At the meshmarketing conference yesterday in Toronto, I had the pleasure to interview Klout’s Joe Fernandez about the influence discovery market, Klout’s recent change in its algorithm, and where Klout is heading.
Here’s a mini-interview I did afterward:
Over the past 30 days, my Klout score has climbed five points.
I guess that’s a good thing, and it suggests the time spent on social media over the past month after returning from a lengthy vacation is starting to dividends. After all, it’s difficult to remain as influential when you’re sitting on the beach as opposed to tweeting or posting updates.
But having a Klout score of 67 rather than 62 hasn’t made much of a difference. I don’t feel more influential, although anyone who feels influential probably has too high an opinion of themselves. I haven’t seen a flurry of new consulting opportunities, a flurry of PR pitches in my inbox, or special treatment at any retail establishment I patronage.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s cool to have a Klout score of 67 because it suggests the time spent building a social media presence is resonating and having an impact, which is good for my personal brand and, hopefully, business.
I’m a big fan of the emerging influence marketplace because there’s value in being able to measure peoples’ influence so it’s easier for companies, brands and other people to identify the leading thought and opinion leaders based on their interests or needs.
But it is apparent we’re just scratching the influence surface and how we assess, discover and engage with influencers. Players such as Klout, PeerIndex, Empire Avenue and Appinions (a client) are developing different approaches and technologies to determine who is an influencer, and how companies and brands can identify and interact with them.
Just like the social media monitoring marketplace, there is room for a variety of influence players. At this point, it is important for companies, brands and people to recognize three key factors:
1. Just as there’s more than one way to skin a cat, there’s more than one way to determine an influencer.
2. It is still early days and there is a vibrant and competitive marketplace that should be explored. Appinions’ Influencer Exchange, for example, assesses influencers by looking at who’s creating content and who’s attracting the most coverage and attention.
3. While giving an influencer a score is user-friendly, there are other ways to measure and display peoples’ influence.
So while Klout has a high profile, there are other compelling options that meet different needs for people seeking influencers.
Last month (was it really last month!) at the mesh conference, I had a chance to sit down with Edelman’s David Armano about the growing focus and importance of influence within the social media landscape. David provides some thoughts on what’s happening, why there is so much interest, and the tools to harness influence and influencers.
The influence panel with Armano and Valeria Maltoni was a good conversation but it felt like a good meal in which you later feel hungry. There was terrific insight and discussion but what I think the panel illustrated is influence is still an elusive beast that no one has a handle on yet.
The biggest challenge with influence and influencers is they’re moving targets. While there are some people who are clearly influencers due to their stature or following, the influence landscape is fluid – influencers come and go, they emerge out of nowhere and then disappear just as quickly. This makes identifying and engaging with influencers a constant challenge and struggle.
And although there’s plenty of excitement about influence tools such as Klout.com, there is no definitive or dominant tool…yet. A growing number of companies are approaching influence in different ways so I expect the market will start to evolve much like the social media monitoring market slowly emerged and then exploded.
David Armano on Influence from Mark Evans on Vimeo.
Here are some of my other thoughts on influence:
- The Fascination with Influence and Influencers
- A chat with Klout.com’s Joe Fernandez
If there has been a key theme within the social media landscape this year, it’s been the influencer. We have moved beyond quantity – blasting out content to everywhere and anywhere – to quality, which means targeting fewer people but those who have a major impact on lots of other people.
It’s an interesting change in direction given everyone was so obsessed with the Long Tail, which is all about harnessing the power of lots of people who are not seen as influencers because they don’t have a big following. The Long Tail is out, the influencer is in.
Jeff Jarvis has an intriguing post about how influencers don’t exist, which completely goes against the grain. Shirky’s believes it’s the merit of messages that influence people rather than people who are influencers. It’s a theory that, in many ways, makes sense but it also dismisses the idea there are people who are influential in specific areas.
For example, Bill Clinton could be seen as an influencer in politics; just as Steve Jobs is a high-tech influencer, and LeBron James is a sports influencer. What these people do and talk about is highly regarded and has an impact on lots of people, regardless of the quality of their messages.
The discovery and identification of influencers has become the new Holy Grail within social media. We have moved beyond being fascinated with monitoring and analysis, which measures how much and where activity is happening. Now, we’re far more interested in who matters (aka influence).
A good illustration of this fascination with influence is Klout, which has become a leading benchmark for measuring influence. Everyone is interested in their Klout scores. It’s part vanity and part a growing recognition influence matters or, at least, a growing number of people think it matters.
The major brands – Nike, Hewlett-Packard, Starbucks – using Klout to engage with influencers is more evidence influence is a key consideration for marketers. Their decision to use Klout also suggests there are challenges in identifying influencers given the digital lanscape is so fast-moving. One day, your’re a modestly successful musician in Eastern Canada (Dave Carroll); the next you’re having a huge influence on what people think about United Airlines.
