Social Media Posts Need a Believability Rating

The Information & Social Media Industry needs to step up to help us differentiate higher quality submissions from poor ones.  Providing a rating for each post will help get us there.

Not all information has the same value. This is something that we all inherently know. However, when it comes to social media it is difficult to differentiate the quality information from the bad. An independent industry association is needed to provide some reference to help us determine the quality of the information we are subjected to every day.

To understand how we might address this chasm on social media, we need to explore how we validate information we receive in our physical lives. Let’s imagine that you are on an elevator and two women are talking. The daughter of the shorter woman in the elevator has an overbite and may need orthodontic treatment, as she is explaining to the taller, blondish woman. The shorter woman heads up a department in your company that you’re interested in and your Aunt is an excellent Orthodontist, so you are now very interested. You listen carefully. You decide to file this piece of information away for an introductory conversation that you might have with the department head in the next few weeks.

Of course, it’s not always that easy to determine the value of the information. In this case, you know who the shorter woman is, and you know that she is an expert on the primary subject of the conversation – her child! You also know that she could be important to your career. Each of these factors make this information valuable and believable, but how? Continue reading “Social Media Posts Need a Believability Rating”