So techcrunch founder Michael Arrington has done a 180 on Klout and has not only decided it is a worthwhile undertaking but has put his money were his mouth is by investing but are revamps of Klout and PeerIndex really going to do anything to improve the measurement of online influence and does it really make a difference?

Let’s find out!

In a blog post entitled Why I Changed My Mind On Klout (And Invested) , Mr Arrington quotes Klout founder Joe Fernandez asserting that Klout is empowering for people and that everyone wants to feel listened. Personally, I think the attraction is about Big Data because Mr Arrington’s belief that Klout is encouraging constructuve online behaviour is a bit of a joke.

I commented on this post after I saw Calvin Lee from Mayhem Studios, whom I’ve had the pleasure of meeting a couple of times, post the link on facebook with the comment that he got pretty much get bashed up in the blog post because Arrington is quoting from an article in Wired that left out all the good Calvin does online.

Here’s my comment verbatim:

“The empowered part made me gag a little. How is this empowering? I recently stepped back from my personal social media accounts as I don’t see value in spending time there.

Is Klout supposed to “give me the recognition I deserve” for wasting time in social media by giving me faster plane boarding? LOL COME ON!

You can’t call yourself the standard for influence when you don’t measure influence. Klout measures the ability to get people talking. All that takes is controversial content and the best part is you don’t even have to create the content yourself! You just have to share it with the right people at the right time in the right way. So you’re either a great communications strategist who knows how to network and use social media, you’re gaming the system or just really lucky but that’s far too much time invested for the “reward”.Who really wins? Klout and the companies who choose to buy in to the idea that if they give people perks those people will be grateful and tell their audiences all about it which MIGHT turn into more sales. I’d love to see THAT data!

So, Klout is really just a hope and pray outreach program that takes a little less work than real brand engagement and people will gobble up free stuff if the free stuff is good enough, which is why people care about Klout anyway.Which bring me to the PageRank analogy. The only reason people care about PageRank is because they want their site to show up first in a Google search. How is that relevant here. Are people really using Klout to find “experts” ?

I hope Klout’s investors see a return on their investment but this is not like PageRank for people, nor is it empowering. It’s a lazy way to hijack someone else’s audience for the benefit of a company’s bottom line and even that benefit is dubious! All it is doing is feeding this ridiculous drive for likes, mentions, retweets and follows which really are meaningless in the grand scheme of things.”

Whilst awaiting moderation, I posted my comment on Google+ and facebook which got some responses.

On facebook, Rich Millington from FeverBee, an online community consultancy,  asked:

“Isn’t it a little ironic to post this on a social media account? :-)Just curious, are you against the idea of measuring influence or against the way that Klout is doing it now? If it’s the latter, what’s the better way of doing it?”

My response to him was:

“I’ve nothing against measuring influence. I just wish Klout et al stopped calling what they measure influence. Based on my three metric model (Thank you, Wow & Done) I’d say you measure influence by looking at those people who actually help you get conversions (ie Done) but that would require good goal setting and a way to track which posts generated the most conversions rather than assuming that activity = influence. That just supports the whole drive to increase likes, RTs, mentions and follows rather than actual measurable conversions on clear calls to action.”

Marjorie Clayman from Clayman Advertising added:

“Frankly Klout is such a low priority in my life - real or online - that I don’t really care if they start measuring your influence in puppy dog tails. Now if they start giving away puppies…we’ll talk.”

Hmm, not sure how animal rights activists would feel about that but great point Margie!

Tina Brooks, VP Marketing at Peppermaster Sauces had this to say: “The second we stopped trying to GAME the search and started focusing on what our clients would look for, we started beating the “game”. Why play it, just be who you are and your target customers will find you. I think we finally figured out the “game”…”

Indeed, meeting your clients needs, wants and interests is a much more effective approach than chasing likes, RTs and follows.

