Check out Twitter Karma — a site that analyzes everyone you follow and who follows you.  It returns results (see screen cap below) in an easy-to-understand, visual format.  It also offers check boxes per person so yo’ure able to perform bulk follows/unfollows.  This site is definitely on my short list of “must have” Twitter tools.  Thank you Twitter Karma!

Most people tip-toe into social media by visiting/friending/joining places where they know already know someone.  Totally makes sense as you’re able to post comments in a relatively known, non-threatening environment.  But soon thereafter, it’s crucial to transition into uncharted territory to start interacting with new people  and places.  Do you have a wish list of industry standouts that you’d love to meet in a social setting?  Unless you’re hanging out at the hotel bar after the big annual conference, it’s not likely to happen.  But in social media, they’re probably just a few keystrokes away.  Look them up on Twitter.  Find their blog.  Read their tweets/posts over time to get to know them.  Perhaps drop them a note after you’re into the ebb and flow of their postings. This is your chance to surround yourself (virtually) with the types of people you want to be!

I’m confident I’m never going to play golf with Chris Brogan, Mitch Joel and Seth Godin — all stalwarts in social media/internet marketing.  But thru their daily Twitter and blog posts, I benefit from their thoughts and musings every single day. I’m a smarter and better person because of these people though I’ll never be able to ride my bike to their houses.

When you monitor 20, 50 or 100 industry leaders on a routine basis, your insight and intelligence will become sharper.  You’ll learn more about their personal lives which helps you understand their work-life balance (or perhaps their lack thereof).  And in the end, it’ll help you figure out the type of employee and person you want to be in the future.

If I was forced to give one statement about blogger outreach, it’d be that each blogger is the judge, jury and executioner. They have no editorial director to report to, no formal code of ethics and no fact checking staffers to double check their accuracy. Knowing that you can’t bond with most bloggers over drinks on the town, what’s sincere professional to do?

1. Read at least 3-months woth of blog entries.  You MUST follow along.  Consider a blog to be a serialized story, a la Charles Dickens.  A blog is a running dialog so be sure to do your homework and learn what’s been written before.
   
2. Read similar blogs in the same industry/field.  Follow along with hot topics and opinion leaders.  Bloggers relish the chance to get the scoop so you’d better know what’s “been done” before and who has said what.
   
3. Learn the personality of the blogger. Are they fun-loving and open to discussing a wide variety of issues?  Maybe they’re a frustrated academic, blogging to reach out to other truists who are sick of crass commercialization.  Or perhaps they’re a well-respected community leader who is trying to change the lives others online.  There are millions of personalities out there — BE SURE to have a good feel for who you’re dealing with as it TOTALLY affects how you reach out to them.
   
4. Engage with the blog. Start participating with the blog by adding comments to various posts and perhaps drop the blogger a personal note with some heatfelt comment.  Keep in mind that a blog is like a club — ingratiate yourself by adding something interesting to the group before you can expect them to do any work for you.
   
5. Pitch the blogger. After you’re educated on what has been written before, the personality of the blogger and have added some thinking to the blog itself, you’re finally in a position to reach out to the blog owner with some conversations.  Don’t send a traditional press release.  Seriously, no self-respecting blogger is going to sift thru a formal press release to find the story, digest it and then write about it.  Instead, send them some unique ideas, some bulletized facts, some approved quotes along with any possible logos and photos. Send them “deconstructed content” and let them talk about it.  Don’t put words in their mouths — they’ll hate that.

Finally, keep in mind that a blog is a personal investment.  No one owes you anything.  Here’s a good story that covers a bad example on blogger outreach.  Basically, don’t be this lady. The future of Today’s effective media outreach is different.  It’s highly fragmented and unique.  That’s the bad news and good news.  Never before have we had the opportunity to such targeted, niche audiences in such an impactful, efficient manner.  But doing so takes a little more finesse and peronal touch.  Don’t properly, its very meaninful and rewarding.  Good luck and godspeed!

When it comes to people, don’t think brand – think SPIRT.  Human beings simply can’t walk thru life constantly acting and speaking “on message” to reinforce some associated brand.  Even if they try, others will see through their being so one-dimensional.  It’s boring.  Don’t be that guy.

Instead, think about being ON SPIRIT — a much more organic and meaningful expression way to breathe continuous life into a brand.

