Marketing

Three Things I Would Have Done Differently If I Started Blogging Today

The following post is an excerpt from my chapter in Danny Iny’s new book, Engagement From Scratch: How Super Community Builders Create a Loyal Audience and How You Can Do the Same.

It features lessons in community building and content marketing from the likes of Guy Kawasaki, Brian Clark, Mitch Joel, Kristi Hines, Gini Dietrich and many more. A review of the book will appear later this week.

I Would Have Posted Less Frequently

I started off writing a blog post a day (and sometimes I posted more than once on the same day). Sometimes this made me publish stuff that, in hindsight, could have (should have) been better.

In the middle of 2011, I made a conscious decision to post less frequently, and really ask questions of things in the stuff I wrote about. It made me a better blogger, and resulted in the ensuing comments going through the roof.

I Would Have Been More Honest

Let me rephrase that: I would not have been afraid to speak more honestly. There were times early on when I wouldn’t have said anything negative about certain people, since I (incorrectly) thought they were right. Turns out we all get blinded by vacuous respect. When I realized this, and began writing openly about bad practices and calling out bullshit, it once again raised the level of engagement through the roof, as others were clearly thinking the same thing. Be honest, and you’ll have engagement.

I Wouldn’t Be So Closed Off

One of the things many bloggers complain about is that social sites like Twitter and Facebook have seen comment numbers decrease, as conversations about a post shift there, as opposed to taking part on the blog. Heck, I even wrote a post about Twitter killing blog comments! But that’s missing the point – engagement comes in all shapes and sizes, and while your blog may be the most desired place for discussion, true engagement allows the discussion to expand in all directions.

If I was to do anything differently, it’d be to get active on Facebook sooner (and now Google+). Because, ironically, I’ve tended to find that the more willing I am to converse away from my blog, the more likely people are to click through and read more of my stuff. And that’s a win-win for everyone.

Engagement From Scratch: How Super Community Builders Create a Loyal Audience and How You Can Do the Same is available now. 50% of all profits from book sales go to support the teaching of entrepreneurship.

Looking After Business and the Real Profit Makers

If I asked you the most important part of your business, what would you say? Marketing? PR? Perhaps advertising or sales?

Now what if I said they?re all irrelevant? What if I said you don?t need sales to be successful? You?d probably say (fairly sarcastically),??Why not just hand my business over to my competitors while I?m at it??.

And you?d be right ? if I were serious.

Of course PR, marketing, advertising and sales are relevant, and hugely important parts of your business. But they?re not the most important part.

?But they?re the ones that bring the customers and make money, and money equals profits!?you might say. And again, you?d be right. But take a look at that sentence again.

?Customers? make money and money equals profits.?

That?s?both?sets of customers, new?and?existing. So why are so many businesses concentrating on the new and forgetting about the existing? Is the mindset, ?Well, they?ve stuck with us so far, they must be happy?? If it is, be prepared for a wake-up call.

Just because a customer has stuck with you doesn?t mean they?re satisfied. They may be tied into a contract or they may feel it?s too much effort at the minute to find a new vendor. But satisfied? Not necessarily.

Be Vocal

Have you asked them lately how they?re feeling? Have you asked how you can improve your service (don?t fall into the trap that your service has reached its plateau ? nobody?s?thatgood)? You?do?have ways of asking these questions, don?t you? If you?re not sure, ask yourself the following:

Do you have a?customer feedback form?on your website?
Do you have a?proactive approach?at asking your customers what they?re thinking?
Do you collect your customer details and use that information to?personalize your relationship?
Do you have some form of?customer service performance?in place?

If you can?t answer ?Yes? to at least one of these questions, you might want to check and see how many of your customers have dropped off the radar in the last 3-6 months.

As important as your sales team is, or your marketing team, or your PR team or your advertising team ? as important as all these elements are to your business?s success, they all cost money.

Your customers, on the other hand? A happy customer is your sales, PR, marketing and advertising teams rolled into one. Your most loyal employee. Your most vocal supporter ? and they don?t take wages from you. So look after them.

Be Pro-Active

If you collect contact information, use it. Call your customer up and ask how they?re finding their time with you. Ask how you can improve and what you can do to make their lives easier when shopping with you.

Don?t collect information initially? Fine ? have a feedback form on your site and have that (or a customer feedback phone number) printed on your receipt. Encourage interaction and communication.

Or, if you have a Twitter account, for example, have ?Don?t forget to tweet about us on Twitter? printed on your receipt and then monitor your mentions. And this works both ways ? you can salvage a negative impression immediately or emphasize a positive one.

Start a forum on your website where customers can chat with each other about how you?re doing, and how you can improve. Involve your employees throughout the company on the forum, and talk to your customers like human beings instead of just sales figures. Sure, you can advise on what employee can say what, but at least offer the voice to open up to and converse with.

The key thing is, sales and marketing and the rest of the new business team is exactly that ? new business. And you absolutely need that. But you also need existing business to build on and let you have the means to go after the new. Your customers ? and by association, your customer service ? are the?real?profit makers.

