Posts tagged social influence
Klout innovation will power search engine results
May 8th
Earlier this week Klout announced a significant commercial partnership with American Airlines — everybody with a Klout score of 55 or over gets rewarded with free access to American’s network of airport club lounges, even if they are not flying on that airline. But it turns out, that was only the beginning of Klout’s surprises for the week.
In a radical turn for the company, Klout will enable targeted and specific “influencer” content creation though an initiative called “Klout Experts” that will begin showing up as the lead items in Bing search engine results. You read that correctly. Your activity through Klout can propel you to the top of organic search results.
Why this matters
Obviously any new factor that could affect search results — even in a small way — is going to receive a lot of attention. This agreement with Microsoft seems to have profound and broad implications for the emerging world of “social influence” and the high-stakes world of search engine marketing.
First, a little background on why this development is important.
If I do a web search for “best car under $20,000,” the first results are probably going to appear because somebody behind the scenes has been optimizing an automotive firm’s website The results may not necessarily provide a useful or accurate recommendation on the best car, the best value, or even a car that is available in my area.
That’s why search firms are desperate to supply “warm results” that consider, who, when, and where a person is searching … and perhaps most important — what are the recommendations from those you trust? Both Google and Bing have been open about including more results from your personal “social graph” in results.
Influencers and search
“We have been experimenting with an idea,” said Klout CEO Joe Fernandez. “What would happen if we asked topical influencers to share their expertise? Would they be interested? Would they repond?”
In 2012 Klout ran a beta test to try the idea, introducing questions to a small group of influencers.
“If you wanted to know the secrets of growing beautiful tulips, or the best make-up for your skin type, wouldn’t you love to have a response from a passionate expert?” Fernandez said. “We found that influencers love to share their knowledge and help, so we are helping them do that through this new program called Klout Experts.”
Example of how Klout Expert answers will show in search results
“Our users are already the best content creators,” he said. “We are helping people realize the full impact of their influence through new, original content they provide on Klout. Every passionate content creator now has a chance for massive exposure through search.”
This new content will be “pragmatic” according to Fernandez, and direct — responses are limited to 300 characters. The best answers will show up at the top of the organic search results on Bing. There will be no “exclusivity” on the content so there is a chance the responses will show up somewhere on Google too.
Gaming Klout and search results
Fernandez is aware that he is creating a giant target for spam and SEO gamesters and is putting counter measures in place to keep the responses targeted, limited and relevant.
“Reputation has to come first,” he said. “If you’re not an established subject matter expert with a high Klout score, you won’t be able to participate.”
However, the top content results will not necessarily be determined by an individual’s Klout score, Fernandez said. “We are developing methods to sort through the content. Answer quality is most important and we have created a novel voting system based on user feedback and input from other topical experts to help us do that. You can only rank if you have influence on that topic. But feedback from other influencers will help determine what gets to the top.”
Klout has developed a system that randomizes the feedback mechanism and limits the ability to get votes from “friends” that would game the search results. ”We will also have visibility on what people are clicking on through our partnership with Bing,” Fernandez said. “We are working closely with the Bing team to keep the product pure and successful.”
Industry momentum
The American deal, and the Klout Experts announcement represent the fourth major commercial roll-out for Klout in two months. The company also introduced “Klout for business” this year, which provides a simple dashboard to discover and connect with topical influencers. Klout reported that it has now attracted more than 200,000 business accounts for its service. In early April, the company announced a partnership with telecom company Orange to bring Klout to France.
Despite fierce and growing competition in the influence marketing space, Klout seems to be at least winning the war on the PR front. The company’s financials are also improving, with revenue expected to double in 2013 to more than $10 million, although the company would not reveal any data regarding profitability.
25 social media influencers Forbes ignored, and why
Apr 23rd
Once a year, a fellow named Haydn Shaughnessy shows up on the social media scene and creates a list of the “50 Top Social Media Influencers,” which is published via the online version of Forbes.
This list gets distributed far and wide and has become an important badge of “social proof” for those on the list. Last year I criticized the methodology as incredibly lame (and I was on the list) and I think that weakness is apparent by just viewing who is NOT on this list. But before I get into that, let’s first look at how this deceptive ranking is formed.
The “Forbes” list isn’t a meeting of the minds or even a popularity contest. It is the singular creation of Mr. Shaughnessy. Now, I grant you that “Shaughnessy’s List of Influencers” does not have the same ring of authority to it, so it has become the “Forbes” list, even though the magazine is simply the pot that is carrying the piss.
