By Mark S. Britton
Special to the Legal Technology Blog
Regular readers of Avvocating or the Avvo Blog know that I am constantly counseling lawyer marketers to “Preserve the Core." In our different Avvo Tours, I hear how different lawyers use the Internet and think about their Core business. Not surprisingly, Twitter comes up over and over as a tool for supporting the core -- partly due to my speech (I highly recommend Twitter as such a tool) and partly because Twitter-mania is still raging like a Category 5 hurricane.
I love Twitter -- everyone knows that. But it's worth calling out a fallacy that is helping serve as a cornerstone of the mania. The fallacy is that the number of Twitter followers one has is positively, if not perfectly, correlated to the amount of influence someone has in the marketplace. In this regard, I have heard many self-proclaimed, social media "mavens" shout, "Listen to what I have to say because *I* have thousands (maybe tens of thousands) of Twitter followers." The implication is that they are as influential as Bill Gates, Socrates or Ghandi. Another potential implication is that you should pay them $500 per hour for their consulting services.
I hate to let the cat out of the bag, but ... [Read the entire article.]
What about retweets and engagement as measures of influence?
Also, Mark, what's your Twitter username? It's not in the bio at the end of the article, and I don't think you're @markbritton.
Posted by: Lisa Sololmon | November 13, 2009 at 06:41 AM
Lisa - Sorry for the slow reply. I have been digging out and also I missed your comment bc it is on the teaser page, rather than the full post page. We need to turn off comments on teaser.
Anyway, see my comments in the full post re: retweets. Also, my Twitter handle is @mark_britton.
Hope all is well. Missed you in NYC!
Mark
Posted by: Mark Britton | November 20, 2009 at 09:41 AM