Walter Adamson

Klout Perks launches in Australia - I got Perked!

I was going to write a more meaty post today but checking my email this morning I found one from Klout offering me a SIM card from Red Bull Mobile Australia as a Klout Perk. I was intrigued, and seems it is new in Australia.

Red Bull MOBILE is giving key Australian influencers a Ticket to the World of Red Bull.

You are receiving the perk because you are influential and have authority on topics related to the perk. You are welcome to tell the world you love the perk, you dislike the perk or say nothing at all.

So I'm surprised to find I am an influencer. Klout looks for "influencers" on topics related to the offer. I'm not sure what my relevant topic is as I only come up under "social media", "business", "consulting", and "cloud computing". Or maybe there were so few members in Australia they just sent to everyone above a certain level - say Klout of 50?

It seems that Klout Perks have been around for more than a year, but not in Australia. It's a logical idea.

The key to success for Klout is to attract the advertisers and also to have confidence that the Klout "topics" are in fact able to meaningfully segregate. For example I've seen many people with topics like "Australia" or "Japan" - they seem a bit broad.  For example, by looking at the Red Bull Mobile website I'm not sure I am really in their demographic - me being a baby boomer? But OK it worked at least I'm talking about them!

It's also interesting to ponder why Red Bull choose this Klout Perks path, as it's little known and I wonder how many people are "Klout active" in Australia. Based on my recent observations it seems that people ARE becoming more active on Klout - I'm not sure why this is happening.

The Klout offers come with "best practice" guidelines for touting the offer to your social web friends - the Influencer Code Of Ethics, which include this:

If you decide to talk about the perk, we will ask you to disclose that you received a sample.

Please check out the Red Bull Mobile offer, and I did receive a sample - well actually I have not received it yet, I have applied for it.

To be honest I don't really need a calling SIM card, I need an iPad data SIM card! But I signed up hoping that they may have been really out-of-the-box thinkers and would give me that option - which they did not! I was also curious about how Red Bull Mobile is going about their launch in Australia.

By using Klout they are showing some innovation, so what else are they doing in social media?

If you know what else Red Bull Mobile are doing in social media please comment below.

See my Question on Quora.

Please check my topics on Klout and confirm my influence on those you choose, thanks.

Want to know how to increase your Klout score? See this Answer on Quora.

Please comment below.

Walter @adamson
http://xeesm.com/walter

Social Shift: Brian Solis move to Altimeter signals consolidation in social media firms

Brian Solis has a Klout ranking of 78 and Klout generates this summary of his Twitter status:

Brian Solis is a Celebrity You can't get any more influential than this. People hang on your every word, and share your content like no other. You're probably famous in real life and your fans simply can't get enough.

So when this message appeared in his Twitter stream it caused a flash of reponses:

News: I've joined @charleneli @jowyang & the team at Altimeter Group http://bit.ly/dNON9b about 12 hours ago via web

The responses were mostly congratulatory, but the thinking behind the scenes, as from @axels for example, was about the forthcoming consolidation of the social media consulting industry.

Is the the first big signal of that consolidation?

Almost certainly - YES!

Brian Solis refers to his reasons in his post Flying to a Higher Altitude with Altimeter Group and here are three that signal the shift to me:

1. The move of "social media" to "social business" and then to just "business" and therefore business strategy. That's accelerated as leaders understand the pervasive role of "social" in their cross-functional business plans.
2. Because of point #1 it then becomes a complicated path to execution - the gap between strategy and execution as Brian Solis says. To execute requires advice and assistance from business consultants with a wide range and depth of experience, the least of which may be "social media" per se.
3. Developing strategy and implementing it, in a complex organisation with breadth, depth, people, existing processes, politics, legacy, and everything else requires a well structured consistent set of methodologies and training built around those and applied consistently. These methodologies, or frameworks, are also a basis for continuous improvement - an important requirement in bigger enterprises.

As I read it, Brian Solis' move to Altimeter is to consolidate these capabilities, among others.

The new consulting firm

You can think of it as building a new "McKinsey" from the roots of social business consulting - branching up into business and strategy. Strategy consulting itself, as a standalone field, has become very difficult. McKinsey itself has extended its reach and range into more execution teams, and into operations and measuring as examplified by their JV with Nielsen NM Incite.

Therefore blending a touch of good strategic thinking capability, with execution and operational experience in social media, with good methodologies and training, and a critical mass of people able to sing to this same hymmbook, and you have the new consolidated social business group.

Why aren't the global "agencies" the natural winners in this race?

For one because agencies and "creatives" usually rebel against the "straight jackets" of methodologies and the details of complex execution. The shift is to business strategy/innovation + project managemennt/execution, not creativity + campaign.

For another reason, their scope of activity is usually firewalled to the marketing or sales group. That's a severe impediment in terms of the forthcoming shift and where the power axis for social business will lie in the enterprise. It's not bad news for agencies, their role will just continue as it is today, in essence.

Do you believe that Brian Solis' move signals a consolidation trend?

What will be the nature of the consolidated firm?

Who will be the clients who most seek these firms - the issues to solve?

Walter @adamson

Five fundamentals fall one short - social media strategy

Socialsmart expands on 5 Fundamentals for Companies Looking at Social Media about social media marketing, and the explanations are good in themselves.

The post does however fall a bit short, since we believe that the "fundamentals" are quite different and are based on comprehensive social media planning and implementation methodologies. That's a bigger topic, and in any case the answers to the questions posed at Socialsmart are good guidance.

In particular #4 - It's your story - it needs to come from you - is a particularly important one, since quite a few agencies see themselves jockeying for contracts as "social media outsourcers". That's a mistake, and the post gives a good explanation. In any case, it's very transparent where agencies are doing that for customers today and it just brings a fake and non-transparent air to the whole exercise. 

You can see this issue in the community sites for several major Australian brands who have obviously outsourced to their agency.

The real point which I wanted to make, is that while "you need to know who your customer is" (point #1 of the post), which is what would typically be used in an online marketing design – persona-based market segmentation - it's not necessarily the best approach for social media.

The social media is different in that:

1. you need to know in which places and spaces your company / brand / products / services / competitors are being discussed i.e. a Social Media Assessment; and,
2. you can identify real people talking about real issues and you can determine how influential these real people are. 

By using this knowledge you can be far more effective than standard “marketing” person-driven analysis. Effective marketers need to hone their tools for the media at hand.