Are you a mover and a shaker? Legendary in your own mind? Or, like the Kardashian sisters, have your legions of friends, fans and followers willing, able and ready to act upon your every brand recommendation in a social post.
Does your VIP card get you everything you want at the airport lounge or should you as a digital debutante, be afforded an ever increasing list of services and products based on your potential to influence your follower base?
Klout announced recently, Facebook information will now be factored in with your Twitter account data revealing your overall influence as a measurement of influence and your ability to create a desired action by others online.
The premise of the score is based on and takes into account metrics such as retweets, follower counts, list memberships and unique mentions to calculate everything from who influences you to your “true reach”, another Klout metric.
How Klout and their platform partners via apps will leverage your influence remains to be seen but clearly now is the time to gain and create influence on social platforms both as individual and as a company.
Who Doesn’t Want To Be Viewed As Important
The old adage, it’s more important to be nice, than it is to be important, will always hold true. More than just being the loudest voice or someone with celebrity status your ability as an individual to move the masses as brands try and tap into your social realm will garner more and more sponsored relationships between high value social individuals and companies.
Who wouldn’t want to be the first kid on the block with the newest shiniest widget or gadget from a company that knows you will potentially laud praise and adulation on their latest and greatest offerings?
Twitter paid sponsorships have existed for a while with a couple of companies showing varied success. I signed up for an account with one of these companies months ago and even though I have a reasonable Twitter following have never earned dime one for a sponsored tweet, indicating the threshold for inclusion to be pretty high, as Guy Kawasaki earns about $7 per sponsored tweet with over a quarter million followers.
Bottom line is folks with influence should and will try to benefit financially from their relationships they have created. There is a delicate balance of maintaining status and influence combined with hawking a companies wares in an individuals conversations, while not generating follower burnout.
Social media and social product mentions/links is way different than Tiger Woods wearing a red golf shirt with a Nike logo on the shoulder as a brand endorsement and product placement.
Creating desired behaviour and actions. Pay me on a scale based off my reach influence when someone clicks on a sponsored link I have placed in a tweet, status update or blog post.
Membership Has It’s Rewards
Klout data has already been used to offer online influencers perks, including free Virgin America flights and free tickets to events. Seanward put together a song and Youtube video “I dont’ represent anyone’s brand well, and now I’ve gotta pay for my flight like everyone else.”
In the following video entitled “Talkin’ Social Media Blues” Sean looks and disects the social media landscape with a humourous bent and Klouts role in social media maven creation.
Frankly, I want perks! I appreciate it when my patronage is recognized at certain bars and a three second pour turns into a five. Disney has a whole concierge setup to let families move to the front of the line on certain rides based on their paying for the service but also their membership usage. If by checking in on FourSquare, my Mayorial status gets me a discount on a Latte, all the better for me. Not to get all Marsh, Marsha, Marsha on you, but seriously, I really do appreciate recognition and value discounts based on my previous purchases.
Leveraging the check in. Coupons at the point of sale on my mobile for instant redemption rock!! Better yet, find me an open table at my favorite restaurant when I show up without a reservation, I am the Mayor after all.
Talk the Talk, Walk the Walk
More than just spewing on and on about a brand or product once or twice, linking corporate and Reward Strategies for high performance influencers is a new direct marketing initiative. Companies should recognize my life time value as a customer and reward me accordingly as measured by my online activity and brand engagement as I turn people on to a companies brands from the following metrics.
- Product Mentions
True story, Shaun in our office talked about Pop Chips for a couple of weeks last month on twitter before they teamed up with Klout. Every couple of days in the afternoon he would go on and on about it being his favorite new snack. So, a couple of weekends ago I found myself at Costco with the kids at the free sample station and low and behold there was Pop Chips. We tried them, but more importantly, we liked them and bought them. Two bags by the way, as the kids really liked them!! Now all Shaun tweets about is Pop Chips to support his habit.
Thanks Shaun for the great snack recommendation. Someone at Pop Chips should send Shaun a free box or two becuase I know he has now turned on 40+ people in our office to the delightful snack and I cannot look at his tweet stream anymore 😉 lol With 650 followers on twitter Shaun has a ways to go with catching up to Guy Kawasaki but Shaun has influenced Overdriver‘s more than Guy regarding Pop Chip consumption.
- Location Check-ins and behaviour generated content
Hi, I am at ……. How many times have you seen that on a tweet stream or now with Facebook places?
Are you and a freind at the same place at the same time? Before bumping into each other would have been considered kismat. Now with Facebook places and 4sq your chanced meeting is no longer subject to only chance encounters. Points systems and customer retention programs based on Return visitors, frequency, recency, conversion rate, revenue distribution, new and return visitors distribution is a great set of KPI’s and tactic to grow returning and loyal site visitors. Clearly the more someone visits a location in a given time frame and makes purchases the more valued and desirable the user. Reward accordingly!!
Behavioural segmentation divides customers into groups based on the way they respond to, use or know of a product. Finding the influencers and rewarding those influencers of your product accordingly is about benefit segmentation. Benefit segmentation is all about the velvet rope and requires marketers to understand and find the main benefits customers look for in a product or service. In some instances price points or free stuff will be a consideration for the user and in other instance moving to the head of the line is the golden ticket.