Social Media Cliques

Social media cliques exist.  Will you dare to be different?

I’m a huge pro­po­nent of social media and believe that it’s a fan­tas­tic way to not only cre­ate rela­tion­ships with poten­tial cus­tomers, but to also grow your per­sonal rela­tion­ship circle.

What I’ve noticed recently is the cliques that exist in social media. It’s almost as if we’ve entered high school again. The last few days I’ve taken some time to watch some of the most promi­nent “thought lead­ers” in social media — stalk them if you will.

There are a few that I watched that inter­act and engage with their fol­low­ers and then there are oth­ers that sel­dom reply unless it ben­e­fits them. What’s even more inter­est­ing is watch­ing the fol­low­ers of these thought lead­ers. They often treat these thought lead­ers as celebri­ties, agree­ing with every­thing that’s said, retweet­ing, prais­ing, and almost doing a dig­i­tal wor­ship dance. If some­one dis­agrees with a thought leader, they are nearly tack­led in the dig­i­tal stream, so very rarely do you see some­one stand up and state their own thought or opin­ion due to the fear of being attacked personally.

What I think is miss­ing is that we have so many peo­ple “try­ing” to be like estab­lished “thought lead­ers” that they in return are not being them­selves. I hope in the upcom­ing year that more peo­ple will stand out with their own voice and worry less about being accepted and more about engage­ment and cre­at­ing their own rela­tion­ships as well as their own following.

I think it’s impor­tant to remem­ber that the social media “thought lead­ers” ended up there because they took the time to engage and inter­act. They voiced opin­ions that may have not been pop­u­lar and were will­ing to stand their ground when nec­es­sary. They’re infor­ma­tive and most of them have their own sense of humor that is reflected. A few of my favorites include Chris Bro­gan, Scott Strat­ten and of course Gary Vayn­er­chuk. They are “thought lead­ers” because they are not only will­ing to share infor­ma­tion, but they are also will­ing to be authen­tic and real and put them­selves out there. I think they will all agree that’s how they got started on the path that has lead them to where they are today.

I have a chal­lenge for you when it comes to social media in 2010, be your­self. Don’t try to mimic the pop­u­lar crowd but rather let your per­son­al­ity shine. That means that peo­ple may not always agree with you. It means that at first it might be a lit­tle scary to stand up for what you believe in, but in the long run it will be worth it. Be will­ing to step out­side the cliques and con­form less. You never know you just might be the next thought leader that thou­sands are fol­low­ing and lis­ten­ing to. Dare to stand out from the crowd.

Tagged as: facebook, online communities, social media, social media marketing, thought leaders, twitter