I recently attended a seminar and a lot was said about Klout.com and how to use it to grow your social presence... so I thought I would find out some more  (My score is only 23, looks like there is some work to be done!)- Wilna 

Clout Vs. Klout: They're Not The Same, And Never Will Be
Guest post written by Tony Greenberg

Tony Greenberg is founder and CEO of RampRate Sourcing Advisors.

There’s been a lot of noise lately about Klout, which creates a single numerical value designed to encapsulate your online influence.

Marketers trying to connect with social-media “influencers” love this idea of One Number to Rule Them All. Klout explicitly tries to emulate for individuals what Google’s PageRank system does for website reach and reputation.

But lots of people complain vociferously about Klout, even as its corporate partners dish out “Klout Perks,” such as free entry to events and early peeks at hot products, based on its scores. Complaints include:

• The score algorithm is opaque. You know, kind of like Google’s PageRank system.
• The system can be gamed. One skeptic used Twitter bots to artificially generate a strong Klout score with a couple of months of “work.” You know, like what can happen with PageRank.
• The system doesn’t measure off-line influence (or even most blog services). As one writer put it, Klout can’t up Marc Andreessen’s score just because the dude helped found the modern Internet. Basically, Andreessen’s clout far outweighs his Klout. But again, the inability to factor in many sources of influence is hardly unique to Klout. In fact, PageRank faces many of the same challenges.

So, Klout already has attained one big goal: it is like PageRank, except nobody complains about Google for trying to rank them (Google whiners probably would be consigned to Eternal Search Limbo if they did, but that’s another story).

“I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don’t have as many people who believe it.” – Geroge Carlin

But I’m not here to slag Klout, whose CEO says the company is constantly trying to improve. The real issue is the true nature of influence, and what that means for marketers and others trying to leverage it.

Klout outrages some in ways Nielsen, comScore or other media-measurement services never have. Why? Because, in this era of self-created media/social networks, Klout isn’t measuring some distant and massive media corporation. Rather, it’s measuring you.

In The Search, John Battelle details the Google Dance, the Darwinian tech tango caused every time Google tweaks its ranking algorithms. For site owners, such algorithmic shifts can make the difference between living on a yacht and living on the street, fueling an endless evolutionary minuet of action and reaction between Google engineers and SEO gurus.

Klout makes this tango personal. In Your Brain at Work, David Rock describes how neural circuits and brain chemicals influence our capabilities for status, connection and fairness, resulting in inexplicable behaviors such as why people spend so much on designer items, or battle ferociously to be “mayor” of the corner coffee shop.

Mix the Google Dance with the hunt for status, and you can see why Klout conjures such strong opinions. As Cloudonomics founder Joe Weinman observes, Klout combustibly mixes rational economic decisions with “lazy, hazy, and crazy” behavioral economics.

“The history of American politics is littered with bodies of people who took so pure a position that they had no clout at all.” - Benjamin C. Bradlee

But why are we online, tweeting and posting and sharing? What’s ourmotivation? Are we trying to influence others when we post about our life, or products we like, or stuff we find interesting? Are we shilling when we’re sharing?

To put it another way, is the most influential and powerful person in a room the one with the most keys (or most widely shared social-media posts), or the one who can get the most doors opened for him/her?

At the heart of these rather cosmic questions is a really important truth that a Klout score can’t quite capture: other people grant power and influence toyou. You only have influence when someone else gives it to you.. cont. 

Article from Forbes...read more 

Here’s a selection of mostly social media tips that the author picked up from World Travel Market in London this week. I have marked some that really intrigued me in RED - Wilna 








Social media’s “Dirty Little Secret” (Social data)
Sarah Kennedy Ellis – Sabre Labs

1)  Instagram is the place to be for brands – people engage with brands 40 times more on that platform than they do       on Twitter, and 20 times more than Facebook. Great for brand engagement.
2) Photos aid conversion – another good reason for making use of Instagram.
3) According to Sabre Labs research, more men submitted photos with their check-ins on FourSquare than women.
4) 60% of smiley faces and exclamation marks were used by women on check ins.
5) Amazon’s Mechanical Turk is a great research tool, eg for analysing the subject matter of a large number of photographs.
6) Small companies with small budgets can access 10% of Twitter’s feed for research purposes.
7) A good way of searching Instagram is by hashtag #.

Facebook – Future of travel marketing
Lee McCabe – Facebook

8) Facebook marketing is all about:

• Efficiency
• Multi-channel (across devices)
• Identity

9) Facebook tools include Facebook Exchange – re-targeting within one hour of leaving the website.
10) Facebook Connect – for increased conversion rate with easy one-click logging in, plus lots of profile information.
11) The travel journey includes and is helped by Facebook:

• Dreaming – is kicked off by viewing friends’ photos
• Planning
• Booking
• The experience – is shared with updates and photo sharing
• Reflecting – the photos kick off friends’ dreaming

12) Mobile’s is clearly where it’s at – an increasingly so in the future
13) 45% of the world’s population are forecast to have a smartphone by 2015.
14) For the first time, digital media consumption has overtaken TV in the US – driven by mobile.
15) There are 874 million mobile daily active users of Facebook.
16) Match the people on your CRM database with their Facebook profiles to find out more about them and connect with them.
17) Graph search is getting better at targeting hotels and restaurants that you really might like (with the help of friend recommendations).

