RyanShell.com

Marketing, public relations, social media... and a little of this and that.

Every Tool should have a Purpose

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Tumblr has been the rage for a while now and it seems to continue picking up steam. It’s simple. It’s fast. And… it’s very very easy.

From brands to bloggers, it seems like everywhere I turn someone is saying, “check out my new Tumblr page.”

Speaking of bloggers, I was recently having a discussion with a group and a girl mentioned that she was now using Tumblr and then said, “Updating all of this stuff is about to kill me.” So I naturally said, “If you’re feeling overwhelmed why did you start using Tumblr?” She then said, “Because it’s the hot new thing and everyone else is using it.”

I know you’d never start using a new tool because of the “all the other kids are doing it” mentality, but it was interesting to hear this play out with someone that wasn’t a marketer.

No matter if you are a casual blogger or a top tier marketer, every tool in the toolbox should have a purpose.

Facebook Questions is big for Brands

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Facebook Questions is, without a doubt, important for brands and businesses in general.

Brands that have focused on building a community within Facebook can now put said community to work to get swift, direct feedback from their audience.

Facebook Questions

Yes, there are other Q&A sites already up and running (Ex. Quora) and companies like Wildfire have polling applications, but my thinking is that Questions is going to offer benefits and features that other services haven’t/can’t offered.

For example, Wildfire is known for building good tools, but they typically require access to personal information via the “Applications Permission” box that sketches people out. Questions doesn’t require that step – it just works.

It’s going to be interesting to watch how brands utilize the power of Questions and to also see if this feature is a wake-up call for those that have only seen Facebook as a place for status updates and photo/video sharing.

The Deets on Klout

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I wrote the following article for IFB, an organization dedicated to helping fashion bloggers succeed. The article is remotely high-level, but is a good overview on what Klout is, and the fact that it’s not the end all be all decision maker when it comes to influence.

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Ever since Klout was mentioned on stage at the Independent Fashion Bloggers Evolving Influence Conference (some) fashion bloggers have been trying to figure out what Klout is, and what kind of impact it will have. This post will give you a high level understanding of Klout, and what it should or shouldn’t mean to you.

Before we go any further and you start worrying about how high or low yours score is, there’s something I must say. Engaging your readers and followers and putting out great content… those are factors you should worry about, always. Win in those areas and your Klout will rise.

What is Klout?

In short, Klout is a new company that is assigning users of social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) a score. Without getting overly technical, Klout uses a set of complex algorithms to give you a score from 1 to 100 (higher the score the “better”) that brands can utilize to measure influence. Specifically, they utilize three categories to determine your score.

Klout Categories

With brevity in mind, I’ll keep the definitions for these three Klout categories relatively simple.

  • True Reach – the size of your audience that is actively engaged with you.
  • Amplification Probability – the likelihood that your messages will get shared (Ex. RT on Twitter, Like or Comment on Facebook) and generate conversations.
  • Networks Influence – this is the measure of how influential your followers are and is the hardest of the three categories to control.

Combined, these three categories use more than 35 variables to determine a Klout score, some of which include (this get’s a bit nerdy): Followers, Mutual Follows, Friends, Total Retweets, Unique Commenter’s, Unique Likers, Follower/Follow Ratio, Followed Back %, @ Mention Count, List Count, List Followers Count, Unique Retweeters, Unique Messages Retweeted, Likes Per Post, Comments Per Post Follower Retweet %, Unique @ Senders, Follower Mention %, Inbound Messages Per Outbound Message, Update Count, List inclusions, Follower/Follow Ratio, Followed Back %, Unique Senders, Unique Retweeters, Unique Commenter’s, Unique Likers, Influence of Followers, Influence of Retweeters and Mentioners, Influence of Friends, Influence of Likers and Commenter’s

Does the Score Matter?

Rather than ramble on with more technical jargon, let’s address how this score impacts you as a fashion blogger.

