Let me say up front that this post is directed to my more traditionally minded followers, who may be highly successful in their fields but have yet to embrace some of the most engaging new tools on the Internet.  It’s a bit of a primer, but it does mention Charlie Sheen – WINNING!

The term “social graph” is becoming an increasingly common part of our lexicon.  It refers to all of your online relationships, as opposed to your real world relationships that are manifested in sites like Facebook.  It’s a reference to the many connections that you establish through sites ranging from Twitter to LinkedIn to Quora.

Now sites like Klout can provide one measure of the extent of your social graph.  Check out Charlie Sheen and his Klout score of 94 (on a scale of 100).  As the site says, it’s hard to get more influential than that.  Of course no such scale is making a judgment call on whether this is good influence or bad; it is more in this case about celebrity.   You can look up my score of 44 and learn that I am definitely not a celebrity but have a focused, highly engaged audience.  I found that rather heartwarming.  Look up yours and see what you think.

Klout uses your Twitter and Facebook actions not to reward sheer volume, but to measure the quality of your online influence.   Will this type of scoring become something that becomes part of your resume in the future?  Perhaps, especially if you’re in an Internet related business.  It does get at a point I’ve always made that it’s not the people you know but the people who know you that matter most in your life. 

I still hear many business people speak with disdain about Twitter.  Certainly not all Tweets are meaningful, but we’re getting to the point that having a Twitter handle and a Facebook log-in are just about as necessary as having a Drivers License.  More and more sites require one of these to sign in, as we do at TechDrawl for comments. 

Does this mean that you have to waste valuable time on services that don’t necessarily catch your fancy?  I think it depends on where you are in your career and professional development.  I can personally attest to tangible opportunities having come my way from LinkedIn and from Twitter.  If you are “on the way up” in the technology business as an entrepreneur or a service provider, you probably need to devote some attention to building your personal brand via these tools. 

I personally check Twitter fairly regularly.  Part of the reason is that I follow a group of PGA Tour players who Tweet regularly and genuinely.  @bubbawatson and @stewartcink are among the best.  I also have my regular A-list with whom I correspond, and I watch a broader feed to keep up with the industry, national events, and other sports.   Because of the brevity of its messages, Twitter is easy to use on your smart phone when you have a break in the action.

I also look at my Facebook page at least daily.  When I have some time for mental sharpening, my favorite site is Quora. This Q&A site covers many interesting topics and is a work in progress from Facebook alums; it has a spirit of competition where answers get voted up or down, and they are moderated.  Some answers are like white papers; brevity is not the winning formula here if you want to move up the ladder on Quora.  It is relatively SF and Valley centric and deals primarily with tech topics among people in that area, many of whom seem to know each other in real life.

Stackoverflow is the Q@A site for coders.  I’m not qualified for that, but I gather that it has become a resume builder for people in that field.  You get to prove (or disprove) your expertise if you jump into the middle of that discussion.

Namesake is more of a conversational site as opposed to a strict Q&A format.  It’s by invitation only now, and I’m just getting a handle on that.  I’ll be seen there more often.

And then there’s the daily ritual of posting to TechDrawl, which I find enjoyable and hope you find to be worthwhile.  Blogs now seem rather old-school in a way, but they still can be very effective tools.  Many carry considerably influence in their chosen topic areas and become daily must-reads for their subscribers.  If you’ve read this far, Thanks!