How travel bloggers impact the booking funnel
Debbie Hindle – Four bgb

18) The traditional marketing funnel is: Awareness – Interest – Desire – Action
19) The new marketing funnel (c/o Xavier Blanc) is:

• Reach
• Engage
• Activate
• Nurture

20) Your customers don’t care about you as a brand. They care about themselves.
21) Content marketing = creating the information your customers are passionate about.
22) Example of an effective campaign is the #Feelmorealive campaign by adventure travel company Exodus – blog posts, photos, videos – lots of content by bloggers and lots of shares.
23) Another is the Liming Appreciation Society for St Vincent and the Grenadines – a group of bloggers invited to provide posts, imagery and video. 60% of searchers have viewed one of the videos before booking. The most popular post was shared 2,000 times.
24) Traditional marketing is about telling the world what a rockstar you are. Content marketing is showing the world what a rockstar you are.

Travel blogging
Keith Jenkins – Velvet Escape

25) The value of bloggers? Niche experts, personal experience, immediacy and an audience.
26) The booking funnel is:

• Inspiration
• Influence
• The Final Nudge

27) As a blogger, one photo Jenkins posted (of ice floating) was viewed 2,000 times and resulted in four bookings for a travel company overnight.
28) Bloggers are good for giving tips and sharing ideas on where to go/what to do.
29) The feedback from people who have taken their advice is invaluable for the company concerned.
30) When engaging a blogger, have specific objectives in mind. What do you want out of the relationship?:

• Brand exposure?
• Online content?
• To drive engagement?
• To grow your social media followers?
• To make sales?

31) Monitor the results of your blogging campaign by

• Using tracking codes
• Using vouchers or downloads
• Using tracking systems
• Keeping track of blogger posts

32) Agree the number of posts, tweets etc with the blogger before you start.

Nicholas Montemaggi – Emilia Romagna Tourism Board

33) Needed a way to make people more aware of Emilia Romagna, so came up with the idea of Blogville – providing an apartment for the use of bloggers from all over the world. The tag line was “Eat, feel and live like a local in Italy”.
34) Only cost to the tourist board was for the apartment – bloggers paid their way.
35) Master of the house present at all times to help and advise the bloggers.
36) Campaign carried out over 2 years – 120 bloggers and 500 blog posts, 3.8 million Twitter users reached and 700,000 visitors later…
37) Example direct benefit – a Chinese blogger went on a cooking course and wrote a post with lots of photos. The organisation who ran the course reported 2 bookings from China overnight!
38) Important: Spaghetti bolognese isn’t a real dish – it’s tagliatelle ragu! 

Lee Stuart – Caliber
39) Bloggers bring authenticity and honesty.
40) Brands and PR companies should look for focused blogs – not necessarily big blogs.
41) Look at the kind of keywords the bloggers rank for – there’ll be a ready-made audience for your product if it fits that keyword.
42) Bloggers are hyper-local.
43) They can act as guides to your destination.

Are you mobile?
44) The cost of marketing an app is going to be much more (and much more important) than building the app.
45) Tip for the future – we’re going to be seeing mobile-only companies in future.


Social media masterclass 2013
Alan Young – TrustYou

46) 81% of online reviews are positive (according to TrustYou stats).
47) In the UK, 49% of online travel reviews are on Booking.com, 37% on TripAdvisor.
48) The more reviews you have the more likely you are to benefit from them.

Debbie Hindle – Four BGB
49) Kuoni has wifi in its shops so people can check TripAdvisor when they’re discussing booking a holiday.
50) When coming up with your new holiday campaign, think about you want your customers to feel. Eg, how did you feel on your first holiday?
51) Viator have pages worth of information on each of the locations they feature. They have lots of useful stuff to keep visitors on your site and make it more likely you’ll book with them. They also reward customers with treats and rewards and have conversations with them.

Google and travel: Sharing best practice
Sarah McDonald – Google head of travel

52) Airbnb has a great guide to Brixton that gives lots of authentic, interesting information about the area.
53) The questions everyone asks themselves when choosing something.

• Is this product what it says it is?
• Is it right for me?
• Is it at the right price?

54) Video can address some of these questions. For example it can give a street view from inside the hotel and a better feel for what your hotel is and where it is.
55) YouTube isn’t as good as Twitter and Facebook at helping consumers find relevant material. Brands should take not and learn to optimise videos.
56)  An excellent site is Visit Brasil – consumers can make their own wishlists on what they want to hear about and the site will give hand back relevant information.
57)  Have a common experience across all channels.
58)  Use relevancy and urgency like the big hotel booking sites do.
59)  The journey isn’t just online or offline – there are touch-points on both for a lot of people.
60)  89% of social media users share holidays photos while away – even if they don’t share the rest of the year. Connect with them when they do it and continue to talk to them when they come back. Reach out at every stage.

NB: This is a contributed article by Julie McNamee from Webnwords.
- See more at Tnooz