Like it or not a personal brand is something that follows you wherever you go from your personal life to the work world and beyond.
It’s the combined information (Internet postings, social media updates etc.) about you that shows up when someone searches online.
So it probably makes sense to figure out how to make your brand the best it can be. 5 steps to take this weekend to boost your personal brand: 1. Define your tactics: Ask yourself: What do you want people to find when they search for you online? Someone they’d like to …
Hire: Then focus on optimizing your Linkedin profile (and not just to get it to Linkedin’s 100 percent complete status, but adding images, videos, examples of your work etc.) Consider using other channels too: A blog to demonstrate your knowledge, Pinterest boards to demonstrate any visual work and interests, and Twitter to share your work and to network without the barriers of Linkedin.
Get to know: Start by picking three platforms to focus on that will allow you to tell your story. For example, if your interests are sports, travel and reading consider creating boards on Pinterest for each of you specific interests.
2. Define yourself: Develop a short description of who you are, what you believe in and what you do best. In other words: How would you tell your online audience why you’re the right person to work with or connect with? This two- or three-sentence statement is for you, but should guide how you describe yourself - everywhere.
Be sure to describe what makes you different from other people with the same or similar expertise. If you’re not sure what that is, do some research on well-known people in your field. Observe what they do and adapt it to your own way of doing things. 3. Define your expertise: What particular skills and knowledge do you want to be known for? Who do you hope to connect with? Determining what makes you unique helps you understand what sets you apart from crowd on the Internet. Your areas of expertise define who you are and what you do. They should be included in your social media profile descriptions and should include your main keywords. 4. Define your approach: How will you use various social media platforms to advance your brand? For example, will ...
You only use Linkedin to post things relevant to your career or will you also post a few things that show some of your personality?
Facebook be strictly for people you’ve met in real life or consider personal friends?
Twitter be a place to share industry news and find new connections?
You use a scheduling tool such as Hootsuite or Buffer to schedule posts to maintain a regular social presence or will you post organically as you find interesting material?
You use tools such as Empire Avenue, Kred and Klout to monitor your efforts and guide your progress?
5. Define your success: What will success look like to you?
Making lots of online connections that become in real life (IRL) connections?
Enhancing your current job/career?
Getting a better job?
Whatever you settle on set some future calendar reminders to look back at what you’ve done. Then decide which efforts are worth continuing and which should be dropped. Remember your personal brand is an evolving, living thing. The only thing you can do "wrong" is to ignore it and let it change, or worse: stagnate, while you remain blissfully unaware… Does this help? Will you use social media and a plan to boost your personal brand? I’d love to hear back from you. Related posts: Quality SM connections for personal branding Blogging for personal branding
With all the buzz in the past week on social media about the change in the Klout Score algorithm you might be wondering if Klout has a public relations crisis on its hands.
Seemingly across the social-sphere people who had come to place value on their Klout Score were upset that the scores had dropped suddenly - in some cases significantly. (For some background see Klout Changes ... Scores Drop and Complaints Rise)
Curious about whether Klout was facing a PR crisis I turned to my friend Jim Reynolds, the Strategic Accounts Manager, Social Media Solutions at Alterian - a company that among other things offers SM2 , a social media sentiment monitoring tool.
He ran the reports and, in a nutshell, Klout has upset a relatively small, although possibly influential, cadre of its users.
The details
Jim pulled reports for the time period Oct. 20 through Nov. 1 that focused on the term "Klout Score" to examine such things as total searches, sentiment and where the conversations were taking place.
First he looked at total searches. There was a big spike in searched on Oct. 26 and 27 (the day the change was implemented and the day after that). But by Oct. 28 it was down to half of the peak and by Oct. 29 searches were back to normal levels.
Then Jim examined sentiment. He and I were surprised to see that in the timeframe of this report almost 79 percent of the mentions were neutral, almost 11 percent were very negative and almost 10 percent were very positive.
Next up was a look at the number of searches by day. During the spike in search Oct. 26 and 27 the numbers of neutral, very negative and very positive results mirror the above sentiment rankings and the total number of searches (around 7,000 per day at the peak) are what Jim described as "a lot for Klout, but not a lot for a brand." He cited Home Depot, which typically gets more than 8,000 every day.
