Banyan Branch

Stories about the most-viewed YouTube video of all time hit major blogs this morning. The video in question is “Twista ft. Do or Die-do you” and at the time of this article was listed with 79,441,058,538 views.  Despite the obvious artificial inflation of this number YouTube’s placement of it at the top of the list will garner it attention out of proportion with its quality (such as this post).

To the casual observer the positioning of this video at the top of most viewed videos may seem worth whatever hack was used to generate this obviously fake number, but this line of logic is intrinsically flawed. One of the most important currencies in the growing realm of social media is authenticity or “trustworthiness”.

Especially in the world of business it is imperative that the practice of social media be organic. Content created or pushed should be relevant, and the methods used to do so should be transparent and authentic. If not, inauthentic participants run the risk of becoming “untrustworthy”, a reputation that is akin to social suicide within most social media ecosystems, which are primarily based around trust, authenticity, and relevancy.

So when thinking through your 2010 social media resolutions remember that views without trust, or views by irrelevant individuals are worth little, and may end up wreaking long-term damage on perception of your brand’s authenticity.

-Emily at Banyan Branch