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Establishing social media influence is not a game

October 22, 2012

social media gameJure Klepic (@jkcallis), a business marketing consultant, had an interesting piece in the Huffington Post last week called “The Amway Effect on Social Media Influencers.”

Amway’s goal is not to just sell products and build a great business, but to get others to sell products so you make money off them. Klepic, not begrudging Amway, sees the same thing happening in social media.

Success in social media has now become defined as having massive amounts of people following you. This is true no matter what steps you took to get those people to jump on your bandwagon.

As to establishing yourself as an expert?

You, too, can become a leading expert simply by finding a group of like-minded people and inserting yourself on their list all the time. Google and SEO will take care of the rest…

I’m in agreement with Scott Greenfield (@scottgreenfield), commenting on Klepic’s piece, that establishing a following is not something that you achieve by gaming the system.

There are lawyers online who have accumulated a following, people who either read their writing or follow their twits, because they have decided that it’s worth their time to do so. They didn’t do anything to make it happen, other than be themselves. Their following grew organically, and it took time, often years, before they amassed any notable following.

Klepic agrees getting followers in social media takes time.

The Amway Effect or multi-level marketing in any form has no place in social media. We are not holding a contest to see who can gather the most followers; we are trying to see who can have the most impact and make the biggest difference. Instead of going through all this effort to make others think you are a social media influencer, why not just become one through hard work and perseverance?

No question social media influence which has allowed lawyers to build relationships and enhance their reputation is a force in business development. But as with most things worth achieving, one’s influence comes organically as a result of hard work and perservance.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Beth Kanter.