Remember surfing? That was how we used to discover interesting things on the web 10 years ago (and waste prodigious amounts of time).

But was that time really wasted? I’m beginning to think not.

Over time, we’ve all become much more accustomed to using the Internet as a tool. Go to Amazon to buy something. Look up something on Wikipedia. Post a blog. Update your business website.

Even if you visit Cheezburger, you probably do a quick furtive hit.

And our definitions have changed, too.

People used to spend more time in unfocused crashing around the web, going from link to link based on what looked interesting. Now, with all of the fantastic apps, social networks, and notifications, the web is a means to an end, rather than a pastime.

This statistic I saw recently really hit me hard–for the first time ever, Forrester found a decline in the number of people “using the Internet.” That’s not because people aren’t using the Internet, it’s because people no longer include surfing in their definition of “using the Internet.”

Here’s the thing: the creative spaces in between working are often where the action and inspiration happens.

Don’t spend all day reading your friends’ Facebook timelines, but this week, give yourself some totally unstructured time to surf again. You might find content ideas, topics to discuss, innovative products, or something completely unexpected.

3 Awesome Surfing Tools to Get You Started

• Brain Pickings – This newsletter and website are a goldmine of inspiration and random thought-provoking ideas.
• The “I’m feeling lucky” button on Google – When was the last time you clicked this button?
• StumbleUpon – It’s been around for a while now, but sometimes people get so focused on getting “Stumbled” that they forget you can also randomly “Stumble” around. Do it by interest area, or in general, and see where you land. This can also be good for finding new blogs to read (fresh inspiration).

Do you still surf? What tools do you use?

By Ovetta Sampson

A few weeks ago, I received a small candle-sized cardboard box in the mail. In it were four Red Bulls. I have never purchased Red Bull. I don’t consume it, and I certainly don’t have it on my grocery list. Yet, I got this present in the mail because of my Klout score.

Brands such as Cadillac, Red Bull, Home Run Inn, believe I am like some Internet imp, sprinkling virtual fairy dust transforming followers into sheep to buy their products. They dubbed me a social media influencer. Such a moniker should make me feel somewhat majestic, like some kind of ROI royalty until I realized one salient thought: the Social Media Influencer, as it’s billed today, is a myth.

The Rise of the Digital Influence Industry

Yes I know, an entire industry—the Digital Influence industry to be exact—has cropped up around this mystical creature known as the social media influencer. Klout is now the leader in a crowded field which includes:

• Tellagence—which purports to find the “right combination of Twitter users,” to engage brand audiences.
• The Mark Cuban-backed Little Bird—a Portland company which commands up to $2,500 per month for connecting you with “experts that other experts trust.
• PeerIndex—a sort of vanity project for social media users which “measures interactions across the web to help you understand your impact in social media.”

These companies throw around words like “influence,” “impact,” and “social reach,” like lollipops in a candy store. Yet few of these actually measure any of these terms.

Defining Social Media Influence?

As social media expert Jure Klepic says, “Marketers already have plenty of tools at their disposal that claim to measure online influence, but all these tools really do is measure awareness.”

What is social media influence? Well here’s what it isn’t: popularity, followers, or likes. A true social influencer is someone who can change behavior. It’s making Coke drinker switch to Pepsi. It’s wooing Nike fans to become Converse lovers. It’s pushing folks from Allstate to State Farm. A real social media influencer engages his or her audience over time and convinces them to do what the data says they wouldn’t normally do. A social media influencer must be seen by its audience as:

• Trusted
• Relational
• Authentic

There is no doubt that digital influence exists. One million people don’t just like a Coke commercial on a whim. But the why’s, how’s and more importantly the “how can we replicate that lighting strike,” is more the future of social media marketing than the present. The jury is still out on that omnipotent, product pusher who commands millions of minions to buy in droves.

Instead, the research says influence spreads through social networks through a bunch of close, intimate relationship circles that connect via social media and influence each other to see a movie, pick up a Red Bull or beta test a new shoe-buying app. Let’s delve deeper:

MYTH: One Social Media Guru Affects Thousands

“There is little data to support so-called influencer behavior in social marketing.” – Jack Krawczyk, StumbleUpon and Jon Steinberg BuzzFeed

“No one has any real data on real influence.” – Mike Wu, Ph.D. data scientist at Lithium

“…it’s not clear whether, when, and to what extent different behaviors are truly “contagious.” – Sinan Aral, Ph.D., MIT-trained technology professor at NYU

Okay. There. Now, I don’t have to convince you that the social media influencer is a myth. These guys, much smarter than I, have done it for me.

In an AdAge article about content sharing, Krawczyk and Steingberg put the kibosh on the myth of the all-affecting social medial influencer.

