Smojoe on Social Capital and How To Invest
What is social capital?
I saw Julien Smith on December 1st 2009 inside the Berkley Church in downtown Toronto and he talked about Trust Agents and how to value social networks. He waxed poetic about advice his father had given him concerning perspectives on friends and potential employers. His script was pretty flat actually, and there was no deviation from the template - a couple times he paused for laughs and there werent any and I suspect he was used to laughs in those places and missed them.
In my humble opinion, Julien mislabels social events as Social Capital. These things Smojoe considers to be ’social currency’ which can build capital. But that’s me being knitpicky … The only thing that kinda bothered me in this presentation was that Julien did not once define social capital in the plainest terms, and so most of the audience is still mesmerized by the abstraction of something that is, in fact, a very real and calculable thing.
This is NOT how Smojoe defines social capital.
In his Third Tuesday in Toronto Meet-up Presentation on Dec 1st 2009 in Toronto, Julien Smith described the idea of building premium social networks and using tools to prep managers before you ask for a promotion, and win jobs before you submit a resume, etc. His presentation makes sense for bank employees and insurance brokers building careers, but he didn’t say what to me is the most obvious answer to the question ‘what is social capital?’
So what is Social Capital?
From an internet marketing perspective, social capital is a measurable array of incoming links each buried in keyword rich text and from respectable, highly usable sources. This is how Google measures social capital, and this is what puts your URL on page one of search engines.
Every webmaster knows what I’m talking about - to grow a successful ecommerce website today you have to be findable in search engines. The best way to get found first is to rank high on page one of Google for the most popular keywords that best define your offering. The way to the top is to earn links.
As more and more business goes online, more and more URLs compete for the same keywords. For all business owners my advice is the same; now is the time to win as many search terms as possible, because your media will only get stronger and appreciate in value over time.
An example of a social capital bank
The best example of a social capital bank that I know would be the Miss Teen Canada-World pageant, and how they now rank first for the term ‘Miss Teen Canada’ because they have the most social capital, the highest usability and the most trust… yes trust, because even trust is measurable.
The people who join and help build this social trust also withdraw its benefits when they show friends, potential sponsors, project managers, college registrars and potential new employers their blogs. In just about every case, the girls who participated in the 2009 MTC-W Blog Army used their own names in the OnSugar blog link URL, and now these blogs are the first results that appear when they type their names in Google. This gives them findability, credibility, and trust. There’s a list of all blogs in the 2009 MTCW Blog Army here http://squidoo.com/missteencanada
On Sunday December 6th the Miss Teen Ontario - World pageant brought together fifty hopeful teenagers from all across the province and filled the St Lawrence centre for the Performing Arts on Front St with 500 or more family members and friends. This part of the MTC-W pageant is really popular now and business is booming because of an improved online presence in search engines, and a very strong MTC-W Facebook community. With hundreds of incoming links from dozens of rich media offerings, press releases and OnSugar blog posts created by the MTCW Blog Army, no other Canadian pageant production can successfully compete against this massive link building machine.
This pageant raised $30K for Free The Children in 2009 through direct appeals from participants to personal sponsors. Thats an example of how to leverage social networks for cash, but the organization has more goodness to share with society. Associating with the Miss Teen Canada - World pageant is a dream come true for sponsors. Now businesses that donate to the production enjoy triple rewards. They harvest the traditional media buzz, and enjoy conversational word of mouth advertising, and they leverage the MTCW social capital bank and its powerful link building mechanisms. So now corporate sponsors get their logo printed in the programs, and their company name mentioned in press, but more importantly the sponsor businesses also get link love from social media press releases, articles, photo captions, tweets and unique blog post links from an army of bloggers who reference them in connection with assignments and activities relating to the pageant. The sponsor’s online goods and services are connected to more valuable stuff, and so their URLS appear higher in search engines. So the MTCW social capital bank rewards sponsor businesses with increased findability, credibility and usability.
Build Social Capital With Smojoe
Rob Campbell will be at the Centre for Social Innovation Wednesday, January 20, 2010. I’ll be showing folks exactly how I execute complicated story funnels that capture readers on multiple platforms and bring them home to a ‘buckstop’.
Build Social Capital with Smojoe Wednesday, January 20, 2010
6:00pm to 9:00pm at the Centre for Social Innovation
215 Spadina Avenue, Suite 120 Toronto
Social Media Workshop: $40.00 CAD per ticket plus service charges and taxes.
Story Funnels to Buckstops
Bring your laptop and blog with Smojoe! Learn by doing as Rob Campbell demonstrates exactly how to build ‘Story Funnels to Buckstops’ and works through the little known principles of article replication, blogvertising and discussion forum marketing.
Story Funnels to Buckstops is the methodology Rob uses to put clients on the first page of Google search, diminish negative press, and generally increase his clients ‘findability’.
Tags: bank, Centre for Social Innovation, leverage, Miss Teen Canada, social capital
Smojoe is a online storyteller, web skirmisher and conversation provocateur that teaches folks how to use articles, blogs and discussion forums to engage humans and satisfy search engine robots. You can read more about Story Funnels to Buckstops in every post and esp in the sidebar links where it gets real obvious how I use photos, blogs and bookmarks to make keyword sandwiches for robots.