This is perhaps the biggest challenge and opportunity within the influence game. No one has cracked the nut on determining an influencer because the criteria is a moving target. One minute, you’re seen as influential; the next you’re yesterday’s news.
Despite the challenge and the questions about the role of influencers, the hunt for the influencer continues unabated. We want to believe there are influencers and they do matter because it would make the life much easier for brands that want to have a major impact by less doing work.
Maybe we’re looking for a shortcut or maybe we’re lazy. Perhaps it’s an attempt to engage and have conversations in a more efficient way. However you want to slice it, we want to believe influencers exist, and no one – not even Clay Shirky – is going to persuade us otherwise.
Last week, Klout.com unveiled its new look and feel that should enhance it status at the leading way to get a handle on online influencers – influence, of course, being a subjective phrase.
Aside from some more bells and whistles, Fernandez said the company’s strategic focus has shifted because it has built a rock-solid platform upon which it can quickly iterate and, as important, start to transform what has been a fascinating project into a “meaningful company”.
“We have become the standard around measuring influence, and we want to keep driving that home because people care about their Klout scores,” he said during an interview last week. “People talk about their Klout scores, and brands see people with high Klout scores are the ones they want to connect with. The strategy is still around trying to create ubiquity in that score, mainly through people caring about their score.”
“Admittedly, when you look at [the site] right now, there are some new features but what is more exciting is the positioning changes and we have laid the groundwork to iterate quickly. With the old site we were saddled by the fact, it was the beta version and something that got bandaged together as we grew really fast and it was hard to build on top of it for a while. We put 98% of effort in analyzing data and creating score. We didn’t put much emphasis on the user experience. For the first time, we are concentrating on and thinking about the user experience and having a platform to iterate quickly. Every week, you will see a new feature rolled out on Klout.”
Despite Klout’s popularity and progress, Fernandez said its business model is still work in progress. While Klout has 2,000 companies using API, including larger brands who are paying for it, he said the API is generating little revenue.
So, where’s the money going to come from? Fernandez said a source with lots of potential is helping brands connect with influencers. Nike, for example, was launching a new Kobe Bryant basketball shoe, and approached Klout to help it reach out to people with influence in the basketball shoe world, as well as related areas. How Klout gets paid by brands is also being worked on. It could be on a project basis or a fee per influencer.
“It is still so early, we haven’t figured out how much per influencer,” he said. “We are working with the brand, understanding the brand, really experiential. The brands are liking it, and we are seeing all of them signing up to do again.
I’ve been spending a lot of time recently thinking about Quora. I’m not as interested in whether the question and answer service is the next social media “star” as I am in what the interest in Quora means. To me, the giddiness about Quora has a lot to do with the hunger for new and shiny toys, as well as how well the Silicon Valley hype machine promotes its own.
With Facebook and Twitter now part of the “establishment”, people are looking for the what’s next. But I think the appetite for new is overshadowing a a far more interesting issue: Now that social media has broad acceptance and usage, companies are trying to determine what to do with it.
“What to do with it” is not about how to use the tools but how social media can be effectively leveraged to support and grow a business. Social media is cool but what is the true value given that being on social media is no longer a competitive differentiator?
After a lot of thought, I think it comes down to a key issue: relevance. Companies – and people – are now focused on how to make social media relevant, a completely different conversation than tactical execution or engagement. Relevance means harnessing social media to make a business operate better or gain a competitive edge. It’s a simple proposition but something that has received little attention amid the enthusiasm about the new tools.
While not taking anything away from people such as Brian Solis who have been hammering away at the importance of “influence”, relevance is more important because it sits at the core of why a company would embrace social media. Yes, social media is about engagement and conversations but why would a business do social media if there was no operational and financial benefit?
There’s value in influence but influence has much to do with reaching out to people outside the organization to support and boost your communication, marketing and sales efforts. In many ways, the focus on influence puts the cart before the horse because it does little to help a company figure out what they need to get from social media. It doesn’t matter if a company connects with influencers if its social media efforts don’t provide strategic dividends.
Truth be told, influencers are just the next social sexy. Whereas the tools used to be cool and sexy, they are quickly losing their lustre as more people use them. Content is invaluable but not terribly sexy. But influencers, now we’re talking sexy because if you can win over influencers, the world is your oyster – at least in theory.
Relevance may not be sexy but it’s fundamentally more critical. If a company can figure out how its social media efforts can be relevant to what it wants to achieve strategically and tactically, it can achieve its objectives and goals – be it a stronger brand, more sales and better customer service.
One of the benefits of having social media relevance is it can help a company connect with influencers because it offers a foundation and reason to pursue them. Truth be told, influencers have little value if they’re just baubles that come along with being active on social media.
I would argue the focus on influencers is being given way too much credence. Influence is an easy concept to understand and pitch; whereas relevance means spending the time to put social media into context so that it provides a business with a new and powerful way to grow and be more competitive.