Mr. Shaughnessy, who writes about enterprise innovation and co-authored a small book about a new wealth creation system called The Elastic Enterprise, bases most of his influencer insight on a Peek Analytics score called “Pull.” So what’s this all about?
Not so fast
First of all, the company declares on its website that its platform only evaluates Twitter. So Mr. Shaughnessy’s list is not a measure of social media influence, it is a measure of Twitter influence.
Or is it?
Let’s see how Peek Analytics describes their measure of “Pull” on its website.
“Social Pull is not a measure of a single individual’s “influence;” rather, it is an audience-based metric that is a direct reflection of the quality and size of the Twitter audience that has been “pulled” into following an account or mentioning a keyword @name, hashtag, or URL on Twitter.
Huh?
An influencer list … that is not a measure of individual influence?
So the Forbes List of Top Social Media Influencers is 1) created by an individual, not a publishing company; 2) based on Twitter, not “social media;” and 3) admittedly not a measure of personal influence.
Can I have a hear a collective “WTF” from the audience?
In summary, this is a suspicious methodology to define social media influence, and that is about as charitable as I can be. The people on the list don’t have to speak, blog, or write a book to demonstrate their influence. In fact, Shaughnessy describes one influencer, Jonathan Naferrete, as somebody who really doesn’t blog but does post images on Instagram.
Now, here is a LIST
I need to emphasize that there are tons of wonderful people on the Top 50 list and many legitimate social media titans I admire. But I’d like to highlight 25 amazing people NOT on the list to demonstrate that we need to take lists like this crazy Forbes mess with a grain of salt.
You want some social media thunder? These are just a few of the truly great social media influencers of the world excluded from the Forbes list. I’ve linked to their Twitter handle. Please follow them so perhaps they can make this “prestigious Forbes list” in 2014. Heh.
Charlene Li — Founder of the influential Altimeter Group and author of the seminal book Groundswell
Avinash Kaushik — Google’s chief digital evangelist and one of the most influential bloggers on analytics.
Brian Solis — Arguably the most prolific and successful social media author in the field.
Mike Stelzner — Creator of the Social Media Examiner properties — perhaps the most successful and influential social media blog, podcast and conference in the world.
Lee Odden — Leading thinker and speaker about integration of social and SEO. Author of the wonderful book Optimize
Amber Naslund — One of social media’s most influential and respected bloggers and thought leader. Co-author of The NOW Revolution
David Armano — An integrated marketing thought leader, contributor to Harvard Business Review, managing director, Edelman Digital.
Clay Shirky — NYU professor and for my money, the most visionary thinker in the business. Author of Here Comes Everybody and one of my favorite big think books, Cognitive Surplus
Tom Webster — His Brand Savant blog packs a wallop every time, Pithy, clever, wise.
Danny Brown – Intellectual provocateur; the blogger’s blogger
Mark Ragan – CEO of Ragan Communications. Publisher of @PRDaily, PR Daily EU, Ragan.com, and about a million other useful publications
Joe Pulizzi – Single-handedly defined the field of content marketing through his Content Marketing Institute and wildly successful conferences and books.
Michael Chui – McKinsey Global Institute principal and expert in using social tools to enhance enterprise communications, knowledge sharing, and collaboration.
Gini Dietrich — Fearless Spin Sucks blogger who writes about the intersection of PR, digital, and social
Seth Godin — World-renowned best-selling author. Perhaps you’ve heard of him.
C. C. Chapman — Incredibly insightful thinker, Co-author of the important book Content Rules
Julien Smith — An observer of the social space who is painfully smart and co-author of Trust Agents
John Jantsch — The man who represents the intersection of social, small business and common sense. Best-selling author of The Commitment Engine
Marcus Sheridan — Passionate evangelist of social media and content marketing for business. Just got a new book deal.
Jeff Dachis — A business leader and entrepreneur pushing for data-driven social marketing through the influential Dachis Group
Shelly Kramer — Gutsy entrepreneur-ess and blogger who tells it like it is.
Geoff Livingston — Social media, social good, deep thinker, superb blogger.