Over on Google+, Aleece Germano who runs the Swap Team, answered my question: ‘Are people really using Klout to find experts,’ in the affirmative. ”The one thing I find Klout useful for is choosing bloggers to work with, because, as you put it, Klout measures the ability to get people talking. So if you’re a blogger and you want to work with brands, you should be concerned about your Klout score.”

I suppose that if you are looking for people who will help you generate buzz (which doesn’t guarantee conversions in my book) Klout would be a good place to look but does it mean they measure influence? I’m still saying no.

It wouldn’t be so bad if Klout et al were honest about what they were measuring and why. I realise conversation starting ability doesn’t sound as sexy as influence but that’s all it really is.

What do you think?

 There’s a lot of talk about metrics, measurement and ROI in social media.While I agree that numbers are important, it is easy for numbers to be misleading. They’re nice to have and they can be reassuring but what are they actually saying?

Some sites claim to understand what makes you “influential” but there’s no talk of being effective. What they’re trying to measure is a lot more qualitative than quantitative.Having more people see your content or even like it or share it doesn’t mean anything is happening for your business.

The numbers of followers, fans,  likes, RTs, views etc are great indicators of activity and watching their trends will help you understand which communications are effective but how do you really measure social media success?I’ve narrowed it down down to 3 important “metrics” which really are goals: “Thank You”, “Wow” & “Done”

What do I mean by that? Let’s have a look:
1) Thank you

As I’ve said before, the first rule of engagement is “be helpful”. Grateful people are usually going to be more likely to remember you and talk about you. This is a way to generate brand “love”. As Tara Hunt explains in her book,  The Whuffie Factor, the way you are perceived highly influences what people will do for you. Make it good!The assistance you provide doesn’t have to be purely within your service offering either. Who or what do you know that can help someone out of a jam? Another rule of engagement: Be human.

This leads us to the second metric:2) Wow

Seth Godin talks about being remarkable in Purple Cow and there is no question that this also gets you talked about. Hopefully you’re being remarkable in a good way even if it’s in  how you respond or deal with mistakes. “Wow” is the effect you’re going for - it’s the underlying trigger of the “viral” effect. Think “Wow! Check this out!” This isn’t a guarantee that you will “go viral”. There’s no guarantee of that but if you get “Wow”s you can be sure people will be talking and sharing the content that made them say it. Just stay away from gimmicks and Wal-Mart style stunts.Ok so “Thank You” and “Wow” get people talking and sharing and sending your referrals but how do you measure ROI? That’s where the third goal comes in.

3) DoneI’m hoping that you have clear calls to action in your communications - That’s what “Done” is all about - did what you come to social media to do get accomplished? Have people done what you wanted them to do? Be it spread the word, donate or buy do you know what you want them to do? Do they?

The way I see it Thank You & Wow will help ensure they do but you need to be clear on what it is you want them to do and in the end you don’t need a huge number of people, sometimes all you need is one person to do enough. Sure we want more people to interact with us as possible we really must focus on the reasons why we’re in business and why we’re using social media.That being said, you don’t want to keep banging away about your sales goals - social media is NOT a hammer! - but do let your communities know how they can help.

Make sense?So what’s next?

Each communication or conversation you have should aim to fulfil one or more and sometimes even all three of these goals. Think “How can I be helpful? How can I be more human & less business-only? How can I tweak that a bit more and blow them away? How can I let them know what I need?”It is clear to me that you’ll be going for the Thank You and the Wow more often than the Done but remember that those two will help you build up a community that will help you go for the Done! It might take time but building relationships is what SM is about, first and foremost.

You need to be helpful and remarkable for people to remember you and tell others about you.That being said, one easy way to go for the Done is to make your call to action clear on your social media profiles, e-mail templates & website.

So, do you agree? Are there other metrics you use? Let me know! And if you’re going to SxSW we’d appreciate a vote for our panel on this topic by clicking here:  http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/11751

I was speaking to Bill Boorman at #trulondon this year and just a few days later my friend Ane Howard asked me about social media best practice for event planners. Bill had said that social media is a great place to get events off the ground (and he should know) and as I was talking Ane through my thoughts, I realised that the most important thing an event planner needs where social media is concerned is a good hashtag for their event.

