The False Appearance of Influence with Social Media

Brent Leary and myself got into a great discussion about how some pretend to have influence simply because they have a few followers.

Listen to this episode of B.S. Walks NOW!
(press play button and be patient, it takes a minute to buffer)

OR Click to Download

Show Notes:

1:20 Outlook for 2010 in Business is optimistic
2:10 National Retail eCommerce numbers beat expectations
3:52 Amazon Kindle e-book sales crush it
5:20 The Apple iPad reviews
8:27 Lessons from Conan O’Brian from Tonight Show
12:00 The Appearance of influence with social media
15:03 The @Wiseman23 Twitter threat 
17:23 Tit-for-Tatter-Twitterers
18:00 Measuring Influence
18:00 Brian Clark (Copybloger.com)
18:39 Guy Kawasaki on Twitter
18:50 Oprah Winfrey on Twitter
19:07 Bill Gates on Twitter
19:30 Chris Brogan/Liz Strauss/Gary Vaynerchuk
23:30 Man vs. Wild
25:10 Levar Burton

Brent recently blogged on this topic with a post called Please Stop Automatically Equating Number of Twitter Followers With Real Influence

So can Twitter make you appear to look influential in a short amount of time? Apparently so, because people will give you the time of day if you have thousands of followers. Can you automate the process of appearing influential on Twitter? Absolutely – I’ve seen people’s followership rise quickly.. people I’ve never heard of before (regular non celeb types), even when they weren’t tweeting all that much…mostly through using some kind of service.

— Brent Leary

Press "Play" to listen now

Be sure to subscribe so you do not miss an episode.

Related posts:

1. Interview: Chris Brogan Talks About "Trust Agents" and Social Media
2. Is Social Media BETTER For Your Business Than Radio, TV and Newspapers?
3. Barack 2.0 Social Media Lessons For Business: The Tactics That Won The White House – Part 1
4. John Lawson from ColderICE.com Social Media Presentation (Ecommerce Summit)
5. Last Chance: ColderICE Social Media Coaching Call and The Workbook