72 Point Blog National News, PR and Market Research Specialists…

7th   Apr

Are you a “Power Player” of Social Media?

Back in February, PRWeek ran an article entitled “Power Players of Social Media”.

Essentially it was a feature outlining a handful of PR folk who’d done some groovy social media stuff.

Then this chap called Andrew Bruce Smith decided to create another list (using Peer Index) of EVEN MORE “Power Players of Social Media”

There followed a few hoo-has - including PRWeek journalist Cathy Bussey criticising Andrew’s methodology. Read the whole story here if you have too much time on your hands: http://storify.com/andismit/pr-week-power-players-of-social-media-uk-peerindex?awesm=sfy.co_2l1&utm_content=storify-pingback

Don’t get me wrong – I love a list – and I’m in no position to criticise this particular list for being unreserved, barefaced link bait, having created my own list of PR Agency Heads on Twitter last year for that purpose entirely.

But I did find something a bit weird about a load of PRs re-tweeting the link in the hope they would end up on the list of “Power Players”. *What does “Power Player” actually mean anyway?*

I’m focussing too much on this list – I have nothing against the list – I’m actually on the list! Really near the bottom.

My point is that there is an unhealthy obsession with power and influence on social networking sites like Twitter and it grosses me out.

My Twitter stream is, at times, like a big old wank-fest where egos are massaged, new ways of measuring “power” are constantly being invented - and then more lists of “really important people" are collated.

Of course influence is important in PR – but is anyone else bored of seeing “5 tools to rank your Twitter influence” and ordered lists and all this brown-nosing and mutual back-slapping?

And more importantly – hasn’t anyone got any actual work to do?

By Harriet Crosse