Is there anything less influential, than a self-proclaimed social media influencer?
There’s a lot of chatter online about so-called influencers. I’m not talking about influential people or influential brands. I’m actually referring to the exact opposite: People who have very little real-world influence, yet market themselves as influencers.
Allow me to explain.
Famous quotes and endless updates
Self-proclaimed influencers may lack influence. However, what they never lack is spare time. They certainly have more than enough time to game services like Klout.
It’s extremely easy.
They will often have over a dozen active social networking accounts connected to Klout. Then, because they seldom have anything of their own to say, they build their fake influence by pumping their social networking accounts with junk. Usually, this is an automated mix of famous quotes, cute photos of animals or ReTweets / reshares of other people’s work. They seldom create anything themselves.
They also use software, which I refuse to mention here, that allows anyone to build artificially high follower counts on social networks.
Between the constant updates and the fake follower counts, these under employed individuals can game the Klout system and claim to be influential. Amazingly, some brands regard a person’s Klout score as an accurate measurement of their influence. By acting foolishly, these brands are being fooled.
More importantly, some small business owners are wasting their money, on the junk being offered by these fake influencers.
My point?
I’ve worked with 2 of the 10 largest companies in the world, 2 Grammy Award winners and countless self-made millionaires. None of them claim influence. Yet, they are all extremely influential. These are people who can make things happen. They’re extremely well connected.
And none of them are available all day every day on a dozen social networks!
There’s an old saying, which goes like this: The guy who tells you he’s the smartest person in the room… isn’t.
The same is true of self-proclaimed influencers.