The Szabo Stream

An excellent conversation around influencers is taking place at Mack Collier's blog.  I have scrapped the internet and presented my clients with influencers many times - however, nothing comes close to the way Fast Company is going about it. Mack says:

" I argued because I don’t want social media to be about how one person can gain at the expense of many. I want it to be about how we can all benefit together. I want it to be about how I can create value for the people that have helped me."

This pretty much sums up why I participate in communities. It stuff like this that leaves an influence on me. I don't know Mack personally but to me, he's cool.

Here was my response to Mack's argument:

To me, the whole “influencer” thing is like being “cool”.

A person is deemed cool by their friends because of who they are and what they do. A cool person never says he is cool or acts like he is cool or asks his friends to validate that he is cool; he just is. And that’s why his friends are his friends.

@DotJenna wanted to be cool. She asked you to confirm her coolness – which would indicate to all your friends that she is cool – yet you don’t know her from Adam. Or the Fonz. Not cool.

She asked you to confirm her coolness simply to benefit from profit. When she realized she wasn’t getting her way with you, she resorted to name calling. Seriously? Not cool.

@FastCompany wanted to be cool as well. From a business standpoint, being cool means more sales. Nothing wrong with that. But how they went about it – by feeding off the coolness of others – was not cool.

Sure, more sales might mean more writers and more photographers for better content (or it might mean more executives at the yacht club), but asking people to validate their influencing power is so not cool. Bad things happen. In this case, the worst with @DotJenna

What you did and what you said was the right thing to do, Mack.