Then he looked at which countries might be seeing the most interest in the topic and hands down it was in the United States with more than 30,000 results. By contrast, the next highest total was that of Canada where there were 1,213 results.
Conclusion
I asked Jim for his expert opinion as to what all of this means for Klout.
"It’s a lot of people in social media talking about something in social media," he said, going on to say this this is unlikely to be a PR crisis for Klout.
In terms of sentiment Klout has a relatively small percentage of a relatively small group who were "extremely negative."
The hard thing to judge, according to Jim, is how much influence or reach the individuals making "extremely negative" comments might be. Given their relative small numbers and their relatively short-lived interest Jim thinks Klout will be OK.
So, what do you think? Was all the discussion around the change to the Klout Score just a "tempest in a teacup" or will there be public relations consequences for Klout in the future?
Questions and criticisms have been swirling around the changes to the Klout Score this past week. I decided to post some questions to Joe Fernandez, CEO of Klout. He was traveling so Megan Berry, Marketing Manager at Klout agreed to step in and answer on behalf of Klout.
Her response is below. It arrived Friday (24 hours after she offered to answer the questions) by email and as a comment – cited here - on a previous blog:
Hey Mike, As I mentioned, I was getting you the responses to these questions. I was in the process of drafting them when I saw this post so I sent them to you in email just now and I'll also post here:
1. Some of the criticisms of the new Klout are that it is not transparent enough. In other words you made changes that altered scores in some case by 20 points, but have not given explanations about why those changes were so dramatic. What do you say to this criticism? Hey Mike, we announced the upcoming changes the week before with Joe's post on why we believe the change was needed and we also had a post on the day of announcement explaining the changes. As you know as someone in the field, social media is constantly evolving and as a measure of your influence there, we need to evolve as well.
2. A quick, early analysis seems to show that those who have linked all of the accounts Klout currently allows users to connect have kept their scores relatively the same or now have higher scores. This would seem to penalize, for example, non-iPhone owners who cannot have an Instagram account of those who blog on something other than Tumblr or Wordpress. Your response? Hey Mike, we measure influence equally independent of network. Lady Gaga, for instance (http://klout.com/#/ladygaga), is only measured based on Twitter and has one of our highest Scores. You do not need to connect multiple networks to have influence but if you do influence on a network, it will help you to connect it (we can then give you credit for that influence).
3. One of the themes in the criticisms is that there could have been an “old Klout” and a “new Klout” or “Klout+” as a way to allow users to decide how serious they wanted to be about their score. Your reaction? Hey Mike, do you mean letting people choose which scoring system they want to use? Technologically it takes a lot of infrastructure to process 3 Billion pieces of content and connections daily so apart from any other concerns having 2 pipelines isn't feasible in the long term. We are always looking to move forward and improve, we think once people look at these scores in context and get a chance to see the improvements they will grow to like them.
4. Another prevalent criticism: It seems the new Klout Score penalizes people who are genuinely involved with others on social media regardless of their influence scores versus those who are selective and only “talk” to high influencers. This seems to encourage a new form of social media class snobbery. What are your thoughts? You are never penalized for talking to people with lower scores. We believe * everyone * has Klout and anytime someone takes action based on your content that adds to your influence. Yes, if they have a higher score, that adds to your influence *more * but either way we give you credit for that and you are never penalized.
5. Twitter and Google+ have been full of people saying they have or will rescind permissions for Klout in protest, the *OccupyKlout and *KloutPout hashtags have cropped up. Can Klout survive and thrive this reaction to what you consider a big improvement? We definitely are working to listen to feedback and are always improving. We believe once people get a chance to interact with our new scoring system they will grow to understand its improvements.
So, how did Megan do? Did she answer the questions you have?
So the changes at Klout Wednesday, I’m sure, have made for some exciting if not exhausting days at Klout. And, as I’m sure you are aware they have caused some people to get upset. I have followed Klout with interest since the beginning and feel compelled to chronicle these changes and the reaction to them. I blogged Wednesday about the changes to Klout and how hard it might be for some to accept them. Now it occurs to me that a lot of criticism of the changes might be "cut off at the pass," as they say, if you were to publicly answer a few questions.
Before beginning my college teaching career I was in journalism for 26 years and so I’d like to offer you the chance to answer these few questions and then I will undertake to publish them with the answers in a Q&A format today. ….