Jason Falls — Pioneering social media blogger and straight-talking speaker
Don Tapscott — Wise observer of our world on digital. Futurist and author of Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World
Jay Baer – Perhaps the foremost social media entrepreneur on the scene. His new book is about to be released – Youtility: Why Smart Marketing Is about Help Not Hype
Mitch Joel – An important, prolific blogger/author/podcaster and a digital marketing visionary. His new book Ctrl Alt Delete
I have no idea how many Twitter followers these people have. But they have all accomplished something.
I normally don’t make lists like this because I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings — there are dozens of other people who I could certainly shine a light on. And I haven’t even included the many innovators toiling at major companies and brands who are too busy to worry about the size of their Twitter audience.
And if you ARE on the Forbes list? Have some fun with it. Let your mom know about it. Put a badge on your website. Just don’t take it too darn seriously, OK?
Illustration courtesy BigStock.com
Book links are affiliate links.
Three dazzling examples that turned online influence into offline results
Apr 16th
Andre Niemeyer (second from left) and the paddle board crew.
There has been a lot of talk about finding powerful word of mouth influencers who can help your business. But once we have identified these influencers, what do we do about it?
Today, I’m going to dazzle you with three examples of people who are setting an awesome example in this area. But first, let me set the stage with a little diatribe about how almost everybody is doing it WRONG.
For some businesses, I have been designated as an “influencer.” Tragically, none of these businesses sell beer, cars, or bacon, but that’s another story.
As an influencer, I am deluged with offers from urgent strangers through email and Twitter every day. If this is your business strategy, here is the probability that I will connect with you and help you: ZERO. In fact, I won’t even open the email.
On the flip side, I will go out of my way to help friends who make an authentic attempt to relate to me as a person and build a relationship. It seems so simple, but 99% of the businesses out there are doing it wrong.
Here are three success stories that I hope will resonate with the thousands of companies out there trying to jump on the influencer bandwagon!
Mining the halls
Last year, a fellow literally came sprinting down a hallway at a conference where I was speaking. “Mark! Mark!” he said. “I just wanted to meet you and say hello. I am a big fan of your blog.”
We had a pleasant conversation and when he learned that I was visiting Europe soon, he invited me to have dinner with him in his hometown of Dublin. Which I did!
The dinner led to a tweet-up, the tweet-up led to significant new business opportunities, and the new opportunities led to new customers. For the fellow, I provided a free speaking engagement for him in Ireland, invited him to guest post on my blog, and he secured a coveted speaking slot at Social Slam a few weeks ago — his very first speaking opportunity in America.
Social Slam panel with Dino Dogan, Dawn DeVirgilio, Jennifer Kane and Ian Cleary in his American speaking debut.
You may recognize the now familiar name of Ian Cleary as the person I’m discussing. But this was no isolated or random incident. Ian is a master of converting online relationships into powerful business benefits.
At the recent Social Media Marketing World event, I ran into Ian and asked him how many sessions he had attended and he said “none.” At first I was surprised.
“I’ve been in the hallways,” he said. “That’s where the conversations and relationships are taking place.”
Ian was working hard to turn the weak links of social media into the strong ties that convert into business opportunity. His personal brand is growing quickly through the effort he is putting into his new friendships.
“If there’s someone I really want to form a relationship with, I focus on how I can help them,” he said. “Everybody is looking for ways to USE the influencers but if you can turn this around and truly help them, that makes it much easier to build a relationship!”
Paddling his way to community engagement
One of the brightest and friendliest of my new connections is an entrepreneur named Andre Niemeyer. Andre, who has been a member of the {grow} community for a couple years, immigrated from Brazil as a college student and has successfully carved a niche for himself in the hyper-competitive digital marketing space in southern California.
He is talented of course, but I believe he stands out in his market through a heart that is authentically kind.
Before the San Diego Social Media Marketing World Conference, Andre put out a Facebook and LinkedIn message to all attendees: “If you’re coming in a day early, I would love to teach you how to paddle board. Would you like to try this with me?”
“They didn’t have to provide anything,” he said. “I had all the boards and paddles. Seven people turned out. We had a great time paddle boarding, which led to dinner and meaningful discussions. Although there were 1,000 people at the conference, every time we saw each other a smile came to my face and we would talk about the ‘paddle meeting.’ At a conference that large, social transactions often ring hollow. That paddle board group changed that for me and, I believe, the rest of the crew.
“Several members of the group described the activity as the highlight of their trip. I couldn’t be more humbled by that, since my purpose was to show some San Diego hospitality and offer an opportunity for more meaningful community building.”
Andre is authentically helpful and in a noisy world, people are attracted to that above anything, I think.
