Every company it seems wants to bring to market a solution to help us obviously uneducated marketers (sarcasm) figure out who is influential. Klout thus far is the platform garnering the most interest, media coverage and generating the most attention. In Klout’s own words:
The Klout Score is the measurement of your overall online influence. The scores range from 1 to 100 with higher scores representing a wider and stronger sphere of influence. Klout uses over 35 variables on Facebook and Twitter to measure True Reach, Amplification Probability, and Network Score.
There are really two big problems with Klout and the competing platforms.
- Our influence constantly changes and our influence is different by topic. For example, I can tell you that I’m very knowledgeable about cameras and camera gear. 5 years ago I wasn’t as knowledgeable as I am today, and 10 years ago I wasn’t as knowledgable as I was 5 years ago. That’s fair, right? I can also tell you that I know nothing about wine. Zero. Zilch. Nadda. A tool like Klout looks at me as a whole instead of as pieces over a time interval. I think Klout has tried to solve this with their +K approach and by auto generating emphasis areas. This has a long way to go. Right now +K’s are doled out in a format similar to a popularity contest where the rich get richer. Meanwhile the auto generating model says that I’m influential about Pittsburgh, which trust me, makes no sense.
- How I evaluate influence is different than you do or my dad does or my CMO. That’s a simple fact. You might look at the resume, I might weight case studies, my dad might go off of how many times the person has been on TV and so on. As a whole, most tools look to solve for the least common denominator. That’s a problem. Social isn’t a one size fits all environment. It’s something that’s different by category (eg pharma vs. retail), audience (boomers vs. Gen Y), goals (CRM, sentiment, volume, etc.) and so much more. Taking Klout as an example, I should be able to attune their algorithm to things that are important to the goals we have at Walgreens and how we evaluate influence. For example, we might discount twitter followers, but over value traffic to a person’s blog. Where as your organization might favor the number of photos a person has on Flickr over their years of experience. There’s lot of ways to slice and dice the data against these categories and all are unique to the person/company conducting the evaluation.
Influence to be a little hokey is not a destination, it’s a journey. Our influence across all topics changes over time and we’re not always as influential in one topic as we are in another. Those are the facts. What we need from companies like Klout are not simple scores that aim to normalize for all people, categories, business and needs. If anything we need the opposite. We need more sophistication and customization of the algorithms and greater control over how the tools seek to help us find those that are influential for the challenge of the day.
Just to give you an idea of what I mean, according to Klout:
When it comes to knowing how to make social support the goals and objectives of Walgreens, I can tell you I know more than both Ashton and Chris. But, when it comes to movies, acting and the interests of Demi Moore, I’m very happy to admit Ashton is much more influential than I
I came across this article the other day while reading the New York Times. I strongly urge you to read it. The similarities to what the military deals with and what we deal with as marketers are striking. We have a lot of noise coming in all the time. If your company handles social “media” monitoring using tools like Radian6, you know exactly what I mean. We have more data and more metrics than we can handle. But, we have very little analysis of the data that’s MEANINGFUl. Is this really surprising? Our brains are on overload. Or as the article stated, “As the technology allows soldiers to pull in more information, it strains their brains.”
As a marketer, I think part of the challenge is try to measure everything and anything, instead of the most important things. It’s your classic case of 80/20 and just because we can measure it, doesn’t mean we should. The marketing partner/agency of the future will need to bring real analysis and insights, not just a collection of data. But, to do that, it will take partnership with the clients and decision makers. Focus from them will allow the team to focus on the right things and make the best use of our brains.
Stephen Baker, who wrote the Numerati, would have an interesting take on this topic…I’m sure. The Numerati does a great job of starting to outline how companies like IBM are trying to bring tools to the table that help companies make sense of the data. Right now, those tools are few and far between.
2010 will see companies trade the short term, hyper-focused, micro measurement approach of ROI for ROMO. ROMO is all about the return on marketing objective. Not every initiative offers a clean manner for figuring out the real return on investment. But, nearly every initiative offers a means to measure the ROMO. For example, marketing objectives often include:
- Awareness
- Intent to Purchase
- Recall
For years these have been considered “soft metrics” because you can’t truly quantify the ROI of increased awareness in a clean manner. As companies focused on ROI, they essentially killed the inability for brand managers to think like marketers and find meaningful ways to connect with their consumers. The hardcore ROI-driven approach transformed marketers into accountants – they simply looked at black and white. After all, how is it that we continue to see such heavy reliance on FSIs and 30-second spots?
Pepsi, by eliminating their investment in Super Bowl advertising in favor of a massive social marketing initiative is the first company to really show us that it’s possible to consider a ROMO attitude to business. We’re going to see more of this. We’re going to see a return to making sure your brand has a soul. And in doing so, we’re going to start caring about the return on marketing objective.
It’s been one crazy week that really hasn’t left a lot of time for blogging. That’s the awesome thing about twitter. I can stay connected with bleeding edge, soak up the knowledge, and share some thoughts. I’ve been collecting links all week that I thought were worth checking out. Enjoy.
- A man tried to pay an overdue bill with a drawing of a spider. Yes, I’m serious. That drawing eventually sold for $10,000 on eBay.
- Yahoo has finally brought “Glue” to the United States. Glue, offers up a new way to see search results. This is a great write-up on why Glue was created and what it can offer.
- Apple released version 2.2 of their iPhone software. It’s supposed to address stability and battery life. My favorite feature of the software is that Google Maps now let’s you customize your directions based on how you’ll be traveling: car, bus, or walking.
- Google launched Search Wiki. It let’s you customize your Google Web Search results. You can rank, remove and add notes to any result page and see those tailored results anytime you do that search while you’re logged in to your Google Account. This video does a fantastic job of explaining the tool.
- McDonald’s, naked pictures, and a lawsuit. Need I say more. Click here.
- Shaq is on twitter. Yes, I mean it.
- Great tweet from Barry Judge the CMO of Best Buy.
- Further proof that IT organizations at company’s are considered painful, non-efficient, and difficult.
- Malcolm Gladwell asks the question, is there such a thing as pure genius?
- Neat tool, called Vitrue, for measuring the social media footprint of brands. It has potential. Another options is this tool.
- The new Pepsi logo/packaging is in market.
- Great blog post that explains the genius behind Alltop.
- American Airlines is offering paperless check-in. Now how about not charging me for bags.
- I heart you Seth Godin for this post. I won’t spoil it; just read it.
- YouTube broadcasted live this week. Very cool and different. Makes me warm and tingly.
- Talking about attacking red headed people is a hate crime in Canada; even when it’s done on Facebook.
- These speakers are absolutely beautiful. I want them.
Tags: Alltop, Apple, Glue, Klipsch, Links, Measurement, Seth Godin, Shaq, Social Media, Twitter, Yahoo!, YouTube
Agreeing on what we measure in the first step.
We also need to collectively align on:
- How we measure
- How often we measure
- How often we report
- When we optimize
The data we provide is only as good as our ability to act on the information.
This is the mantra I follow on every project.
Head of Social Media at Walgreens. Interactive marketer, innovator, boat rocker, continuous learner, movie lover, risk taker, dad and all around good guy. I'm always up for a spirited conversation. These are my thoughts and ramblings, not those of my employer.