The questions are below. Thank you for your time.
1. Some of the criticisms of the new Klout are that it is not transparent enough. In other words you made changes that altered scores in some case by 20 points, but have not given explanations about why those changes were so dramatic. What do you say to this criticism?
2. A quick, early analysis seems to show that those who have linked all of the accounts Klout currently allows users to connect have kept their scores relatively the same or now have higher scores. This would seem to penalize, for example, non-iPhone owners who cannot have an Instagram account of those who blog on something other than Tumblr or Wordpress. Your response?
3. One of the themes in the criticisms is that there could have been an "old Klout" and a "new Klout" or “Klout+” as a way to allow users to decide how serious they wanted to be about their score. Your reaction?
4. Another prevalent criticism: It seems the new Klout Score penalizes people who are genuinely involved with others on social media regardless of their influence scores versus those who are selective and only “talk” to high influencers. This seems to encourage a new form of social media class snobbery. What are your thoughts?
5. Twitter and Google+ have been full of people saying they have or will rescind permissions for Klout in protest, the #OccupyKlout and #KloutPout hashtags have cropped up. Can Klout survive and thrive this reaction to what you consider a big improvement?
NOTE: I did get a response from Megan Berry, Marketing Manager at Klout saying Joe Fernandez is travekling and could she answer my questions. I said "yes, of course." Since then? Crickets.
Now I’m sure everyone at Klout is extremely busy right now, but shouldn’t someone be answering these questions? Somewhere public?
So, what do you think? Should Joe, or someone else from Klout respond to these questions and others the Klout community has?
Klout, the online social media influence rating service, made some big changes today that are sure to have people talking.
The changes, earlier described by Klout CEO Joe Fernandez as a "the biggest improvement to the Klout Score in our history" are likely to tweak many who use the service.
"This project represents the biggest step forward in accuracy, transparency and our technology in Klout’s history," says Ash Rust, Director of Ranking at Klout on the official Klout blog.
The changes include a more-detailed look on the Profile and Dashboard pages.
What’s the biggest change for most people? Officially, the Klout line is that scores will now be easier to understand. Unofficially many have seen their scores fall – in some cases significantly. Although Rust says this won’t be the case:
"A majority of users will see their Scores stay the same or go up but some users will see a drop," he says on the Klout blog.
But a quick check of the comments at the bottom of that blog post and comments on the Mashable story about the same subject indicate many scores dropped and some dropped significantly.
My favorite comment? From someone called Dolpher:
"I think Klout just pulled a Netflix... Most people have experienced big drops. Any bit of insight into human psychology would state that in general people do not like to see their 'worth' drop sign..."
Another … this from Peter Alderliesten:
"Some scores seem not to have been influenced at all, others seem to be totally 'devastated'. To keep faith/trust in this scoring algorithm, I think Klout should explain the scoring system more fully. Transparancy maybe? "
As with all change it won’t be easy for users to accept. The big question is this: Will the changes stick? In other words will people stay with a service that just knocked them down a few – or in some cases many – pegs?
I WILL influence you! Wouldn’t social media be turned on its head if simply stating this made it so?
Well, to read some of the debates about social media and influence (and in particular about tools that claim to measure influence) you might think that the whole concept of influence is new and somehow unique to the social web.
But in reality influence (and here I use the term in the sense as defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as "the power or capacity of causing an effect in indirect or intangible way") has always existed. It’s just that in the open, transparent social web there are now many ways to attempt to measure that influence.
Tools such as Klout, PeerIndex, Hubspot’s Grader tools, Tweetlevel and EmpireAvenue can all lay claim to measuring some of our digital footprints across the social web and how those footprints may (or may not) influence others to follow our lead or otherwise act.
The mere availability of these tools is not what is getting folks riled up. No, it’s that some people are publicly admitting to using these tools to make potentially life-changing decisions such as hiring or business relationships.
And this leaves me, Dear Reader, with a dilemma when it comes to advising college students: Should they or should they not pay attention to these scores?
