If you want to learn how to become an Internet celebrity, please continue reading. If you don’t care about becoming a celebrity but want to learn more about how social media works, same thing. If you work in business, traditional media, the non-profit world or politics and your goal is to reach as many people as possible in the most persuasive, cost-effective way, New York Magazine has provided you with an essential resource.
“The Weird Wide World of Internet Celebrity,”New York‘s informative guide, is a step-by-step, how-they-did it view of how (mostly) ordinary people have used social media to deliver a message, attract huge audiences and sometimes monetize that visibility. The cover story features several different people who have become famous (and often well-paid) by using mostly free or low-cost Internet tools to entertain or educate vast audiences. Most are teenagers or in their 20s.
It is a definitive guide to how social media works in terms of publishing original content and attracting audiences. Equally important, it illustrates why millions of teenagers and other consumers have turned away from traditional media outlets and replaced them with the Internet and their smart phones.
Many people continue to be on a learning curve regarding how social media works, why it is so popular and what the social media culture responds most enthusiastically to. If you are one, you won’t be after digesting this useful guide.
“Twitter is an opportunity. Facebook is an opportunity. To say what you feel. To try to pick people up. To try to be positive. To try to add something to society. To let people see you transparently. You cannot be defined if you’re on social media by someone else. You will define who you are, and if you’re negative, that’s your fault. But here is who you are. If you are negative, it will come through. Five years of being on twitter and facebook, are you gonna lie for five years? You are who you are. But we’re trying to tell those kids, you build your brand or you break your brand down. You are who you are through social media.”
A Master at Online Reputation Management
With NCAA violations blemishing his past success at UMass and Memphis, and critics accusing him of exploiting the NBA’s “one-and-done” rule to win his first national title in 2012 and lead the Wildcats to this year’s final, Calipari has certainly had his share of controversy. Through that, it’s been clear that he is shrewd and effective at managing his online reputation.
Since joining Twitter in 2009 (right around when he took over at Kentucky), Calipari has averaged 4.6 tweets per day, according to his account’s statistics on Socialbakers. “I give out information, I’m transparent to our fans,” he explained on ESPN Radio’s Mike and Mike. “I tell them how I’m feeling.” He gets help from CoachCal.com editor Eric Lindsey, who “oversees Coach Calipari’s social media platforms.”
Adept at Using Social Media to Build His Brand
Such candor has helped earn Calipari praise as “NCAA’s last honest man,” but it’s not the only aspect of online reputation management that he’s been adept at harnessing. He also recognizes how celebrity can bolster his brand and recruiting power, as he demonstrated while attending his friend Jay-Z’s concert at Barclay’s Center in 2012. “Calipari didn’t hesitate when it came to letting his 1.2 million Twitter followers know about his backstage pass to the concert, tweeting out this picture of himself in front of the stage,” Rob Dauster observed in a Sports Illustrated piece.
Even Calipari’s comments about social media above seem to be part of “selling his program,” as Dauster points out in a recent NBC Sports article. Calipari understands that the premier young players that are key to Kentucky’s success view social media not as a “waste of time,” as Pitino argued, but as a normal part of everyday life—and something they’ll need to know when they make it to the NBA.
There’s been a lot of talk about Vogue’s choice to feature Kim Kardashian and Kanye West on its April cover, but Christina Binkley’s piece for the Wall Street Journal’s Speakeasy blog zeroes in on an important point:
Kim has 20.3 million Twitter followers, to Kanye’s 10.3 million. Vogue has a mere 3.63 million followers, so the magazine has everything to gain from this association, in a publishing world that is increasingly focused on social media.
Kim and Kanye landing a Vogue cover demonstrates how building and maintaining social media followers has emerged as a type of equity.
Cover Sparked Heated Debate
This isn’t anything new for Kim, who can make five figures from a single sponsored tweet, but it’s understandable that Anna Wintour’s decision has sparked heated debate. “Arguments reverberating around the Internet over the last few days have largely focused on this central question: Does Kim Kardashian deserve to be on the cover of Vogue?” observes the Washington Post’s Cara Kelly. Sarah Michelle Gellar and others appear concerned that Vogue is compromising its standards. But more likely those standards are just evolving.
Wintour explained her decision by invoking the magazine’s history of highlighting “those who define the culture at any given moment.” And social media now plays a significant role in culture. Perhaps Vogue’s choice of Kim and Kanye is a signal of the magazine’s adjustment to that significance—“evidence of a shift in target audience toward younger, more socially connected readers,” as Adweek puts it.
General Motors is using social media to manage customer complaints and its reputation — and using it well. How they are applying social media management is a good case study for other companies in crisis. (The Detroit auto manufacturer has recalled 1.6 million cars and faces roiling legal issues after top management hid defects that caused deaths for 10 years or longer.)
– GM’s Facebook page. In addition to hosting GM-produced content, it is also an open forum where customers can post comments and complaints. GM staffers are engaging them in real time with assistance and responses.
– @GM on Twitter. Frustrated customers who have spent an hour or more on the phone with GM customer service representatives have turned to Twitter to seek help – and found it in minutes.
“G.M. has a team of about 20 people based in Detroit that manages its social media presence — including monitoring about 100 independent auto forums — and responds to inquiries and complaints seven days a week,” reports Goel.
In addition to managing the crisis using traditional methods – including letters to car owners – GM created a video with CEO Mary Barra to keep customers and employees abreast of how the company is managing the situation.
As more companies use social media to better manage customer relations, they can learn from GM’s example.
