You know the person. They always look perfect, have the best of everything, and are always at the front of every classroom and at the top of every list. Now, we have social media that feeds their desperate search for respect and legitimacy, because these people are "Top Linked" or have more friends and followers than anyone else.
Social media, whether you are talking Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or YouTube (and others) feeds a growing problem in our business world and society. People who believe style is more important than substance and quantity is more important than quality. People are using Social Media to trumpet to the world their legitimacy, as though numbers alone tell the story. After all, if someone has 5000 twitter followers, people must really care about what they are doing, right? And, if someone has over 1000 links on LinkedIn, they must be really connected! Or, if someone has over 500 friend on Facebook, they must be popular.
Search Engine Optimization has a similar problem. People are blogging and twittering and linking for the sole purpose of driving up the rankings on search engines. Most of the time, once again, style (i.e. key words, length, activity) is more important than substance. But what happens when the visitor gets to the site? Shouldn't there be subtantial content to reward them for their efforts?
I have begun to develop my own "rules" about the social media, blogging, and SEO activity to fight this trend towards style over substance. I only...
1) "LinkIn" with people whom I have met (or with whom I have had prolonged long distance contact.) And, I only post business-related news.
2) FaceBook with people with whom I have had regular and prolonged in-person contact, i.e. the people who I care about what they do every day. In fact, I am in the process of unfriending people on Facebook so that I can accomplish this.
3) Blog with observations, lessons, or rants/raves. I don't sit down with the keyword list and generate blog posts from that list to improve SEO.
4) Write press releases when I want to announce something. We don't generate them to drive SEO.
5) Follow twitter to monitor trends and the press. It's really not important what my dogs ate for dinner! I don't think most people care.
6) Consider all of these mediums as tools. They are not the ultimate measure of me or my company's legitimacy or popularity.
So, instead of being intimidated or feeling bad because I don't have 4000 LinkedIn connections or 1000 friends or 5000 followers, I am taking a stand for quality over quantity, substance over style! What about you?