Isn?t it about time you treated them accordingly?

image:?Nemo?s great uncle

Is Klout Using Our Family to Violate Our Privacy?

First, apologies to anyone suffering Klout burnout here – but sometimes a topic has more than just a simple viewpoint. Especially when that topic is something like online privacy. And that privacy has (potentially) been broken by Klout.

I was on Facebook today, and my friend Tonia Ries?asked about Klout’s ability to make profiles, when users haven’t connected their details with the service. I pointed her to the response from Megan Berry, Klout’s marketing manager, where she says if we don’t want to be tracked, then to make our social feeds private.

Even though I feel having to make your social feeds private to stop any service from accessing it is commercial suicide, especially for a business whose primary custom is online, at least there was an option to stop Klout from grabbing your information.

At least, until Tonia pointed out the example of her son.

He isn’t on Twitter, and he’s not super active on Facebook. He hasn’t given Klout permission to access his account, and he has his Facebook privacy settings at private. Just like Megan advises.

And yet here he is on Klout, with a profile and score of 38. However, that’s not the issue. The bigger issue is this. As you can see from the image (which I’ve blurred to protect his identity), you can clearly see that his Facebook icon is a live one (i.e., not shaded out), which means people can visit his Klout profile and be taken to his very private Facebook profile by clicking the Facebook icon.

So, a private Facebook profile with no access allowed to Klout is now on their system and, worse still, allowing any public visitor to Klout to be taken directly to Tonia’s son’s private Facebook account?

Doesn’t something smell incredibly rotten here?

When looking into the issue more, Tonia mentions that her son commented on her Facebook wall about something. Tonia’s account is public – so does that mean Klout has activated an account for Tonia’s son, based on her being an “influencer” of her own son? All from one single wall post?

Sorry, Klout, but if that’s the case, that’s bullshit, and you’re treading on very slippery ground.

If you’re going to activate accounts for people who have their feeds set to private, and justify it by saying, “But they spoke to someone who has a public account”, that’s crap. That’s like saying, “Well, we’re going to telemarket call your son’s private phone number because we overheard you asking for his new number on your public phone.”

Seriously, Klout?

So, a word of warning to everyone. Your friends and family, who have absolutely no interest in social media, may be getting hawked as an active contributor to the Klout userbase, whether they have a private account or not, simply through their interactions with you.

Something to keep in mind when hooking up your own information to something like Klout….

Updates:
~ Check out Tonia’s own take on the issue in this post?at The Realtime Report.
~ Check out Brian Carter’s take on this post over at All Facebook.
~ Marian Heath from Facebook Safety has advised they are investigating Klout to make sure they’re complying with Facebook’s Privacy Terms.
~ Fernando Fonseca has posted instructions on how to be completely removed from Klout legally.
~ Jure Klepic has published a great resource on how to get completely disconnected from Klout.
~ Update: As of November 1st 2011, you can now delete your Klout account.?

A Klout Upside the Head

This is a guest post by Bob LeDrew.

I?ve been an observer of things Klouty for a while now. But I?ve been darned if I could work up a lot of excitement over it, positive OR negative. Until now.

I got pointed to a post on the Klout blog today about their reworked formula. Since I haven?t any accounts linked to their service, I didn?t have much reason to care.

But then I began to read the comment thread, and I was transfixed. The first comment set the tone: ?My score went from 73 down to 53. 20 point drop. I’ve been working for months to increase my Klout score. Please fix this.?

Others quickly chimed in:

This is going to cost me big time.

Went from 71 to 56 here. Time to get back to work.

You are killing our blogs here!

This trashed a 6-month effort to get our organization to use Klout as a measure of social media marketing effectiveness.

If I was searching for a job in Social Media right now I’d be concerned.

Klout set itself up as an authoritative measure of influence, and many organizations have coupled economic functions and job-related selection to?your scoring system.?By making this change, you have negatively impacted the job market viability of many loyal supporters of Klout at a time the?job market is in free-fall.

I have been promoting Klout to clients as one of the various metrics to use in measuring the impact of social media campaigns. This change has already caused me to lose clients, and I have to start over using PeerIndex instead.

I am beyond irritated over my 10 point drop, plus demotion in title! I work in Social Media Marketing, this point drop will hurt me in gaining clients! What the hell?!?

Sadly, expecting prospective clients to know how to hire someone based on their future delivery of results is not realistic. A score like Klout gives busy people a simple litmus test in advance. It’s the same reason people eat at McDonalds or AppleBees; the food is crap compared to the independent restaurant across the street but at?McDonalds or AppleBees they know what they are going to get.

I was just presenting a lecture today on the value of social media?efforts using monitors such as Klout and PeerIndex as a benchmark of impact, influence and effectiveness. Only, when I set it up this morning, I was at a 58 but when I opened that page, I’m now?a 40. Not terribly helpful – the whole presentation went south.

