Klout Sucks and Why You Should Use It
The Twitter influence measurement service Klout was a huge topic of debate at this year’s SXSW conference. Its founder Joe Fernandez was on various panels touting how wonderful it is that the startup has found a way to automate the influence measurement process – something many feel is the “holy grail” of social media marketing. Mr. Fernandez also discussed “Klout Perks” – a service that allows brands to target influencers by sending them tangible items in hopes they will talk about them throughout their social circles leading to increased sales. Unfortunately, Klout is nothing but snake oil when it comes to determining influence. That said, it’s an immensiely valuable service that should be incorporated into your reporting mix. Confused? Let me explain.
No matter what Joe Fernandez says, there is currently no tool that can accurately automate the process of identifying influencers on specific topics throughout Twitter. The only way to do this is to immerse yourself into the conversational context data manually. In fact, my own Klout profile says I’m most influential on the topics of “Social Media,” “Marketing,” “New York Yankees,” “Media,” “Family,” and “Public Relations.” Now I can see where some of those terms may come in to play as I do social media and digital marketing for a living, but I rarely ever tweet about topics related to my family or families in general. Perhaps a better example is a friend of mine that ranks as an influencer in “football” when in fact she probably can’t even name more than five teams in the NFL!
Now Klout claims they get their content analysis data on influencers from semantically analyzing tweets for engagement and reach to see which topics one is most influential in, but clearly this is a flawed method. I’m not saying it’s 100% inaccurate, but there is bad data coming back here. In fact, I recently spoke to a Klout employee on how I was personally targeted for two of their perks, one for Disney’s “Tangled” film and the other for an NBA promotion; these are two topics that I really couldn’t care less about, yet somehow I received invitations for their swag. When I mentioned this to the employee, I was told “sometimes people slip through the cracks” as if that’s an acceptable answer. If I was a brand paying good money to target influencers and there were people slipping through the cracks, I’d be very upset, especially with the value of some of these perks brands are sending out.
I also asked Joe Fernandez how Klout measures ROI on their perk program after he made the statement that some brands were so thrilled with the results that they came back for another go and was given no clear answer. It appears, from my take on his reply, that brands are using this money as “experimental marketing” and waiting to see if there’s any long tail effect. With no required action by those who receive perks, it’s impossible to measure any sort of ROI. (Klout users that receive perks are not required to say or do anything. The hope is that they will enjoy the perk so much they talk about it on their own.)
All this being said, I find there is value to be had in using the Klout score in social media monitoring as it aids in identifying those Twitter users that “get it” versus those that are speaking to a disengaged audience. While I firmly believe that brands should listen to and treat all customers throughout social media as if they have 100 Klout, I’m a realist and know that sometimes that’s impossible, especially if you’re a brand with thousands of mentions per day. When it comes down to reputation management and someone with a Klout of 50 is talking about how much they hate your brand, you’re going to want to put them on a higher priority list than someone with a Klout of 8. This score gives marketers some data to go back to CMOs with that satiates their need for numbers and data clustering.
I don’t want to come off like a Klout hater – I’d love to see the service thrive, but only if it’s doing it right. I had many conversations around this topic this week and can say that there are many out there that loathe Klout and everything it stands for. I just want any tool out there that can help me make my job easier. I don’t think we’re anywhere close to finding a way to automate the influencer identification process as there are too many variables that go into what makes one influential, but of everything out there, Klout at least seems to be heading down the right path, even if that path is thousands of miles long.
Three Simple Ways Business Owners Can Use Foursquare Right Now
The rise of mobile location applications such as Foursquare and Gowalla has presented local business owners with a fantastic opportunity to bring the power of social media marketing to street level. Of all the players in the location application space, Foursquare is clearly the one poised to make the biggest splash. Recent partnerships with Bravo, The History Channel and now NBC’s The Today Show are quickly making Foursquare a household name. With over a million active users, a number growing steadily every day, Foursquare has been called the “Twitter of 2010.” It’s rumored that major players such as Yahoo! and Facebook are knocking on the doors of the New York startup with intentions of buying the booming service.
Hype aside, Foursquare is probably the lowest hanging fruit that a local business owner can utilize to connect with their customers in social media. Here are three things that business owners can do right now to start tapping into the Foursquare buzz.
1. Claim Your Business On Foursquare
The most important step that one must complete as a business owner is to claim their business on Foursquare. To do so, simply find the business entry by searching for it on Foursquare.com and click the link that asks “are you the manager of this business.” You will be asked to verify your claim to the business by copying and pasting the URL of your venue’s website contact page or entry on Yelp, Citysearch or Google. Basically, Foursquare needs you to prove that the email address and/or phone number associated with that venue matches up with your account so they can contact and verify you. Once you have been verified, you can begin offering special promotions to users.
2. Create Specials For Foursquare Users
After you’ve been verified, you have the ability to create specials for patrons of your business. Currently, Foursquare allows you to create specials in the following categories:
- Mayor Specials: Specials that can only be unlocked by the “Mayor.” (The Mayor is the users that has checked in the most frequently over the past 60 days).
- Count-Based Specials: Specials that are unlocked when a user checks in a certain amount of times.
- Frequency-Based Specials: Specials that are unlocked after every “x” amount of checkins.
- Wildcard Specials: Specials that are always unlocked but will need to be verified by the staff. (Example: Free side-order with your purchase if you check-in)
The only special that I would avoid is the mayor special. The problem with rewarding only the mayor is that it’s limited to one person, and that one person is in all likelihood already a loyal customer. Wildcard specials are probably the best to start off with if possible. The way Foursquare currently works, anyone checking into an establishment nearby your business will receive a notice that a special is occurring at your location. Offering something that one can redeem instantly is a great way to entice foot traffic from nearby users that would otherwise have not made the visit.
3. Promote Your Foursquare Presence
Setting up your business specials on Foursquare is only half of the equation. In order to maximize success you need to promote, promote, promote! I’m not talking expensive campaigns here, but a sign on your front door or a link on your website is a good start. If your business is on Facebook (you are on Facebook, right?), there’s an excellent plugin called PlaceWidget that allows you to integrate your Foursquare presence onto your page. If you really want to get fancy, the Foursquare API allows you to do some wonderful things with the data it has collected.
While Foursquare may still be in its infancy, it has a very big future ahead of it. It doesn’t cost a business owner anything but a few minutes of time to participate and can really pay big dividends with increasing foot traffic and building loyal customers. In the days of social media ROI, it’s a can’t lose. It’s important to remember however that Foursquare, just like the other social media outlets one is engaged in, should be part of a cohesive strategy to maximize potential. Just as integration and promotion across all one’s channels is the key to success on Facebook and Twitter, the same holds true for Foursquare.
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