Source: Cloutonline.comThe buzz online with all the cool kids is that social media is about community and trust. Seth Godin, a cool kid in his own right, talks about clout (or trust, as another cool kid puts it):
If you knew which of your followers had clout, you could invest more time and energy in personal attention. If we knew where big ideas were starting, that would be neat, and even more useful would be understanding who the key people were in bringing those new ideas to the rest of the world.
To put this in context, Seth is talking about the web, how it's data rich and how we can pull good "stuff" out of it to help us connect with the right people in order to develop the right ideas.
His post is to the point, yet pretty heady. One thing I'd like to expand on, however, is the idea of knowing which of your followers have clout. I'm of the opinion that everyone has clout. We all have influence over some thing or someone. Conversely, someone has influence over you. That's the way the world works. It's a massive push and pull mechanism. We all have clout in some way shape or form. The key is figuring out how to leverage that clout -- whether it's your clout or the clout of others that can help you reach your goals.
How have you used the clout of your social network?