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"On Twitter, a well-known chef recommends a restaurant in your town. You trust the chef. You trust his advice. What\u2019s more, he gave you a local recommendation. As a result, your esteem of the chef increases. You begin following him. You retweet his review. Others may as well. You may not remember the restaurant he recommended, but you do value the chef\u2019s opinion, and it was just strengthened thanks to his latest review.\nThis phenomenon of brand value coming back to the recommender is a behavior we see time and again, according to James Buckhouse, head of corporate marketing for Twitter.\nEvery connection in the Twitter message chain \u2014 following, @replying and retweeting \u2014 is a reputation statement, explained Randy Farmer, co-author of Building Web Reputation Systems.\nIn the statement \u201CChef X recommends Restaurant Y,\u201D the primary effect is the value of the chef recommending a restaurant. The transitive effect is the restaurant being recommended. \u201CSometimes we don\u2019t get to the transitive effect,\u201D Farmer said.\nAre we consciously aware of it? Are we sharing just to boost our own brand?  \nCan You Build a Brand Just By Sharing Links?\nAddToAny, a social media sharing tool, ran a study this year on the social and personal brand effects of just sharing links.\nThe study showed that for the average sharer, they won\u2019t receive any significant recognition just sending out blind links, but \u201Cestablished influencers can sometimes 'get away' with blindly sharing headlines,\u201D said AddToAny\u2019s founder, Pat Diven II.\nA blind share, according to Diven, is a link accompanied with a headline and no commentary. Since we can\u2019t determine if they were blindly sent or not, we\u2019ll refer to them as \"plain\" links. When established influencers share plain links, they receive on average a 400% higher clickthrough rate than a plain link from an average user. If that influencer provides thoughtful commentary, that clickthrough rate jumps to 500%, or a 20% increase from those links without commentary.\nThe most famous plain link tweeter is Guy Kawasaki. He and the others who manage his feed are unabashed about just tweeting links from his curated news service Alltop.\n\n\n\n\nIn general, it\u2019s difficult to tell if a person sharing a plain link actually read the content. But, in some cases, Diven could see that a few established influencers spent little to no time consuming the content they were sharing.\nThat doesn\u2019t mean the influencer would never consume the content, Diven said. They sometimes send out links and hope for responses.\n\u201CTo those influencers, thoughtful responses to a thoughtless share are indicators that the content is worthy of further consumption,\u201D Diven continued.\nAddToAny\u2019s data goes on to show that after receiving thoughtful responses, the influencers returned to the shared content and spent more time with it.\n\u201CPeople can increase their brand value solely through sharing,\u201D said Joe Fernandez, CEO of Klout, an online influencer rating service focused predominantly on Twitter.\nTwitalyzer, another influence measuring service has noticed the same effect with their Twitter-based \u201Cimpact\u201D scores. \u201CWhat we\u2019ve discovered is people may retweet content just to increase their own scores,\u201D said Eric Peterson, the service's CEO.\nAccording to Twitalyzer\u2019s data, the top 500 link sharers have a 21% higher \u201Cimpact\u201D score than a random sample of 500 users. Twitalyzer\u2019s \u201Cimpact\u201D is a function of Twitter followers, retweets, @replies, and post frequency.\nPlain link sharing, or as Diven calls it, \u201Cblind sharing,\u201D doesn\u2019t work in all cases.\n\u201CFor those who lack influence, blind sharing is particularly ineffective \u2014 rarely producing engagement \u2014 much like shouting into a vacuum,\u201D said Diven.\nIn the case of Kawasaki\u2019s link-tweeting activity, he\u2019s been dubbed a top \u201Ccurator\u201D by Klout with a score of 82. Klout defines a \u201Ccurator\u201D as someone who is a mega sharer. Curators add no particular editorial on the content they share, said Fernandez. They just share.\nIn AddToAny\u2019s study, the clickthrough data shows that a plain link share from influencers is transferring some value to the sites they\u2019re recommending. But is this always the case? It would make sense to assume that consumption of content would be a positive multiple of all the social sharing. What can we deduce when we have evidence of consumption of content being a fraction of the people who are sharing?\nWhen Sharing Exceeds Consumption\nIn all my interviews, everyone admitted at some level to sharing content without actually consuming it. They would send out a consumption-free share for the following reasons:\n\nThey trust the source of the content.\nThey like the title of the content.\nThey want to help a friend promote something.\n\nIn the last scenario, one developer I spoke to admitted he got hundreds of friends to pre-agree he could retweet his content via their Twitter accounts. Whenever he publishes an article, he hits a button and hundreds of automated retweets are sent through his friends\u2019 pre-approved accounts.\nNo one admitted to sharing just to build their own brand. It would be a rather brash statement to say so. Although there seems to be a fluid unconscious-to-conscious behavioral process that sharing someone else\u2019s content will improve one\u2019s brand.