What is a hashtag?

A practice that is common on twitter but that has spread to other social media sites is the hashtag. Yo may have seen people include them in their posts. They are used to categorise status updates and follow this format #<topic>.

Here’s an example from Wikipedia:

#RealAle is my favourite type of #beer.

I use them to add sentiment to my tweets (#fail, #facepalm, #happydance), to discuss certain topics (#csr, #green, #socent), to participate in tweetchats (#blogchat, #IMCchat, #tweetdiner) to comment on TV shows I’m watching, and last but not least to discuss or share content related to events I’m attending or wish I was attending!

On twitter, you can actually click on a hashtag and see the latest tweets containing that hashtag.

So why is this the most important thing event planners need? Well for one thing, once you’ve chosen a hashtag you can start sharing content and tracking conversations around your event on twitter and it can also be used to tag videos, photos and blog posts on other sites.

But there’s more to it than that: You can find out where and with whom your event is resonating, you can display tweets using the hashtag during the event, monitor feedback on speakers and venue issues in real-time and see which relationships have been formed through your event be it online or in-person.

All in all, hashtags are a great way to maximise the returns of your event through social media. The earlier you assign one the better, because if you don’t someone else will. In fact, don’t just choose one and broadcast it - register it at whatthetrend.com and let me know how your hashtag is working for you!

Whilst it’s great that more brands are getting involved online, I worry that their goals are not properly defined. This is underlined by three trends I’m observing in social media right now.

The first one: ‘Like/Follow/RT/Comment to Enter’ contests.

Anyone else feel “dirty” when they enter a contest on twitter, Facebook or a blog that requires you to like, follow, RT or comment?

It’s great that brands have bought into giveaways/competitions as a way to connect with people who have an interest in the product (here’s hoping) OR as a way to increase their numbers (a more likely motivator).

The issue with the latter is that it devalues the very numbers they’re trying to increase. Call it social currency inflation.

If I comment on a brand’s blog or like/follow/RT them it should be because I genuinely am interested in what they have to say. I admit that it’s mostly for selfish reasons but aren’t we all mostly on twitter/Facebook etc for ourselves?

Likes and follows, in particular, are part of my online identity. They tell you what I’m interested in. I can skew that if I have to like/follow a brand just to win a prize I want, especially if the prize is “cool” but not relevant to the brand and the community they’re trying to reach.

I’m not advocating that prizes only be product. In fact it’s preferable that the main prize not be product. A universally needed prize, like a gift card or the hottest new gadget, will attract anyone who wants to win those prizes. In addition to that, the cost of entry is minimal and does nothing to prevent people from using multiple accounts to increase their chances of winning.

RTing to enter is not only useless towards building long-term relationships but usually provides no value to the RTer’s followers. Also, keeping track of RTs can be tricky and, with twitter’s RT function, takes away the opportunity to discover the people in your community who are key connectors.

Asking people to put a simple comment on one of your blog posts to be entered into a draw can be helpful for SEO and the comment might be useful to understanding them but what does it do for you in the long-term?

So we want more followers, more Facebook fans, more pageviews, more activity that looks like engagement but why aren’t we trying to actually make them mean something and get some value out of competitions by rewarding creativity?

Yes, we all like numbers and we want to believe that bigger numbers mean better numbers but the goal with social is not to reach MORE people, it’s to reach more of the RIGHT people.

Let’s stop devaluing the numbers, complicating measurement and let’s do what we came here to do: Connect & communicate.

The next part of this series is coming soon. Subscribe so you don’t miss it!

And as usual, I look forward to your comments.