So when you (or your employees) are interacting with other people online, don’t suffer from “paralysis of analysis” on whether or not you’re precisely ON BRAND.  Rather, think about what you’re saying/doing to gauge if it’s in spirit of your organization’s brand.

Google realized this early and adopted their mantra for employees: Don’t be evil.  To be even safer, I’d recommend the Golden Rule: Treats others as you’d want to be treated yourself.

So if stay ON SPIRIT while interacting in social media while your advertising delivers your message ON BRAND, you’ll stand out as an organization that can both talk the talk AND walk the walk.

In the real world, who do you most respect as an opinion leader? For me, it’s someone who’s been around a long time (village elder), is  involved in the community (but not too much), has a positive reputation and is friends with other respectable people. Maybe it’s a city council member, a business leader or a well-liked athletic coach. It doesn’t matter who they are. They’re viewed as being “good people” by the community at large. In the online world, we don’t have the luxury of knowing a person’s reputation based on their nickname and thumbnail sized photo.

In theory, a composite karma rating could be calculated by an algorithm that includes the following factors:

• How long has a person been a member?
• Total number of contributions: posts, comments, etc.
• Average daily activity
• Positive/Negative rankings by other community members
• Number of blocks (people who have blocked your comments completely)
• Activity association with other people

The key to a system like this is the administrative control.  While the mathematical formula wouldn’t change, a site administrator would be able to customize the relevance rating for each factor, making some more important than others.  Here’s an example scenario:

Save the Whales (or whatnot) Community Website
Primarily driven by wildlife biologists, environmental activists, media, students and philanthropists.  This community values the opinions of long-standing members (reflecting experience), engaging conversation and collaboration (smart people sharing info with each other).  The site admin would adjust their karma system to uptick the value of membership duration, rankings, daily activity and association.  So a person who has been using the site longer than average, adds comments that get “thumbs up” from other members and participates in a healthy number of discussions with other higher ranked people gets a good karma rating score.  A newly registered person who has neutral community rankings and always comments along with other lower karma members will end up with a lower score.  This person is likely not adding value to the community conversation and only participates during “pack” attacks.

Given the organic nature of ratings, scores would (mathematically) change daily.  And to prevent people from “gaming” the system, karma ratings would be displayed as simple, colored icons — not as numbers.

• Gold = Highest/Best Ranking
• Mustard = Strong Rating
• Green = Average
• Maroon = Somewhat Negative
• Red = Lowest/Worst Ranking

I’d leave it up to usability experts to determine icons and number of colors, but you get the idea.  This is all theoretical stuff that would auto-magically blend into the background on site.  I shall call this my Karma Chameleon.

Thoughts?  Add a comment below…

We can’t let that happen on social media sites whose essence is being a 2-way street.  I think we need to implement the notion of community standards for our actions online.  Here’s what I have in mind.  Say you’re on a local newspaper website that invites users to comment on articles.  Fair enough.  I register and add my opinions about the various articles.  Other readers should be able to vote on my postings with a thumbs up or thumbs down.  Over time, I end up with a karma rating (similar to eBay sellers/buyers)  that suggests the quality of my contributions to the website.  New visitors to that website see my ranking and have an idea what others think of me.  It quickly helps them discern the helpful, engaged citizens from riff raff who argue for the fun of it.

Now here’s the rub. I don’t expect everyone to agree with me.  But I do expect them to rate me based on my intelligence, authenticity, courtesy and respect.  Even when I disagree with someone, if they make a well thought out case and maintain a respectful tone, I’ll hear them out.  I’ll give them a good rating.  But if they cross the line of decency and civility, they should rated accordingly.

The more participants in a karma rating system, the better.  If I have a low karma rating after 500 different people have voted for me, I realize that I’m pissing off a lot of people and it’s probably not because of my dissenting opinions.  I’d better shape up or else.

The final step would be to allow individual users to completely block my posts from appearing to them.  If I were at a community gathering (say the local town festival), no one would be obliged to listen to me ramble.  They’d walk away and avoid me all together.  Same goes for online communities who are made up individual users who abide by common standards.  Either play with respect and decency or get out of town.

The specifics of how karma ratings will be implemented remain to be seen.  Bottom line?  Everyone should be accountable for the quality of their contributions according to the community standards. I say thumbs up.  What do you think?  Please leave me a comment below…