There’s been so much talk about the accuracy, value or benefit of social influence scoring tools this past year; most of it about you. What does it do for you? How does it impact you? How do you game it? What’s your score? And that’s how social influence businesses like Klout like it. Keep the focus on you.
Their game is to play on the vanities of individuals, which is fuel for their “service” and bank roll. The longer and harder you play their game the more money they can generate by selling access to you. Good ole American ingenuity. In fact, they also love those who claim to “not care” because by not caring (especially when you secretly do), you don’t opt out. And by not opting out, they will continue to use your online activity and persona to make money by selling them to advertisers.
But this post is not about you (I know, don’t be too upset). The debate I’m surprised no one is having is the value (or lack thereof) of the information collected, parsed and presented as real market data by Klout for Brands? Businesses are paying top dollar to access the real influencers, which Klout claims to be able to identify but are their clients getting their money’s worth?
The #bizforum video debate experiment continues at New York City’s Internet Media Labs by exploring this topic with Ric Dragon, the author of Social Marketology and Fred McClimans, Managing Director of the McClimans Group.
What are your thoughts? Do you believe Brands are getting their money’s worth by paying for access to the Klout-annointed? Businesses have been successful at influencer-outreach programs pre-Klout but the criteria, manpower and human intuition that went into these efforts seem to have given way to the short-cut of online measurement tools.
Is this just a short-term gimmick sucking ad dollars from brands or is it a legitimate customer acquisition strategy for marketers?
Agree/Disagree? Get in on the debate via the comments below.
Sam Fiorella – Sensei
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego