Do You Know What “Whuffie” Is?

Published on: Nov 29, 2009 @ 9:51

Do you know what ‘whuffie’ is?  Yeah, I’m not making it up.  It’s an actual word.  In social networking terms, it’s money, the coin of the realm, more valuable than folding negotiables.

Whuffie is what you’ve got if you’ve got social influence on-line.  Sarah from Smart Bitches Trashy Books has huge amounts of whuffie.  So do the Ja(y)nes from Dear Author. The RWA organizers who responded to e-published authors on-line killed all theirs inside 24 hours.

Your whuffie rises and falls from one day to the next, based on a number of factors:

1)    How friendly you are on-line.

2)    How useful your on-line presence and the resources you provide prove to be

3) How genuine you are

The last is significantly more important than the first two put together.  Fakers may as well shoot themselves in the head regardless of how put-together their websites and how shiny-white their smiles are.  And net citizens are very good at figuring out insincere flakes with agendas and ignoring them.  You do it yourself all the time, almost without thinking about it.

Please note, this does not include authors using pen names.  Just because you’ve got a pen name in front of you doesn’t mean you’re not being genuine.  If you’re mixing with people and are there because you want to get to know them, not because you’re bored out of your brain and just waiting for the last author to get through their spiel so you can push your book, that’s genuine.  The fact that you’re Beth Ziegel, but your screen name is actually Angela Fabulosa is irrelevant.

Intention is everything and insincerity leaves a stench.

For the same reason, if you’ve still got your website written in the third person, it might be time to think about changing it to first person, and making it sound more like a blog.  It doesn’t matter if your website designer is doing the writing and the changes.  Make it sound like you sitting there conversing with the readers, instead.

There has actually been books written about wuffie.  No kidding.  There’s a lot to it beyond this very, very basic primer.  Here’s one, The Whuffie Factor: Using the Power of Social Networks to Build Your Business, by Tara Hunt. It goes a lot deeper into the idea of being genuine and being yourself when you’re on-line.

Do you know what ‘wuffie’ is? Yeah, I’m not making it up. It’s an actual word. In social networking terms, it’s money, the coin of the realm, more valuable than folding negotiables.

Wuffie is what you’ve got if you’ve got social influence on-line. Sarah from Smart Bitches Trashy Books has huge amounts of wuffie. So do the Ja(y)nes from Dear Author. The RWA organizers who responded to e-published authors on-line killed all theirs inside 24 hours.

Your wuffie rises and falls from one day to the next, based on a number of factors:

1) How friendly you are on-line.

2) How useful your on-line presence and the resources you provide prove to be

3) How genuine you are

The last is significantly more important than the first two put together. Fakers may as well shoot themselves in the head regardless of how put-together their websites and how shiny-white their smiles are. And net citizens are very good at figuring out insincere flakes with agendas and ignoring them. You do it yourself all the time, almost without thinking about it.

Please note, this does not include authors using pen names. Just because you’ve got a pen name in front of you doesn’t mean you’re not being genuine. If you’re mixing with people and are there because you want to get to know them, not because you’re bored out of your brain and just waiting for the last author to get through their spiel so you can push your book, that’s genuine. The fact that you’re Beth Ziegel, but your screen name is actually Angela Fabulosa is irrelevant.

Intention is everything and insincerity leaves a stench.

For the same reason, if you’ve still got your website written in the third person, it might be time to think about changing it to first person, and making it sound more like a blog. It doesn’t matter if your website designer is doing the writing and the changes. Make it sound like you sitting there conversing with the readers, instead.

There has actually been books written about wuffie. No kidding. There’s a lot to it beyond this very, very basic primer. Here’s one, The Whuffie Factor: Using the Power of Social Networks to Build Your Business, by Tara Hunt. It goes a lot deeper into the idea of being genuine and being yourself when you’re on-line.

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