“Our data show that online sharing, even at viral scale, takes place through many small groups, not via the single status post or tweet of a few influencers. While influential people may be able to reach a wide audience, their impact is short-lived. Content goes viral when it spreads beyond a particular sphere of influence and spreads across the social web via ordinarily people sharing with their friends.” – Steinberg & Krawczyk

FACT: Social Media Influencers More like Sewing Circles than Celebrity Gurus

So are these smart guys saying there is no such thing as a social media influencer? Well, not exactly. What they’re really saying is that social media influence is real but we haven’t figured out how to measure it just yet.

In his blog post, “Why Brands Still Don’t Understand Digital Influence,” Wu explains that no algorithm in the world can compute the complex psychology that goes into human decision-making. Sure, they can identify a person with a large social network, they can even determine if anyone listens to that person. But the idea that math has cracked the behavioral database is fiction—as of now.

“One of the reasons brands don’t understand digital influence is because they don’t seem to realize that nobody actually has ‘data’ on influence (i.e. data that says precisely who influenced who, when, where, how, etc.)…” Wu says.

What the data has shown is that influence is a personal, intimate and very small circle kinda’ of thing. It’s not one social guru casting a net of thousands. It is 10 social gurus casting a net of four or five. Buzzfeed reviewed content shared on Facebook since 2007. StumbledUpon looked at 5.5 million shares over 45 days. Here are some of their findings:

• Sharing among friends outnumbered large broadcast sharing (sharing by a person with a large following) by 2 to 1.
• The median ratio for sharing a piece of Facebook content was 9. That means for every piece of content shared, basically only NINE people saw that content when it was shared, and Twitter was 5 to 1. News sharing sites such as Reddit had a median of 36.
• Viral content is created not by one person broadcasting to millions of followers but thousands of small networks broadcasting to their own intimate networks.

The Takeaways

So what does this all mean for you? Well, when you’re promoting your content you might want to stop star gazing or even ego-baiting gurus to get shares. Concentrate on making your content more authentic that will have that “water cooler,” quality prompting co-workers, families and friends to share it. So experiment with:
Creating resonating content – personal content that connects with content consumers in a way they feel personally obligated to share it.

Match your influencers and content. Don’t just share your content to influencers with large mass audiences but with audiences who have relevancy to your subject matter.

Deeper, not just longer, content gets shared. So experiment with longer videos and blog posts that are rich content.

So what do you think? Are you still stuck on finding the Social Media Influencer?

By Sarah Evans

Time is money, right? Wasted time is like throwing money down your kitchen sink (or anything with a deep, dark hole). When you blog for a living or as part of your professional role, you may be wasting time. How? By using outdated or inefficient workflows to brainstorm, create and share your content. Most bloggers recognize the need for a better work flow, but they fear a steep learning curve. But, it doesn’t have to be this way. I’ll tell you why.

Have no fear, the productivity junky is here.

In full disclosure, I’m the chief evangelist at Tracky, an open social collaboration platform scaled for the enterprise and accessible enough for anyone to use. I eat, breathe and sleep this stuff. Here’s the secret: the productivity platform (yes, platform, not a tool) you select is the key to working and sharing better, not more.

First, you must acknowledge that they way you work isn’t working. It’s not your fault. It’s no one’s really, but it’s a broken process. Say, “stop!” Demand change and replace older, less effective habits.

I use Tracky to:

• Create a shared editorial calendar for our team, including delegating tasks for various articles (see image below);
• Work on content real-time via Google Docs that I create from within a track; and
• Manage all tasks in my professional life, including urgent media queries, team meetings and various professional affiliations.

If you’re ready to make the change to an open social collaboration and productivity platform, here are a few features to look for:

• No desktop software. Say no to software. Use a platform that is browser and app based.
• Easy on-boarding process. All productivity platforms have a learning curve, but it shouldn’t be so complex that it deters you from using it.
• Open. Allow for contributions even from those not using the platform. If you can’t freely and easily bring people into collaborate, there’s no sense in using the tool.
• Custom notification settings. In order to reduce email, your platform should send regular email updates and allow you to respond on your time.
• Real-time document editing. If you’re working on a project that has many rounds of edits and various documents, the right platform allows you to easily create or upload, comment and edit — together.
• Public and Private. You should be able to create both public and private tasks and groups in order to work seamlessly within in one place. Once you finish your project and want to share it with the world, you can share it publicly in the platform and via social networks direct from within the platform.
• Publishing. People become authoritative by sharing what they’re getting done. Platforms should allow for direct publishing to your blog or website and sharing via social networks.
• Schedule meetings and reminders. A basic feature for any collaboration platform should allow you to add tasks to shared calendars.

Making the shift to a social collaboration platform will improve communication, simplify workflows, engage team members (if applicable), provide an element of fun, reduce email overload, increase real-time collaboration, decrease unnecessary meetings and connect you with your external audience. It’s a decisive business decision that can bring you into the age of collaboration and ensure that you’re competitive for the long-haul.