Media Blitz

A while back I posted about wanting to be a media mogul. The reason that I want to be more in tuned with social media is because of its synergistic capabilities to expand my skills and ideas to others. In this hyper-connected world, we are all networked into the "system." There are so many people in the world now-a-days, that it is incredibly difficult to for people to get an idea of who you are.

I would like to believe that by being interconnected it serves a greater purpose by allowing people from anywhere to share ideas and expand on world views. Recently I have been or a personal marketing frenzy, promoting myself across many different platforms and networking sites. It started with the need to grow this blog at first, but then after a bit of researching, I found out the huge effectiveness a large social media presence can have on a person.

People that have a big social media presence (High Klout score) have the ability to receive perks and discounts. Essential businesses look at people with high scores and see them as walking advertisement, with their ability to twitter their likes or dislikes of a business. So it's in the best interest of the business to impress and reward them primarily on how many people they can influence.  

Now perks are great but for me, it is about the advantage I would gain in the specific industry that I am working in. As you all might know, engineers in general, are not too interested in growing or developing their social media presence. Most engineers think that its an irrelevant activity that has  very little benefits and rather focus on things that are important. I know this from personal experience as well as many of my college and work peers. It isn't a priority for most of us to gain followers and/or twitter random things. Even now, I have not tweeted things random things that I find curious or interesting. (maybe I should?)

So the advantage is that I have exponentially more exposure to the "world" than others that have little to no online presence at all. This can benefit me when it comes to marketability of my skills and documentation of what I have done in the past. It also allows people to gain a sense of who I am as a person as well as my work ethic. Anybody that sees my posts and their content can instantly form a opinion about me even before they even meet me. They know a bit more about me than another engineer that has no online presence, thus giving me the ability to tailor my message to the viewer. Now of course it comes with a caveat, things that you talk about must form a positive opinion, which is a lot harder to do.

There are just not enough ways to let people know who you are as a person these days. It is harder and harder to distinguish yourself from the rest, there is simply too much competition. The only way to stand out is to find a missing critical aspect and work that angle as much as you can. Social media is my way, but it is not for the faint of heart, creating a good unique brand for yourself is incredibly difficult and requires plenty of time and energy.

So what is your Klout score?