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Category Archives: Social Media Marketing
Random Personal Thoughts about Klout
November 19, 2011 – 5:00 pm
Klout is a web service that measures the influence people and brands have in online social networks. I have heard a lot of other marketers talk about it, but mostly because they have signed up for it. Not because they have used it for business.
Here are some random thoughts I have about Klout that go beyond “I can’t believe my score went down”:
- As a “measure of influence” it is great at measuring reach.
- As a “measure of social media marketing ROI” it is not as great. I typically try to measure ROI in three ways: attitudinally, behaviorally and financially. Financial ROI is the most important and also the most difficult to track. From what I can gather, Klout lacks in this department.
- It fills a huge gap and supports marketers greatly in evaluating the reach or “klout” of the social media users they are targeting for product reviews or mentions. Klout Perks are awesome.
- The gamification of Klout for users is awesome. Perhaps that is why it has grown so quickly.
Please feel free to share your thoughts as well. And for the record klout score is 36.
The Next Stage in Social Media Marketing
June 2, 2010 – 6:54 am
Long before my professional career started, websites were built and controlled by high school students and information technology departments.
A decade later, when those same high school students became college students, they started an internet revolution called social media. The movement led to many companies to rely on interns and recent graduates for navigation through this new communication phenomenon.
In both scenarios, marketers and communicators were somewhat limited in how well they managed the messaging. However in 2010, I think we have entered a phase where social media marketing is now better understood and better controlled by upper level management. Seriously, how many events can a marketer go to without sitting in on at least one social media presentation?
With that comes better planning of resources and content. This is contrary to the issues raised by Jason Fried of 37signals in an interview with Forbes.com. He argued that the biggest problem with social media marketing is that the social websites are just tools and that most companies have yet to decide who they are and what they stand for on social media.
In just a few years this will no longer be an issue. Much like marketing departments starting taking back control of their websites asking their IT department to turn them over the keys so they could optimize the site for search engines, they too will start asking questions about how to start a successful group on Linkedin.
The next stage in social media marketing ready to start flourishing will be more meaningful content publishing and consumer interaction led by senior marketing professionals, who are no longer too naive to ask tough questions of interns and recent graduates.
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