Adding to the debate/confusion/concern are a number of recent writings:
For example, Stephanie Rosenbloom in her New York Times June 25 piece Got Twitter? You’ve Been Scored Begins with: "Imagine a world in which we are assigned a number that indicates how influential we are…. This is not science fiction. It’s happening to millions of social network users. "
It goes on to quote Azeem Azhar, chief executive of PeerIndex: "We’re at the start of this journey and we expect the journey to take us into much more nuance and granularity."
It then quotes Mark Schaefer of Schaefer Marketing expressing concern "that we are moving closer to creating social media caste systems, where people with high scores get preferential treatment by retailers, prospective employers, even prospective dates."
Then Schaefer, a social media commentator and adjunct professor of marketing at Rutgers University stirred things up with his July 20 blog post The making of a social media slut where he worries that "An algorithmic measure of influence can never tell the whole story, but it seems that it is starting to become a quick and easy indicator of … something."
The blog is worth a read for its rumination on what the scoring of social presence might mean. But what’s particularly worthy of a read are the comments which, range from "Wow. I feel like I'm back in high school and trying to fit in with the "cool kids" to "If any of those kids had sent me a Klout score, they would have gotten the job."
The debate got so hot-and-heavy that Schaefer felt he needed to comment on his own blog a few days later. His comments are insightful:
"One of the common responses in the comments is that Klout is flawed and even stupid. I can imagine a similar reaction from people who went to see the first silent movies. "This is stupid. The people don't even talk." Similarly, social scoring is in the silent movie era. Klout has millions in VC money and a dozen PhD researchers figuring this out. It is going to get more accurate, more meaningful every day. I'm not defending any company in the field. I'm simply offering a suggestion to be aware of the TREND, not the data point."
Then on July 26 social media author and internationally known speaker Chris Brogan weighed in with his blog post Influencers where he first advises: "Please stop worrying about your Klout score, or your stock price on Empire Avenue and on all kinds of other measures that don’t have much to do with anything related to your real world."
Before refining his point in answer to a comment: "It's like that line in the Social Network: a million dollars isn't cool; a BILLION dollars is cool. Or however they said it. To me, having a high Klout score isn't cool; having the ear of important people that shift things is cool. : )"
Again a comment war raged on this blog – and is worth a read.
So where does this leave me in terms of advising students?
I think I have to come down on the side of: "Be aware of these tools and what they say about you, but don’t spend your days trying to game the system and raise your scores."
So what do you think? Has social media evolved to the point where measuring each other’s activities with a numeric score makes business or hiring sense?
Got Klout? In social media 2011 is turning out to be the Year of Klout.
The service that began in September, 2009 has rocketed to the front of the pack of tools that attempt to measure overall influence across social platforms.
So what is Klout? It takes social network data and measures the likelihood that each user’s connections will act upon anything that user shares on their networks and then calculates the influence of those connections and their ability to cause actions. In other words it tracks online influence and gives each user a ranking on a scale of 1 to 100.
Initially Klout measured its users’ Twitter and Facebook influence, but 2011 has seen some big changes:
Early 2011: Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome offer add-ons: This allows users of these two browsers to instantly see the Klout score of all the people in their Twitter stream.
May, 2011: Launched a new section on the Klout website highlighting Klout Perks. According to the company’s blog: "Klout Perks are exclusive offers or experiences, given as a result of your Klout. Perks allow brands to connect with influencers in their area of expertise."
Jun 1: Introduced +K: This is a way, as Klout explains on its blog, to augment the data captured by Klout. The tool lets Klout users vouch for their peers’ influence in topics Klout has associated with each user.
June 14: Added Linkedin data to the influence score because with 100 million users of the professional network Klout said it believed adding Linkedin would make for a more accurate overall score.
July 12: Announced its data is in high demand: Klout says that it served more than two billion API calls in the month of June – or four times the demand of three months prior. This means large numbers of services are now seeing value in pulling Klout data.
July 14: Announces that Foursquare is now integrated into Klout scoring. According to a Mashable interview with Klout CEO Joe Fernandez adding Foursquare "is the start of an aggressive process from Klout to add more data sources and granularity to the Klout scores."
And possibly in the near future?
Google+ integration: According to a July 20 post on Klout’s official blog the company has "already started work on ways to assess your influence on Google+"
More on Klout: • For an example of how Klout stirs passionate debate over the whole topic of measuring social media influence check out Mark Schaefer’s The making of a social media slut blog post (especially the comments area).
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