Awareness through conversation
While I was in California, I was invited to an “influencer dinner” at a well-known steakhouse sponsored by the company Sprinklr. I was skeptical of being cornered into some kind of sales pitch but decided to attend because frankly, I like steak. Also, I like Jay Baer and I saw that he was attending so I thought, What the heck? I perceived real potential value in the two hours of time this would take and decided to check it out.
New friends Liz Philips and Paola Elizaga at Sprinklr influencer event
It turned out to be a very valuable event. I had an amazing conversation with Intel’s Ekaterina Walter, became friends with Paolo Elizaga of P&G, and got to tap into the mighty brain of Lee Odden.
There was no sales pitch from Sprinklr. However this was a very effective influencer event because relationships with companies are formed through interactions over time. I got to meet the folks from the company and I have a positive feeling about the nice environment they created for a group of social media thought leaders. So now, this company is on my radar screen.
Am I willing to open an email from them? Yes. And that is a big step forward, right?
The networking expert. Not.
Making personal connections that result in business benefits is a nuanced art. Here’s an example of influencer marketing that backfired.
While I was attending the conference in San Diego, I received a hand-written note under my door with some chocolates. The author of the note expressed a desire to meet me at the event.
I had no idea who this person was — had never even heard his name before. I felt a little creeped out that a strange man had found my hotel room number and was sending me candy under the door.
It turns out that this fellow was a professional “networking expert.”
He eventually cornered me and asked if I could do a video interview for his site. I was happy to oblige but it became apparent that this fellow really knew nothing about me, nothing about my books, nothing about my business, and could not even put together a meaningful question to ask me. My perception is that the video was a ruse — like the candy — to provide some nominal value that would make me feel like I needed to reciprocate. Sure enough, when the “interview” was over, he wanted to talk about “next steps.” I left feeling disappointed and used.
The difference
Do you see a pattern in the successful interactions?
1) The social web is an amazing opportunity to create small interactions that lead to larger engagements — meaningful relationships and business opportunity.
2) Turning online connections to offline relationships transforms weak links into strong bonds.
3) Offer true helpfulness and real value. Actionable relationships are earned, not bought. We’re not idiots. We know when we’re being used.
4) At the end of the day, we do business with people who we know and trust, not somebody who is trying to game us. Trust is paramount and needs to be at the foundation of your social networking strategy.
I believe social media (and specifically Twitter) is personal networking on steroids. But the basics remain the same. You still have to earn attention and trust to turn a weak link into a powerful one.
What do you think? How are you networking on the social web? Please add to the conversation!
The results are in: An experiment in social influence
Dec 9th
As many of you know, I recently asked fans of {grow} to support a charitable cause through a post entitled “The kid who wanted a door for Christmas.”
I’d like to examine the results of this appeal as an example of “social influence” in action. What happens when a blogger asks his audience to do something beyond clicking a “like button?” What happens when a social media audience actually has to commit to an action and open a wallet? What can you learn from this example that will help you ignite your own business or charity?
The results from this blog post provide a fascinating lesson and case study:
The business situation
Asking for money on the Internet is a notoriously difficult proposition. In short, it usually doesn’t work.
I document this extensively in my book Return On Influence
The reason for this failure is that most social media connections are very weak relational links. Sure, we might be willing to help somebody out by clicking a “like” button or sending a tweet … but opening our pocketbook? No. It doesn’t happen.
So, going into this project, I knew this was a very risky proposition. Based on my own research and knowledge of the subject, I knew that there was a good chance my appeal would fall flat. Perhaps I would even be publicly embarrassed. Still, this was a worthy charity in need, so I decided to take a risk and ask for help.
Let’s look at what happened.
The results
So far, my appeal to help the Amachi charity resulted in 92 individual donations totaling $4,352 (excluding the PayPal fees). I consider this an extraordinary result since this total is not inflated by “friends and family” donations. The total I am reporting represents the new value I created for Amachi by establishing an effective social media presence and creating new connections that did not exist prior to the time I started blogging in 2009.
But we need to take a much closer look at the results to really discover the true nature of social influence.
Here’s an indicator of what we’re up against. My blog post was tweeted 446 times but only 92 people actually made a donation. So the reality is, 354 people encouraged others to donate without donating anything themselves.
Let’s peel the data back a little more by dividing the donors, to the best of my ability, into “strong” connections (people who are known fans of {grow} and regular contributors to the community) and “weak” connections (people I do not recognize from the blog who possibly donated via a tweet about the article or a Facebook post).