\nNone of this \u201Csharing without consumption\u201D behavior surprised me, but I thought these users were in the minority, and that it would never be pronounced enough to be noticeable. That was until I saw one of my own posted videos receive more shares than views. It was a low discrepancy, 52 shares and 48 views, and I didn\u2019t see any bot-like behavior. Still, it was clear to me that sharers were more interested in being seen as someone sharing my video, entitled \u201CHow do you get everyone to watch your video,\u201D rather than actually watching it.\nMy situation is not an anomaly. SocMetrics, an influencer identification service, was able to uncover 100 more similar cases of shares exceeding views. Similarly, most of these shares didn\u2019t show any bot-like behavior, although there were a handful of standouts that did. \nHere are five with the greatest discrepancy (more shares than views).  \n\n\n\n        Video\n\n     Shares / Likes\n\n     Views\n\n  \n       Straight 2 Work\n    5026\n    1231\n  \n       Vulcha Smooth \u2013 GET OFF\n    4827\n    3641\n  \n       Vulcha Smooth \u2013 Hustle Hard (Freestyle)\n    5023\n    2771\n  \n       CLUB NOOK VID AD\n    633\n    285\n  \n       Marcus Baker Introduction and Gift\n    258\n    118\n  \n\n\nShares and views measured as of March 31, 2011\n\nIndeed, even this article, by virtue of the Mashable brand, will likely fall victim to shares without consumption. I've watched hundreds of shares appear within minutes of my previous Mashable posts \u2014 far less time than it takes to read the article.\nBut given Mashable\u2019s stature, views will inevitably exceed shares. For others that don\u2019t have Mashable\u2019s strong brand, it\u2019s possible your clever title may only benefit the person sharing, and not transfer to your content.\nIs it too easy to share?\n\u201CWe\u2019ve created a situation where sharing of information is rapidly becoming devalued because it\u2019s so easy to click the retweet button,\u201D said Twitalyzer\u2019s Peterson.\nFarmer agrees and argues that we\u2019ve made reviewing and sharing far too easy and frictionless. In the earliest states of any reputation system Farmer understands that developers want to make it as easy as possible for people to participate, share, rate, and review. You desperately need users. Any type of roadblock seems antithetical to building success.\n\u201CLong-term, the success of your reputation system will depend on quality, honest and unbiased opinions,\u201D Farmer said, \u201CDon't ask your users to provide opinions on things they haven't experienced.\u201D\nThis seems rational, although many successful rating services allow you to review things you haven\u2019t experienced. No one on Yelp is checking to see if you've actually patronized a restaurant. Anyone can leave a review on Amazon, and YouTube lets you \u201CLike\u201D a video without even hitting the play button. All of these low-barrier sharing and rating systems have succeeded grandly, although the quality of their reviews are highly debatable. \nIncrease Your Brand by Being More Critical of Other Brands\nAddToAny\u2019s research shows that adding commentary to a link increases personal brand, as measured by clickthroughs. What happens when that commentary is more selective and critical?\nHolaba is a brand recommendation service based in China. People sign up for the service, create an account, rate and sometimes write reviews of brands. With 150,000 subscribers and 5,000 brands to rate and review, Holaba users develop their own personal brand by giving their opinions about other brands.\nAccording to Holaba, the top 500 users, as determined by number of followers, are the most critical and selective about giving love/hate reviews in both quantity and severity, as compared to a randomly chosen group of 500 average users. \nTop users write 139 more reviews than average users. On a scale from 1 to 10, the average users rate 56% of the brands a 9 or 10, while the top users only rate 19% of the brands a 9 or 10. In addition, the average user rates fewer brands negatively (only 16% rate 0 to 6) vs. the top users (30% rate 0 to 6).   \n\u201COnly praise might give the potential followers the impression that this person is just like an ad,\u201D said Jan Van der Bergh, Holaba\u2019s founder. \u201CAdding critical/negative notes seems to help to be considered as a trustworthy recommender.\u201D\nThe Brand Rich Continue to Get Richer Off of Others\nFrom all these results, one assumption that can be made is that if you already have a brand (e.g., you're a well known chef) you can continue to build your brand solely by making recommendations. The ease of being able to share content with your entire audience affords you the luxury of sharing without consuming.\nWhen we see evidence of limited time on site before sharing, or when sharing exceeds consumption, we can make a strong assumption that people have limited the only interaction with the content to be the act of sharing. This could be an unconscious or conscious attempt to build one\u2019s own brand.\nSo what? Does it matter if someone shares without consuming? Your message is getting out there.\nThe danger of sharing without consuming is that those following the sharers can continue the cycle, with more people sharing without consuming. When this continues, the meat of the dialogue soon becomes the act of the share, rather than the conversation that can come from viewing and interpreting the recommendation.\nInterested in more Social Media resources? Check out Mashable Explore, a new way to discover information on your favorite Mashable topics. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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