Archive for year 2011
Keep your hands off my Klout
Jun 21st
The whole idea of assessing social influence is fascinating to me. Klout and other companies are popping up to reduce people to a single number … which evokes delight in marketers and loathing in those being rated! An evil genius could have a lot of fun with that scenario : )
This trend also taps into people’s sense of competition and it’s easy to be knocked off center when a cat or an inanimate object has a higher Klout score than you. Hey, I admit it – when Klout first came out, yes … I compared my score to other bloggers to see where I stood. I’m competitive, too! I think you have to enjoy competition to be good at business. We just have to keep it in perspective. Today, my score kind of stays the same under most circumstances so it’s not at the top of my hit parade!
But when people start getting obsessed with personal scores and measuring against “the competition,” it may drive the wrong behaviors. In the past month I’ve seen no fewer than six posts with Klout-enhancing strategies to game the system. I could really care less about how other people spend their time, except when it starts to affect me. You see, all these posts include something along the lines of finding ways to troll for people with high Klout scores and trick them into engaging with you. They suggest something like this:
- Research and follow people with high Klout scores.
- Retweet and reply to Tweets from these “influencers,” in an attempt to elicit a response.
- Find ways to support and promote influencers, hoping they will support and promote you.
So I am the perfect target. I have a relatively high Klout score and I engage a lot. But this seems a little creepy to me. Plotting artificial engagement to hike an artificial score? It just seems well, artificial!
I sense that there are people enacting this strategy on me now. I just had somebody follow me called @kloutbait. Hmm … subtle! Of course I can never really know a person’s intent, but I also don’t want to spend my time being part of a plot to game the system.
I believe that increasing your influence in any social environment — offline or online — can be supported in the long-term by following the simple formula that is also at the heart of my book, The Tao of Twitter:
- Surround yourself with meaningful people who have a probability of caring about you and what you do (regardless of their Klout score)
- Provide meaningful content that will naturally create value and act as a catalyst for connection
- Nurture and sustain relationships by being sincerely, authentically helpful to people.
These online scoring systems will come and go. Their algorithms will change constantly. Instead of trying to figure out the system, I think that by consistently following this path, your social score will take care of itself. And more important, personal and business benefits will accrue no matter what your score may be.
Does this make sense? What does this trend toward measuring social influence mean to you?
Blogging like a Big Baby
Jun 20th
Sometimes knowing nothing about what you’re doing can be the best competitive strategy.
I recently attended an interesting seminar about integrating interactive technology into the classroom and a speaker made the point that to be successful, they had to do their best to view the classroom from the perspective of a child.
This struck a chord in me relating to blogging. I think one of the reasons I have had some success as a blogger is because I had a child-like approach, perhaps even a naive approach, to starting my blog. This was not a mindful act. I took that approach because I literally didn’t know what I was doing. I learned to swim by getting thrown into the lake!
I didn’t study blogging before I jumped in. I did not read Copyblogger or study the other blogging deities. Didn’t even know who they were. I wasn’t worried about SEO, affiliate links, or being politically correct. I had no expectations about community or page rankings. I blogged for fun and the pure learning experience.
So, like a child, my posts were honest, blind to politics, and playful. It was just a pure expression of what was on my mind. I didn’t know it at the time, but this was a rare commodity on the social web.
As momentum on my blog picked up, I thought I should get more acquainted with the culture of social media blogging and for awhile got swept up in trying to replicate the formulaic patterns that seemed to be bringing everybody else so much success.
But many of the blogging best practices actively work AGAINST originality. The heart of content marketing strategy, for example, is a focus on popular keywords, so by definition you are gearing your content toward the same topics everybody is writing about, right? Wouldn’t you agree there is a chronic sameness to the social web?
It is the blogger’s constant battle to be original but I think adopting this child-view of the world — filled with curiosity, raw creativity, and honesty – is a powerful catalyst for innovation. I’ve been challenging myself to maintain that perspective and find ways to use my crayons to color outside of the lines a little more.
What would happen if you became more child-like in your approach to blogging? Children don’t avoid risks, focus on “best practices,” or become slaves to search engines. They see beauty in the small and simple wonders most tend to overlook. They say what needs to be said without knowingly hurting anybody.
How are you trying to be original in your writing, in your business and on the social web? What would happen if you viewed content creation through the eyes of a child?
Social media marketing progress in a developing country
Jun 19th
If you can’t see this video, please click here: Mark Schaefer interviews Kimmo Linkama.
On my recent vacation I was able to visit with marketer Kimmo Linkama from Estonia. I was totally impressed with this small country and how it has emerged from decades of Soviet oppression to become a vibrant regional economic engine. The capital of Tallinn is also an extremely beautiful city with much of its Medieval city center in place.
Kimmo hs been a Twitter friend for two years and a valuable member of the {grow} community. This short video discussion is an opportunity to get to know him and see what it’s like working in a country still recovering from decades of communist oppression. How do you establish a social media voice in a small country, with a minor language (Estonian), and well behind the social media marketing curve? I love learning about other views and angles on the social media scene and I think you’ll agree this is a rare and interesting perspective, especially his observation on the seemingly “frantic” activity in America.
Twitter, Klout and the vacation effect
Jun 18th
As somebody with a fairly high social media presence, it’s not easy to “sneak off” for an extended vacation. I have a blog community to think about and I also get a lot of business-related tweets. I don’t want to disappoint people so I announced that I was going on vacation, where and when.
Although this was certainly a digital de-tox, I occasionally sent out a few tweets along the way. An interesting thing happened. Every time I sent out a tweet I was scolded by multiple people with something like “Why are you tweeting? I thought you were on vacation!” It got to the point where I cringed each time I sent out a tweet.
Now I would like to know something. Who made the rule that you can’t tweet while you’re on vacation? And why are we policing each other?
Certainly there is a business element to Twitter. Heck, I wrote a whole book about it. But Twitter is also home to some of my best friends from around the world and sending out a tweet is an easy and quick way to keep in touch with them along the way.
To me, and I hope to you, Twitter is FUN. In fact, I even did a little writing on my vacation. Yes, that’s fun too.
I don’t normally obssess about Klout scores but was curious to see what would happen when I went on vacation. Here’s the answer:
So the implication is, going on vacation makes you less influential! And of course, a little getaway also cost me value on Empire Avenue, which I care even less about than Klout:
Hey, I’m a great buy right now. Ha!
Scolded by my readers, pounded by Klout, abandoned by Empire Avernue! What’s a guy to do? The message seems to be that the world of social media punishes those who go on vacation. To succeed on the social web, stay put! : )
Addition to the original post: Quite a few people have mis-interpreted this post and I feel compelled to clarify.
This post was written tongue-in-cheek. I am not seriously advocating dismissing vacation for social media, I am not really lamenting the loss of my “numbers” and I’m not really encouraging people to buy me on Empire Avenue because I’m a deal.
Writing for a diverse audience is difficult, especially under the pressure of other deadlines, as well as making up for vacation time. I guess I assume that people “get me” and my sense of humor but that is not always the case, especially for new readers.
The point of this post is to encourage balance in your life and NOT be caught up in the numbers. Stay centered, stay focused, stay real, and the results will take care of themselves. Sorry for any confusion!
Welcome to {grow}
You’re in marketing for one reason: Grow.
Grow your company, reputation, customers, impact, profits. Grow yourself. This is a community that will help. It will stretch your mind, connect you to fascinating people, and provide some fun along the way. I am so glad you’re here.
-Mark SchaeferFollow Mark
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