This morning I woke up to something unpleasant.
When I logged into twitter.com, instead of the message across the top of the page that I’d started ignoring about how the New Twitter is so great I saw this:

For starters, the bio no longer has clearly defined fields for name, location, address and bio. While I get that it might reduce load times, it’s really annoying to get the information you need. The same holds true for twitter lists. While twitter can be praised for giving us back bios instead of tweets in the following/follower listings, the person’s location is no longer immediately visible. You have to click through to each profile to view it and even then, as outlined above, it’s not easily readable.

Twitter has also relocated the Direct Messages tab to the top of the page and has renamed it Messages.
It seems like the links to the things you need are all over the place and the interface suffers from toolbar and button overload. It’s also not clear where the mutual following/follower information is going to go if they keep it at all. I don’t know about you but I liked it.

Overall, there are too many extra clicks and extra time required to use the new twitter and I don’t like it! What do you think? Is new twitter better than old twitter? Will twitter ignore us and force this annoying change on us like they took away the ability to see conversations your friends are having with others, something even facebook understands?

Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Four-what? Go-where? Why be (geo)social?

 

With the furor over yet another privacy violation by Facebook over its new geosocial application Places, one wonders what the point of “checking in”, the practice of sharing your location with everyone, is.

 

The most common objection I hear with regards to geosocial networking are the same people have to microblogging and “social networking”: “I don’t want people knowing what I’m doing”. What’s funny is sometimes these objections even come from regular twitter users who understand that twitter isn’t about telling people what it smelled like when you left the bathroom.

 

Although foursquare was only available where I lived in October 2009, by December, I had made the following prediction in an interview with NetSquared: “Geosocial networking will facilitate community building and allow people to connect offline and take on bigger challenges together.”

 

Maybe we’re not at the point where we’re using it for community building but I really believed that 2010 would be the year of geosocial and with the explosion of apps from foursquare, which was *the* app at SXSW 2010, allowing you to check-in anywhere in the world, to the appearance of gowalla, whrrl, rummble and company and on to sites like yelp, qype and twitter becoming “check-in” enabled. Let’s not forget all the location-enabled flirting apps for smartphones either!

 

Even 2 of Friday’s 5 Huge Trends in Social Media Right Now post on Mashable are related to geolocation!

 

Whilst I agree that you don’t want just anyone knowing where you are at any given time and that dark side of geolocation has shades of Orwell’s 1984 (and even Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451), it is still entirely up to you which locations you do and don’t share.

 

Personally, I only share locations I am comfortable having people meet me in spontaneously. I don’t hey why people check-in to their couches or beds. I understand that there is a gaming element to most of the apps and that, yes, the badges *are* fun and that they give you something to brag about. I also understand that mayorships and sometimes even single check-ins give you freebies and discounts but if you don’t want people to know where you are then don’t check-in.

 

For me, using geosocial apps to meet people at events or finally connect face to face has a lot of value. It helps to break the ice and it sometimes even resolves scheduling conflicts. The best is when your friends from out of town are visiting and you get a notification that they’re in town! That’s always a nice surprise! I also use it to share places that I loveand that I want to see thrive. That being said I’m not telling you where the best assam laksa in central London is! At least not via foursquare.

 

The benefits to business are huge as well. I am most familiar with the foursquare model so I will use it as an example. Businesses who have registered a presence on foursquare can offer specials either for mayors (the person who checks-in the most frequently) and/or just for checking in. This creates a reason for others not only to come in themselves when they see a “special nearby” notification but also to tell their friends. As Brian Solis put it in his “Foursquare Means Business: Have you checked-in yet?“ post: “foursquare and the like are introducing trusted opinions and real-life networking into the mix [of reviews and referrals] that reward exploration and experimentation. Businesses can only benefit by playing along.” ‘Nuff said.

 

I still have hope that my prediction will come true and that geosocial networking *will* facilitate community building and allow people and businesses to connect offline and take on bigger social challenges together.

 

So next time you check-in, consider inviting people to come join you. Or conversely, the next time you get a notice that someone you’ve been meaning to meet is around the corner, just hop on over and say hello!