I have been feverishly working at increasing the Klout score for my company, as it is part of my MBO’s. Now, with a sudden 12 point drop, it will reflect poorly (and?inaccurately) upon my efforts.

I have a feeling that Katie Paine hasn?t waited to find a grave, but is spinning in her office somewhere in New England.

So I checked with a couple of people I know and trust. Surely, I asked, businesses aren?t seriously considering Klout scores when choosing consultants or working on a measurement strategy for a communications initiative?

And my trusted friends told me that while they felt it ridiculous, businesses were using Klout numbers as part of the decision-making process on who is most influential and that there are instances where brands or agencies won?t work with people who are Klout-challenged.

I responded to this with a bad humored string of profanities that would have embarrassed my mother and impressed my father, if they were in earshot.

The Klout Kraziness

I?m not sure whether I?m more upset with the sellers of services seizing Klout scores as indicators of worth, value-add, or influence, or with the BUYERS of services doing the same.

I don?t think much of Klout. I have several reasons for that, mostly based on the limitations of their methodology and the crudity of a 1-100 score in representing the vague concept of influence. As a game, it?s amusing.

But as a serious business tool, it?s horrifying. I?ve been trying to come up with an equivalent to the Klout score in the business world, but I haven?t been able to.

FICO score? No, that actually seems to have some predictive ability and a more transparent methodology.

Ad-value equivalency? No, that took a useless measure (how much space X would cost) and multiplied it by an arbitrary number (the mysterious ?multiplier?) which represented the credibility of editorial coverage. Closer, but not there.

Cost per contact acquired or cost per dollar raised? Nope, that?s clear and understandable. Click-through rate? Nope, easily calculated and clear.

Right now, Klout represents something that we all should be concerned about. A fun little statistic is one thing; a valid and credible measure of influence is another; but a fun little statistic that?s being treated like a business tool is akin to the correlation between storks and fertility rates.

Except nobody I know of is making policy decisions based on stork density…

About the author:?Bob LeDrew has been working in the words and ideas salt mines since the 1980s, when he edited audio with a razorblade. Since then, he’s been a writer, editor, public relations practitioner, and podcaster. Among other things. You can find him blogging at Translucid.ca?or on Twitter at @BobLeDrew.

A Letter to Joe Fernandez of Klout

A couple of months back, I wrote about online influence tool Klout, and their approach to how they build their membership (they use opt-out profiling, versus the more widely-used opt-in).

The main concern I had was the fact it was so difficult to leave Klout if you didn’t want to be seen as endorsing their product. As of today, two months later, my profile is still live, despite requests to be removed.

While the likes of Twitter, Facebook and Empire Avenue allow you to delete your account with one click, Klout has a bunch of hoops to go through – and even then, it would appear it doesn’t make much difference.

To his credit, Joe Fernandez – the CEO of Klout – reached out to me via email and addressed the fact that they were still working on how to best approach the opt-out / opt-in process, and that he would love to hear some ideas.

I sent an email back to Joe, but haven’t heard back yet – understandable, I can appreciate he’s busy. So here’s the reply below:

Hi Joe,
I think the single biggest issue is that it’s so difficult to leave.
I understand completely how you gather the information, but the advice from your marketing manager Megan on how to stop yourself from being measured isn’t very business-friendly. Megan’s advice is to make your feeds private – but for someone who does a lot of their business online, making your feeds private is like committing commercial suicide.
Let’s say every single person online did that – Klout itself would have no reason to exist, since your information-gathering tools would have nothing to gather. So you can see the folly of that approach.
There are millions of people wanting to use Klout as a barometer of their “existence”. Fair enough – that’s your audience and the people you sell to investors and companies buying into the Klout ideal.
But there are also many people who don’t wish to be a part of a non-regulated system, and one that can (rightly or wrongly) be used as a third-party validator for expertise. For those people, it should be a simple option of “Delete My Account”, which the likes of Empire Avenue, Facebook, Google, Twitter and more offer.
Making it easy to leave should be as simple as it is for Klout to set up an account for you in the first place, whether you approve it or not.
Thanks for listening,
Danny.

As an addition to this, my friend Lucretia Pruitt had a great idea. Simply have a page that says “This user does not wish to be profiled by Klout, and we respect his/her wishes.” And for that user, don’t allow the option of being pinged by people on Twitter to check their Klout score, nor be invited to Klout itself.

I know there are many people for whom Klout is incredibly useful. I know there are also many people for whom Klout is just a bit of fun, or something they want no part in (especially when it comes to affecting your career path, based on a limited algorithm).

For these people, let them have the option of not being profiled on Klout. Then everyone is happy, and no-one can accuse the platform of just trying to boost numbers by having profiles on there that don’t want to be.

How about you – what would you suggest Klout does better when it comes to people who have no interest in being on their platform?

Update: As of November 1st 2011, there is an Account Deletion option in the Klout dashboard. Finally.

image:?remuz