Lance Armstrong, the cyclist, wrote a book called "it's not about the bike" it's an amazing story of how he came back from surviving cancer and won 7 Tour de France Titles.

At the time, he was an inspiration, I for one, read his books and it was him that got me cycling again.

But the whole thing was fake. We subsequently found out that he was involved in doping.  He, in fact the whole team used performance enhancing drugs.

Most people realise this is wrong, most people will be rolling their eyes, shaking their head and see Lance now as a fake.  There was a great meme on social media, which is where somebody had moved hos books into the fiction section of the bookstore. 

So what about using performance "drugs" on social media?

There is such a thing as a "pod".  A Pod  is a group of people, often now in slack groups where the agreement is that you all promote each other's content.

You don't have to read it, you just drop a like.  You hope that if a person drops a like on your content it will be seen by their network, or of course as in many cases, pod members are just ignored.

But let's get back to the title of this blog, how to become an influencer.

The answer is simple, join a pod.  

Let's investigate somebody whose in a pod.

Post 1: 1 like

Post 2: 13 likes

Post 3: 248 likes

Post 4: 11 likes

Post 5: 28 likes

Post 6: 568 likes

Post 7: 7 likes

Post 8: 2 likes

Post 9: 1393 likes

Post 10: 1 like

Post 11: 692 likes

Post 12: 858 likes

Post 13: 13 likes

Post 14: 3 likes

Post 15: 1111 likes

Can you see a pattern forming?

Can you see when they drop their content into the pod and when they don't?

If you want to be an influencer then join a pod OR maybe people who use performance enhancing drugs should be banned.  If you are a brand using influencers, I would certainly be careful about people who use false influence.