that are making these communities part of their lives.

Think about it this way.. I follow many people on Twitter (and many follow me too.. check out http://twitter.com/sanjay_mehta). But do I really manage to read all that they tweet all day? Sure, no. How can I possibly do that for 450+ people?? And then there are those who follow 1000s or who are followed by 1000s. How much of that is real “influence”?? Very little.

The only way that you can really wield influence is if your tweets are interesting, And in which case, those who follow you start watching out for your tweets. And THEN you wield real influence. If you have a lot of followers and all you tell them is how the traffic sucks, or how you’re having coffee with your pal, really how do you expect to hook them into tracking your tweets?? Or all you do is to put out links that are anyway all over the place, or put some good thoughts of the day, its nice for the moment, but people are not exactly going to particularly watch out for them.

You get the drift, don’t you.. !

Disclaimer: If you follow me, I am not practicing what I just preached. This personal Twitter account is one where I am experimenting and learning, but I will start another on, which will focus on the “influence” part, putting all my learnings into it.. !

Creating a Bunch of Followers
http://kerisinger.wordpress.com/2009/02/04/creating-a-bunch-of-followers-or-new-leaders/

Twitter, Twitter-Di, Twitter-Dumb: What’s Next? http://kerisinger.wordpress.com/2009/02/04/twitter_twitter-di_twitter-dumb/

Cutting Through the Virtual Noise:
http://kerisinger.wordpress.com/2009/02/04/cutting_through_virtual_noise/

Keri

http://tinyurl.com/coe5qj

I use twitter to share and learn. I have some pretty lofty goals/interests that I like to propound on, but I hardly think that makes me an “influencer”.. But if numbers and stats are important to you there is a host of twitter centric tools to track every bit and byte just tweet “what tool do you use to measure your tweeting” and you will get enough replies to keep you busy a week or two

Read my recent blog post (http://is.gd/hQx0) where I discuss the metrics introduced by http://twitter-friends.com.

The following five metrics provide a good measure of value:

* Loyal fans (not number of followers)
* Conversation quotient
* Link quotient
* Retweet quotient
* Network overlap (between incoming and outgoing nets)