  1. If you have no desire to work with brands and are simply having fun with blogging, your Klout score won’t matter much to you.
  2. If you aspire to monetize your blog you need to pay attention to your score, as it is one of many elements brands may potentially use to analyze you, as a good fit for their marketing needs.

If you are a 2

If you relate to number 2 from the list above, yes, it’s true that you should pay attention to your Klout score (to an extent). It’s also very important that you not get caught up in sending X tweets per day and sweating when you don’t get Y retweets per day.

For my day job I’m one of those marketing folks that will, at times, need to find influencers for certain categories. When doing so I’ll check a person’s Klout, but I also look at a variety of other factors before listing someone as an influencer.

Things such as the quality of content you distribute and the type of brand ambassador you have been/could be plays a big factor when adding people to an influencer list.

Does Size Matter?

Keep in mind that Klout measures influence, and a person with 400 followers that causes his/her audience to react can easily be viewed as more influential than someone with 5,000 followers that never react. The size of your audience doesn’t guarantee a high Klout score; it’s all about influence (causing action).

In the End

Klout measures influence, but what was said towards the beginning of this post should be what influences you, “Engaging your readers and followers and putting out great content… those are factors you should worry about, always. Win in those areas and your Klout will rise.”

I hope this post has in some way shed some light on Klout. If you don’t know your Klout, but want to, click here to get started.

Foursquare’s New Recommendations Feature

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Since moving to New York City last year I’ve come to appreciate sites such as Yelp and many others that provide feedback on places to eat and things to do. That being said, I’m kind of excited about the latest enhancement to Foursquare.

Foursquare 3.0 is out, and they’ve stepped up their game a bit by introducing a recommendations feature that’s based on an individuals previous check in behavior, and their friends check in behavior.

The image above is the first screen you see when clicking the “Expore” tab in Foursquare. At the top of the image you’ll see various things that you can choose to search by: Food, Coffee, Nightlife, Shops and A&E.

For this example I clicked the Food icon to see where that takes us.

This screen explains that Foursquare is recommending locations nearby, and highlights that each recommendation has an explanation for being included. Take note of the different food options at the top.

After scrolling down I can see that Energy Kitchen is nearby and that a couple of my Foursquare friends have been there in the past.

I don’t know about you, but this seems like a great enhancement to the mobile app, especially when it comes to exploring the city you live in, or playing tourist somewhere else.

Driving with no Hands and Flying Blind

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I’ve noticed a growing trend for a while now, and after friend asked me a question related to the issue last night I felt like a blog post was needed.

The Issue

Many organizations that are utilizing social media don’t have a clear plan of attack. They know they want to use it and have created all the “right” accounts, but they don’t have anyone running the show. And when someone is running the show, let’s assume that’s Marketing, they don’t talk to other departments to create a common message and to achieve goals.

That is a broken system and it flat out doesn’t work.

The Solution

My friend from last night informed me that his organization recently hired a new head of Marketing position, and that this individual is trying to run the digital show, which is my friend’ territory.

He wanted to know if I felt this person should have a say so when it comes to digital and I knew the answer he was fishing for, but that’s not the direction I went.

Allow me to elaborate by using my friend’s organization (very large and has high revenues) as an example. They are known for making fly-by-night decisions and never seem to have anyone giving a clear direction, at least that’s my view from the outside.

I told him that the individual in this new position shouldn’t necessarily be the person calling the shots on execution (because they aren’t the “expert”), but they should be able to make sure messaging is on point and that all divisions are working together to achieve a common goal.

If an organization has a Marketing Director and PR Director, the two individuals have to make sure their teams are communicating and not having one go left while the other goes right.

That may seem like common sense to you, but I’ve seen examples where Division A says “Division B handles that and it’s not something I’m worried about.” It’s tragic to witness such a breakdown in an organization, but that’s what happens when you don’t have someone bringing “the team” together.

In the End

It has to be realized that digital isn’t Division X’s “problem” and that it isn’t “owned” by Division Y – it’s something everyone should have some sort of ownership in and understand the importance of this exploding communications channel.