The Myth of Viral and Klout

Everyone wants Viral. The Social Media Industry in it's own best interest have created the Myth of Viral for Brands and Businesses. They talk about Influencers like they can help your Brand. But is this really the way to market and sell and engage via Social Networks?

First off I wish to give Kudos to Adverve: LINK They hosted an expert Josh Warner, who's company helps Brands with viral video views. Josh in his honesty claimed only 5 or 6 Viral successes out of over 120 Campaigns.All the campaigns met the view goals but only a handful went truly Viral.

Using Twitter as a better case study I was building a following for a client. Using HootSuite I could see very easily these metrics: Number of Followers. No. they are following. Klout Score (silly measurement no one should take seriously) and Tweets per day.

At first you are like a kid in a candy store. The feeling is the bigger the number of followers the more potential to spread my clients message. This turned out to be a false assumption. The two biggest metrics we should be looking at is how active they are on Twitter (No. of Tweets per day) and secondly the lower the number of people they follow the higher the chance they will see a Tweet from my client.

I came to this conclusion because we had a low number of Trivia Game players and that the players who had the smallest networks usually played and won. Why is this?

I use an average measure of 4 tweets per person on Twitter. This balances out the people who tweet once per day and those who Tweet a lot. The more accounts you follow the more Tweets that come into your feed, reducing the chance of you seeing a specific tweet that is not directed at that person.

Extreme example: @ChrisBrogan He has an 86 Klout and 150,000 followers. He also follows 140,000 accounts. So his stream should have about 560,000 tweets per day coming to him. GOOD LUCK 

GETTING YOUR TWEET SEEN! Never mind retweeted.

But someone who has a small network and is a heavy Tweeter means 1] They will see your tweet 2] They are using the service all day. Remember once a Tweet is missed it goes into the Twitter Afterlife Void of Nothingness.

The same holds for Facebook. Both Live Feeds are so filled with Clutter that it is impossible to get your message seen on a consistent basis. This doesn't make me negative on Social Media. In fact its a revolution in interpersonal communication. But to get heard as a Brand or for Engagement it is a pure crap shoot. Most Brand Fan Pages on Facebook have less than 0.1% Engagement levels.

Be Realistic - Have goals that are real. Don't be arrogant.

Bring Value - give your network a reason to WANT to engage with you.