Category Archives: social media

I’m not a number

Yesterday on twitter, I started seeing all of these tweets.

Hmmm Kred. I had been there at least once. I always go and check things out to see what they are about, if they are useful. I see people giving other people +Kred (whatever that is) but I don’t live in there and the number certainly doesn’t concern me.

Still, I was intrigued and clicked through to see my score. Hmm. It’s pretty high? Why am I not a 1% Elite Kredster? In the middle of a tornadic afternoon, I found myself starting to feel concerned, ripped off even, that I hadn’t made the cut.

Well, in my inbox this morning was the golden email. There it was:

Thank God they realized it! Ha!

In the light of day, well, it’s still dark but as I sit here with my new prize, I come back to the idea I’ve believed since Klout started messing around with their algorithms, I’m not a number!

I deactivated my Klout account several algorithm changes ago because, the way I read it, I was going to be penalized for interacting with “less influential” persons than myself. I call BS on that!

I love all of the people I meet on twitter. It’s such a rich and diverse group that you’d have a hard time assembling in real life on a daily basis. I learn and gain from ALL of them not just the top dog Klout wise.

When I started seeing articles that employers weren’t even looking at your resume’ if you didn’t have a certain Klout score, I thought, “now the world has really gone mad”.

I think that within my sphere I am influential to a certain degree. When I get excited, people get excited right along with me. I can see this with my own eyes and I don’t need a number to prove it.

I have gotten some very nice, real life, tokens of appreciation from various brands because of this quality. I haven’t even blogged about my trip to Washington DC as a guest of Eight O’Clock Coffee and I really should. It was a dream trip. Did they look at my Klout score to pick me? No, I don’t think so because when you go to Klout and look for me, you see this:

No, they saw me actually influencing others regarding their brand. I’ve been drinking their coffee since I was 15. It’s my favorite and it’s not a secret. I drink it, I hoard it, I tweet about it. This is real, not some put on. They noticed, called me a Super Fan, and flew me to DC for the experience of a lifetime.

I think the numbers are probably fun to a certain extent but should they mean anything in real life? I would give a hearty NO! to that.

So, if my klout score is the reason that someone will or won’t hire me, I guess I’m destined to be an unemployed trophy wife forever. Dang the bad luck! 😉

Friends Friday – January 25

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Every so often on a Friday, I’ll see the larger friends grouping that facebook has spilled out and there will be a collection of people that I want to tell you about. Today is one of those days.

Here they are:

First comes my friend Janice, or J as I like to refer to her. I love this woman. She is our neighbor in Bartlesville. I’d say that J knows me just about as well as anyone on earth. We spent a couple of years walking around the neighborhood every morning, getting exercise, picking up garbage and talking. We called ourselves the Old Bat Patrol and we even had t-shirts. In addition to being so amazing and grounded, J’s married and her husband Keith, is an equally fabulous person. With a great beer fridge. 🙂

Dan Gordon and I became friends on twitter and have become friends in real life. He’s a great guy and is the owner of Samuel Gordon Jewelers in Oklahoma City. Dan was very supportive of the pageant while I was running it and allowed us to shoot an end of the year video in his store when the weather turned bad outside. He let the girls try on hundreds of thousands of dollars of jewelry which they loved! Dan’s got a great family and one of my favorite things to see on facebook are photos of his little girl, Hadley, who looks from every photo to have such an amazing personality. I hope to meet her some day.

I have known Debbi Raffalli for a long time. Back in the day we were both Pampered Chef consultants. In fact, I even WAS Debbi when I crashed a Pampered Chef convention in Washington, DC. She had two nametags. All went well until we were at dinner one night and a girl at our table said, “Oh I know you! We email together!”. Oops. 😉 Debbi gets me and I wish she was my next door neighbor. Although we might get into a lot of trouble. 😉

Mariam Kobras is another of my twitter friends who will become a real life friend as soon as we are on the same continent. Mariam is an author and lives in Germany. The next time she’s here, I’m going to throw her a book signing party so prepare to save the date. 🙂 Mariam is another person that I wish lived right next door and she is another person who gets me even though we have never met in real life. To consider Debbi and Mariam and I as neighbors? Hmmmmm… BIG FUN! Mariam’s first book is The Distant Shore, and her second Under the Same Sun are both available to purchase and she’s writing the third!

Laura Webster. You know she was named after me, right? 😉 Laura is my cousin Cindy’s oldest daughter and I adore her. She makes me laugh and you know how I love to laugh! Laura is on the way to her first big gig as deputy director of Leg Up India. I’m excited for Laura’s new adventure and I know she’ll do a great job. Laura is almost an exact replica in looks to Cindy. Especially in this photo below!

Tiny little Alisha Loper is another twitter friend who’s become a friend in real life. She is so tiny and cute! She’s a new mom and looking at photos of her little boy make my heart happy. He looks like a mini-me of her husband and it’s awesome to watch her be a good mom. Alisha is a talented designer and I love when she shares her work so I can admire it. 🙂

I’m trying to remember how I met Dawn Allen. I think it was through the Real Housewives of Oklahoma of which she is one. Dawn is terrific. Fun and kind and she clearly knows the importance of a good tiara. 🙂

LeAnn is my daughter-in-love Nikki’s Aunt Lee. I think she may have been one of the first relatives of Nikki’s that I met and she welcomed me like I was a direct member of the family. Lee is so nice and friendly and makes me believe that “in-law” can be “in-love” as I like to call it. She has a cute little granddaughter, Brighton, and I love seeing photos of them together.

So that is how facebook shook it out today. I am again reminded how blessed I am to have these people in my life. Makes it FABU! 🙂

“Pinterest is for sad women.” Oh yeah?

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A facebook friend of mine made a comment about Pinterest that I responded to. So, as you know, I was notified of all the follow on responses. I was really surprised to see this:

Wow! Really?

Immediately, I thought of five men who I follow on Pinterest.

Reg and Aaron are huge in the social media world. The other three (Lennon, Ryan and Rex) are my Oklahoma City friends, successful businessmen in their own rights.

I was relaying this information to David and discussing the different ways people are using Pinterest and remembered another friend of mine, Dan Gordon from Samuel Gordon Jewelers in Oklahoma City. He (note I said he and not she) held a Pinterest contest at Christmastime.

And then I had to know.

I know for myself, when I post a recipe or craft project from my blog to Pinterest, my blog traffic TRIPLES. Yes, that’s right, triples.

So I asked Dan how his Pinterest contest went over. And he replied:

“I believe we had close to 40 participants pinning hundreds of items on the Samuel Gordon website. SamuelGordons.com website traffic went up over 400% for close to 5 consecutive days. Then stayed steady at 200% up for at least 5 more days afterwards. Also, we had Twitter and Facebook posts of pics. Brand awareness exceeded expectations. Now My boards have taken on a life of their own and some days I go without pinning anything I get over a dozen pins or more even if I’m not on the services for multiple days on end.”

Wowza! Doesn’t sound like a sad woman who will never have any happiness to me.

Every day, I see a few more articles about how people are using Pinterest to grow their business, market their non-profit, or create brand awareness and I think it’s awesome.

Although I am currently a twitter user who uses twitter for its originally intended purpose, over the past couple of years, I used twitter (and other social media platforms) to grow my business. I am endlessly fascinated at the cleverness of people in business figuring out ways of using each new social media platform to their benefit.

Now, I will say that the young man who posted that Pinterest is for sad women is a college student and maybe isn’t old enough to know any better. But I sincerely hope he’s not a marketing student or maybe he needs to be paying more attention in class!