Social Media Fitness – Speed/Power and Scale/Impact

Welcome to the fifth installment of Social Media Fitness – Zone Training: Speed/Power and Scale/Impact.

1. We have warmed up by doing our research and preparing our strategy.
2. We spent quality “base building” time in our Fat Burn zone as we built up our social media tribe.
3. We began to burn more efficiently and improve our threshold in our Aerobic zone as we worked on content curation.
4. We started testing our endurance in our Anaerobic Zone with content creation.
5. Now we will push our limits in the Speed/Power Zone by increasing our Scale and Impact.

Let’s complete this stage of the zone training fitness analogy by discussing the Objectives, Application and “Feeling” of Zone 5 in regards to both fitness and social media.

Objective:

Fitness Develop speed and muscle power while increasing VO2 Max Peak
Social Media Expand the scale and impact of our influence by leveraging multiple venues to establish ourselves as trusted thought leaders.

Application:

Fitness Very intense, short intervals and sprints Social Media Klout breaks an influence score down into three components:

• True Reach – The number of people you influence, both within your immediate network and across their extended networks
• Amplification – Indicates how likely your audience is to respond and how close you are to your entire network
• Network Impact – Measures the influence of your audience

I use Klout in this example because, even with perceived flaws, it is currently the most recognized influence scoring system. Let’s now take a look at mechanisms for increasing these three components of an influence score.

1. Triberr – If you have developed strategic relationships and advocates through the other zones, you can join Triberr and start getting invited to tribes. Each tribemate then has the capability of reviewing your exceptional blog content and scheduling it to share with their own networks. Triberr is an excellent Reach Multiplier. Since many of your tribemates will be strong influencers, and most likely will start following you on Twitter, they also strongly enhance your Network Impact.
2. Syndication – Syndication requires proving yourself to a community like Business2Community by submitting exceptional blog posts for review. These communities then leverage RSS feeds to easily re-post your content to a much larger audience (again increasing that scale/impact). Susan Silver wrote a nice 12 Most post that further explains the benefits of syndication.
3. Blog Communities – Speaking of 12 Most, blog communities are excellent mechanisms for improving all three aspects of influence. Each blogger brings their own network that enjoys reading their content, and those readers tend to stick around and read several posts from one site (thus improving your True Reach). These bloggers are intent on growing their own influence, so now you increase your Network Impact as they start sharing your content in the spirit of reciprocity. Finally, blog communities are one of the best venues for increasing Amplification because bloggers develop a sense of community and camaraderie. In addition to engaging via the comment sections on individual blog posts, they are likely to engage further as everyone shares content across the social channels (@mentions in Twitter and tags in Facebook, for example). Blog communities differ from syndication in that they generally require original content (that you may subsequently re-post on your own blog after sufficient time has passed).
4. Guest Post – Just like some flowers thrive through the act of cross-pollination, blog authors can thrive by guest posting. For example, I love writing sports analogies to discuss both social media and leadership. However, I am not familiar with every sport. I may invite another blogger to write a sports analogy discussing social media or leadership using their favorite sport as an example. In fact, consider this invitation to submit guest posts for skiing/snowboarding, cricket, lacrosse and rugby! Both authors, and their readers, then benefit from a cross-pollination of interests, experience, and followers.
5. Mixed Content – Dare to be different even if it requires you to stretch beyond your comfort zone! Engage your audience on multiple levels with the use of mixed media content. Write individual blogs and blog series. Try an interview format and either transcribe the results or deliver via a podcast or video. Produce a slide deck and distribute via Slideshare. Keep ‘em guessing, and they will keep coming back for more!
6. White Papers/Books/Speaking Engagements – Consider three classifications of athletes: recreational, competitive and world-class. The world class influencers make it to this last stage and truly push their limits of Scale and Impact. Submitting a White Paper can be as simple as developing ties to the appropriate professional organization where you can share your ideas. If you have strong enough corporate website traffic, you can promote white papers that establish your company as a thought leader. If you are thinking of writing a book, I invite you to read Mark Schaefer’s How To Self-Publish Your Book. White papers and books help establish your credentials as an industry thought leader, and that status will lead to speaking opportunities.

Feeling:

Fitness Very uncomfortable, out of breath and heart is pounding, loss of “form” and muscles simply give out
Social Media You will need to frequently revisit your goals, and measure progress against those goals, because this is work! Are you a weekend warrior who is treating social media more as a casual engagement platform, or are you working towards becoming a consistent high-performer who helps your team/business win? Endorphinsare fantastic, but our competitive spirit demands we see the return on investment from our efforts. Our Zone 1 efforts helped us identify our goals. Now we must actively monitor our performance against those metrics and be willing to change our regimen to most efficiently reap the greatest rewards.

• Did you know that both Fitness and Social Media Zone Training require good monitoring? I use a product called DigiFit for my fitness zone training, and I encourage you to review Mantis Pulse Analytics for social media monitoring.
• Where are you in regards to your own Social Media Fitness? Do you think this type of Zone Training approach can improve your fitness?

I look forward to your comments as we work through this series. If you enjoy these posts, please Stumble them to further encourage social sharing and discussion of these ideas.

*Note: Fitness descriptions were paraphrased from Training Zone descriptions provided by New Leaf and Lifetime Fitness LifeLab. These are not sponsors…I just appreciate their services.

Read more:

• Social Media Fitness – Aerobic Endurance and Content Curation