What is your Klout score?
My Klout score is 55, my Peerindex score is 60, my Kredscore is 658, my PROskore is 50, my twittercounter shows steady increase, although there was a serious dip in followers on the 2nd of September where 2,157 stopped following me. I posted a review of “Adapt” on that day on Amazon.com. No correlation (I think). Very upsetting though.
Mark Schaefer
Yep, bitten by the social scoring and the influence marketing bug. All the fault of Mark Schaefer, whom came to speak in Dublin a few weeks ago. Organised by @ianmcleary. Mark talked about love marks, twitter as a real time global brainstorm session, social proofing, meaningful content, targeted connections and the importance of authentic helpfulness. Based on that talk, I bought his books “Return on influence” and here we are.
Books
In the book he quotes Gladwell and “igniting epidemics”, he refers to “The Cluetrain Manifesto”, he uses Brain Solis’ language about digital Darwinism (Mark Schaefer refers to social media as a “Darwinian hyper catalyst”) and he talks about information density as an issue. He touches on “The long tail” and “Free” by Anderson and shifts these concepts to power and influence. As he and Chris concludes, content is free. However time, attention and influence are scarce.
Reciprocity and social proof
Reciprocity (a word to avoid at radio interviews!) is mentioned, which brings us to “Launch”, which we reviewed on Newstalk a few months ago (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dDfYhCu2Sw) and “social proofing”. Social proof makes you legitimate, hence the need for Klout, Peerindex, etc.. Online there is no other way to socially proof your influence, no uniforms, no titles, only the appreciation of your content. And the algorithm that tracks that.
Content
So content is important. Content is everything. The more people consume your content, the faster you will grow. Content as rocket fuel for your business. To do that, content needs to be:
• Relevant
• Interesting
• Timely
• Entertaining
If you do that right (RITE), you will develop influence. And influence is relevant to marketers, when they finally realise that online marketing is word of mouth work on steroids. So online influence counts. And online influence is important to you. A high Klout score is worth money.
Monetising social influence
If you are regarded as somebody with influence online, companies will give you gifts, discount offers, perks, upgrades and lots more. It is becoming part of job applications. It will be part of your CV. Soon you will have to consider what is more important? A degree in Harvard or a high Klout score?
Klout
I keep on mentioning Klout because Mark Schaefer does. Sometimes it reads like a long Klout add. Which why I like the book, instead of loving it. I should love it. It touches on everything we try to with www.smallbusinesscan.com and all the books we have covered on social media.
Tools
It does gives you lots of tools, it gives you all the platforms that measure that measure influence (and I have joined them all ;). It suggests the books to read. As said, a lot of these books we have covered in our blogs and radio reviews (see www.bookbuzz.biz and www.youtube.com/bookbuzzonline).
Recommended
If you are new to this, if you are sceptical to online reputation management and if you want to be savvy as a marketeer, you should read this book.
My Klout score
Let me know what you think @orangemanta or @bookbuzzonline. All tweets are highly appreciated as they are good for my Klout score………
It is addictive.
