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Getting smarter via social media

This week was a huge week for interactions with Human Resources professionals who are deeply immersed in the use of social media tools. You can check some of my other posts for details on the activities that tool place at HR Florida and the Disney Institute.

This post is on a pretty simple topic – getting smarter by associating with smart people. Well known blogger Robert Scoble is probably the poster child for this idea, even though he recently unfollowed more than 100,000 people on Twitter to reduce some of the noise from his social network. Scoble is now following 1700 people that he said he personally cares about, as well as “smart” people that he can learn from

Here is Scoble’s list of criteria on why he might follow you so that you can add value to his personal knowledge base. He has also devised a set of criteria about “what makes a ‘followable’ person”.

Scoble’s Twitter Rules

Scoble’s list is as follows:

I’m more likely to follow you if you have a well targeted Twitter profile. If you say “fun guy,” sorry, no. But if you say “engineer at Yahoo working on Flickr.” Well, then, I’ll be much more likely to follow you. Now, take it out of geek ville. Let’s say I was looking for quilters to follow. Well, then, I’ll be biased toward people who identify what kind of quilting they do.
No picture, no follow. For a brand like BestBuy you better have a logo. Out of 1,600 follows I’ve done this week, I’ve only broken that rule a few times and even when I broke this rule it made me think very long and hard about whether following them is worth it.
I’m biased toward following people who DO things in real life. Entrepreneurs. Politicians. Actors. VCs. My list, which you can check yourself, is biased heavily toward people who’ve made something of themselves.
If tons of the people I trust (you know I trust them, because I’ve followed them) recommend you, I’ll add you too. So, repetition is important.
I look at who YOU follow. Do you follow lots of other geeks and people I like to follow? Then you’re more likely to get me to follow you too.
If someone smart keeps retweeting you (like how Dave Winer keeps talking about Jay Rosen) then I’ll follow you too.
If you’re a news maker. Hey, I follow Barack Obama. Why? Well, he makes news. Among other things. Same reason why I follow TechCrunch.
If you’re powerful, I’ll follow you. I follow both powerful bloggers like Ariana Huffington as well as powerful VCs like Jeff Clavier and powerful executives like Marc Benioff. They probably all will laugh that I called them powerful, but they are.
Do you have a brand I like? I notice that I’m adding more and more brands I like like Zoho and Evernote and others. But if they abuse that position I’ll unfollow them first.
I look at your last 20 tweets. If you are just talking about your lunch, I probably won’t follow you. But if you’re talking about a project you’re working on and it sounds interesting I’ll follow you.
If I’ve met you face-to-face I’m much more likely to follow you. In fact I’ve scanned all my business cards in, thanks to Cloud Contact’s great service, and I’m now matching those up their Twitter accounts and adding them too.

HR Capitalist Twitter Rules

Kris Dunn mentioned some of his own pesonal rules for choosing twitter followers at a pre-conference seminar he did at HR FLorida. His rules were more simple than Scoble’s, but relevant in a similar way.

You should have profile, a bio listing and a location in your twitter profile.
Will follow almost any recruiting or Human Resources person, so this must be indicated
Anyone from his local area.

Simple, but powerful. These rules allow Dunn to build a strong network of local business contacts and a more global network of professional contacts.

Human Race Horses Twitter Rules

I will follow if you are HR person or doing business related to the industry.
I will follow you if you are a cool geek who shares great informationm
I will follow you if you are quirky, funny or amusing.
I will follow you if I think you can make me smarter on any of the topics that interest me at any given time.