American Idol contestants provide a case study in social capital
In many of Cision’s free social media webinars, we frequently receive questions about how to get more followers on Twitter, Facebook and other top social networks. My answer usually consists of two parts:
- Quality vs. Quantity: It’s not just a numbers game on these sites. There are lots of get-rich-quick tricks to getting a lot of followers – but if they aren’t loyal followers, they will not be inclined to take action or act as a brand ambassador. Building quality relationships with a smaller community will get you much further in the new world of building social capital.
- Authentic Involvement. Act as a member of the community by actually having conversations with friends and fans, sharing helpful ideas, links and stories and answering and asking questions as they arise. Comment on influential bloggers’ posts in your industry, create a list of your favorite Tweeters or create something of value within your social network for friends and fans to take advantage of. These actions will build your social capital and you will watch your community grow.
These are definitely best practices, but, in reality, does a larger number of followers ever produce better results solely because of sheer size? Well, we may soon know the answer.
The behemoth machine that is American Idol has always kept a pretty tight reign on the messaging coming from its contestants. In past years, contestants were not allowed to maintain public profile pages on the top social networks – this year, Fox gave each semi-finalist a controlled MySpace, Facebook and Twitter profile, according to Reality Blurred. Read it all..