Here is the breakdown of strong connection versus weak connection donors:
I am pleasantly surprised that as many as 30 people could have come across the blog via Twitter and donated to the cause. I think the number is actually much lower because I’m sure some of the donors in this category are actual readers of the blog who I don’t recognize. But nevertheless, about one-third of the donors were people who do not have a personal relationship with me, which is pretty cool.
Here’s a second indicator of how the weak connections represented by social media “friends and followers” is not a very actionable group of people.
A couple social media heavyweights with more than 100,000 followers (and even more than 500,000 followers!) heavily tweeted my post to try to help. I estimated they generated more than 3 million Twitter impressions. Here is how many donors this activity generated: ONE.
So the “celebrity influencer” conversion rate on Twitter was 1 out of 3 million possible impressions. Sad, but not surprising.
Digging even deeper, we see that the strong relational connections from the blog community had a powerful impact on both the number of donations and the average amount of the donation:
Conclusions
Content is power
One premise behind Return On Influence
Think of the incredible potential we all have here. From a standing start in 2009, I have been able to create a global community that responded to an appeal in one blog post and contributed $4,352 in 48 hours. It took hard work to get to that point, but you have that opportunity — that power — too.
The real power is in strong connections
Not all social media fans and followers are created equal. As this example suggests, the real power of online influence comes through the strong connections created over time through the personal interactions on a blog or other community. If you want to create personal power on the web, you need to build an engaged and loyal group of advocates, not just a big number of Twitter followers. The numbers don’t matter as much as the relationships.
The critical importance of reciprocity
Another tenet of Return On Influence is the power of reciprocity (re-paying favors). My friend Jay Baer states in the book that reciprocity is the engine that powers the economy of the social web. As I look at who gave the biggest donations — yes, I’ve done many of them favors along the way. I had built up a bank of “social capital” and my appeal for donations was an opportunity for those folks to return those favors.
This is not something I planned or manufactured. I help people every single day without an expectation of reciprocity because I enjoy doing that. I’m not sure you can have a reciprocity “strategy.” You just have to be kind to people.
Where Klout fails
Klout, Kred and the other social scoring platforms provide an indicator of a person’s relative ability to create content that moves on the web. That’s an extremely important “leading indicator” of power because without that consistent presence you will never influence anybody on the social web. In other words, you can’t be an online influencer if you can’t move content. That stream of content to your followers creates the consistent, small “provocations” that eventually lead to those critical strong relationships that will take real action.
However, Klout does not dig deep into blog communities and other forums where the strong links are born, and until they do, they cannot really grasp the “actionable connections” powering the web. This is changing, however. For example, the start-up Appinions has patented technology that analyzes data across an incredible 5 million online data sources – including blogs, forums and traditional media – to create a glimpse of content in context. This represents the real future of social influence measurement and offers mind-blowing opportunities for marketing insight.
Your action plan
If you are an individual, company, university, or non-profit, your ability to create measurable actions across the weak links of social media platforms are negligible. Remember … I had one conversion over 3 million impressions. In terms of igniting “weak links,” I could have probably had better results taking out a Facebook ad!
This is a glimpse of the limits of “influencer” outreach. The donations didn’t come from somebody else’s vast community. They came from the strong relationships in my own community, which were built by delivering a lot of helpful content, engagement, and authentic helpfulness over several years.
There is a lot of potential to build awareness, social proof and validation through influencer outreach. But don’t overlook the need to do the hard work and build a real community for your brand.
The role of social media in the marketing mix is to consistently provide provocations through content that lead to that type of genuine, actionable community. Over time, you then have an opportunity to turn that work and “social bank” into loyalty and even passion for your brand or cause. And only then will the wallets open.
I’ve covered a lot of ground today on a rather controversial topic. What do you think of this example of social influence and my conclusions?
And by the way, if you missed the article and would like to help me support a charity that is turning lives around, you can learn more in my original post. Thanks again to all who have been so supportive and generous!
Update: If you are just stumbling on to this post, the final total raised was $5,900. but if you care to donate, I will leave this Donation button “on” in the original post => Here.
Also, when I delivered our first check to Amachi, Elijah and I visited the Amachi Office with the surprise donation. You can watch the video here: Amachi video.
Illustration courtesy BigStock.com
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-Mark SchaeferFollow Mark
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