The identity of the mystery tweeter @GSElevator has been exposed. For three years, the Twitter account has entertained over 500,000 followers with witty, profane one-liners reportedly overheard in the elevators at Goldman Sachs.
Fake Twitter identities proliferate online. So do imposter and parody accounts. @GSElevator’s profile page has a thumbnail picture of Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein and this profile description:
Things heard in the Goldman Sachs elevators do not stay in the Goldman Sachs elevators. Email what you hear to elevatorgoldman@gmail.com.
Andrew Ross Sorkin broke the story.
“The Twitter account, which has an audience of more than 600,000 followers, has been the subject of an internal inquiry at Goldman to find the rogue employee. The tweets, often laced with insider references to deals in the news, appeal to both Wall Street bankers and outsiders who mock the industry. Late last month, the writer sold a book about Wall Street culture based on the tweets for a six-figure sum,” he reported.
If you scroll through this blog’s archives, you’ll find many different examples of how being authentic is central to successful online reputation management. But there are few better examples of the value of authenticity than Gary Vaynerchuk.
If you’ve read David Segal’s recent New York Times piece—or any of the countless other profiles on Vaynerchuk —you know the remarkable story of his rise from the savvy social media manager/über marketer for a New Jersey wine retailer to one of the top branding and social media thought leaders. In today’s climate, where building a personal brand has become an almost universal concern, we can all benefit by looking at the strategies and tools that have fueled his success. Loud, brash and profane, Vaynerchuk’s personality doesn’t appeal to everyone. But he doesn’t try to.
Uncompromising authenticity has been at the heart of his approach since his breakout video blog, Wine Library TV, which Segal describes as “Mr. Vaynerchuk sitting at a table in his office, demystifying chardonnays, rieslings and other wines by describing them in terms that any mook could understand.” The blog not only presents Vaynerchuk as an unvarnished, passionate and accessible wine enthusiast, but also demonstrates his shrewd understanding of his medium. “My high quality content definitely factored in, but that might not have mattered had I not also made native content—authentic content perfectly crafted for that particular new platform, YouTube,” he reflects.
Early Adopter of Twitter
As an early adopter of Twitter, Vaynerchuk has harnessed it with a similar combination of candidness and insight. “It was the platform that came most naturally to me, because it was perfectly suited for small bursts of quickfire conversation and idea exchanges,” he writes in his latest book, Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World. Vaynerchuk understands that the platform is about more than just “microblogging.” It’s about engaging directly—or, as he puts it, “creating context.”
“Twitter is the cocktail party of the Internet—a place where listening well has tremendous benefits,” he observes in Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook. And listen he does. “About 90 percent of Mr. Vaynerchuk’s tweets are direct replies to people who have written to or about him,” Segal points out in the Times. “I always say that our success wasn’t due to my hundreds of online videos about wine that went viral,” Vaynerchuk wrote in an Entrepreneur article, “but to the hours I spent talking to people online afterward, making connections and building relationships,”
Content Is King
Vaynerchuk also emphasizes the importance of creating content. Arecent Forbes article went so far as to call it “the cost of entry to relevance in today’s society” and encouraged people to create as much as possible. “It literally doesn’t matter what you do, if you’re not producing content, you basically don’t exist,” he has declared. Vaynerchuk’s characteristic hyperbole aside, this argument has resonance when it comes to online reputation management.
If you don’t publish content that provides accurate and appropriate information about yourself, your company, area of expertise or organization, you are not just losing an opportunity to build your brand—you are endangering it, essentially relinquishing control of your online image anyone else who decides to post content about you. Bringing together engagement and authenticity as well as content and context, Vaynerchuk’s approach highlights some valuable tools and strategies for managing one’s reputation online. G.E.’s Linda Boff may sum it up best. “When I think about Gary, I think about scrappiness before anything else,” she tells Segal in his Times piece. “He lives his own life out loud.”
In the WSJ article, The New Résumé: It’s 140 Characters, Rachel Emma Silverman and Lauren Weber explain why Twitter is increasingly used as a recruiting tool. They also provide examples of how job seekers are using Twitter to attract positions.
Those who appeal to recruiters have creative, succinct descriptions of their skill set, often accompanied by short videos. According to Silverman and Weber, firms place value on the number of quality followers job seekers have, with 1000 considered a solid number. Their sidebar with tips on using Twitter in job searches, and podcast about how companies are using Twitter to recruit, provides invaluable information for job seekers.
The piece exemplifies how and why online reputation management (ORM) encompasses image and branding, and why it is important for everyone. The ORM industry has expanded far beyond its early beginnings as a tool for pushing negative information down online. With the majority of research about individuals and organizations now conducted online, social media offers everyone the opportunity to shape their online image to support their goals. Job seekers have many free online resources to help them master and utilize the social media tools that can help them add value to companies seeking employees with those skills.
Vala Afshar, chief marketing officer at Boston network-infrastructure firm Enterasys, is one convert quoted in the article. He used Twitter to recruit for a new position at Enterasys.
“I am fairly certain I am going to abandon the résumé process,” he said. “The Web is your CV and social networks are your references.”
The fast-growing market for buying fake Twitter followers has become a big one.
In this Bits Blog post, technology reporter Nicole Perlroth explains why. That you can buy 1,000 Twitter (fake) followers for $5 goes to show how many social media statistics are iffy. Social media has no barrier to entry: anyone can write, post, share and follow. Even the experts find it hard to detect fake followers from real ones.
