So you got high Klout score… so what

With the emergence of social media “experts” popping everywhere and some are aggressively flaunting their Klout scores to intimidate their potential clients and friends, I feel the need to do a breakdown of how this works.

Here is a little bit of a preamble, I appreciate Klout and I have advised some of my friends to use Klout as one of MANY  tools out there to analyze how they are doing on Twitter.  It is a good tool if you genuinely are interested in authentic engagement but Klout isn’t perfect, nothing is.  If you really want to, you can game Klout to get a high score.

Here is how you game Klout:

1) Engage with people who have high Klout scores, people like @hummingbird604 @jason_baker @kempedmonds @vancitybuzz and ignore people with low Klout score

2) Ask controversial questions or ask for RTs, for example “What do you think about #charliesheen?” or “I love iPad 2, RT if you agree.”  BONUS: If you exploit trending topics and tag people, it increases your score even faster because it forces people to respond.  As an example, “What do you think about #charliesheen? @hummingbird604 @vancitybuzz @kempedmonds @jason_baker”

3) Run contests on Twitter, pony up a few hundred bucks.  Heck even 50 bucks will get people excited.  “Win $50 bucks, just RT to enter”

4) Campaign people to follow you and make them feel guilty if they don’t.  BONUS: Once they follow you, you unfollow them because you score higher if you have more followers than followings

5) Tag everyone in your tweets so you get on their radar in order to achieve #4, for example “Nice to see you tonight @hummingbird604 @vancitybuzz @kempedmonds @jason_baker @more influencers”

You don’t have to add any particular value and still have high score because Klout relies on an algorithm that most definitely take into account of reach, amplification and network.  If your “network” are people with high score – well it thinks you are somewhat of a big deal.  Begging for RTs give you amplification because you are reaching other people’s network, it doesn’t take into account that you are paying for this reach with contests or because you applied social pressure by tagging people making them obligated to response. If you follow a few influencers, pressure them to follow you and engage in conversation with you then you achieve a high true reach score.

There are people like @hummingbird604 @vancitybuzz @kempedmonds @jason_baker who have achieved high Klout scores because they genuinely engage, they care and they provide value for their followers and you can tell from their interactions on Twitter.  Then there are those who game Klout to flaunt, intimidate and make other people feel inferior which is NOT the purpose of social media.

To them I say, “You can game Klout but you can’t game people”

Posted via email from Virtual Assistants

Tool Tuesdays: What time is the best time to tweet?

One of the big questions right now in social media is what time is the best time to tweet?  There are a few ideas out there.

Guy Kawasaki mentioned in his blog post, “Looking for Mr. Goodtweet:  How to Pick Up Followers on Twitter”

Tip 9: Repeat your tweets. Try this experiment: take your most interesting tweets (as measured by how many people retweet them, perhaps) and post them again three times, eight to twelve hours apart. I used to think that people would complain about repeating tweets, but I’ve never had a complaint. My theory is that the volume of tweets is so high and most people check in at about the same time every day, so people don’t notice repeat tweet

Read more: http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2008/11/looking-for-m-1.html

Dan Zarrella, HubSpot’s social media scientist did some studies and found,

I noticed that retweet activity tended to peak around 4pm EST, suggesting that this might be the best time to tweet a blog post for maximum potential retweet reach.

 

When I looked at retweet activity over the days of the week, I saw that they peaked later in the work week, specifically on Friday.

Read more: http://www.problogger.net/archives/2010/12/06/whens-the-best-time-to-publish-blog-posts/

This all make sense but for social media to truly be social, I think the goal is to engage with my followers and a blanket approach is a good starting point but to really create a relationship, it has to be customized to my own followers.   That’s not to say I don’t tweet on Friday at 4pm EST and repeat the good tweets so more people can see it.  I believe in the Dan Zarrella’s science and Guy Kawasaki’s practical experience, I would never ignore hard evidence but I also want to make sure I understand MY own followers.  In comes, Timely which is aptly name for a service whose sole function is to schedule tweets for maximum impact.    It’s pretty simple when they break it down on their front page, so simple it provokes a DOH why didn’t I think of that and did that myself kind of reaction.  The magic is in the simplicity of Timely.

You add your tweets, it schedules to tweet out the tweets according to the time it thinks will produce the most impact – impact is defined as increase in retweets, mentions and followers.  The science of it is it analyzes your past 199 tweets and figure out the best time slot, it learns as your following grows.

Timely does absolutely produce results it promised – there is an increase in retweet, mention and retweet per tweet.  My only problem with Timely is, if it schedules consistently the same time I might miss out the opportunity to reach out to new followers to build relationships with people who operates outside of the time frame that yields the most impact.  I don’t solely rely on Timely, I use it to tweet quotes mostly.  I read and share all my links mostly live.   Even just figuring out what time is your most optimal times to tweet is very interesting, if it’s just for the sake of knowing but I believe in knowing what times to tweet also tell you a lot about the followers that engage you.

I hope you find Timely useful, if you have used Timely let me know your experience.  If you are going to start, pop back in at some point and let me know how it went.

Note: These are tools I have used for a substantial amount of time (> 2 wks) and have found useful for me, this is not a paid post and paid is defined as money, swags, free dinner, t-shirts, pens, free coffee, gift certificate… absolutely nothing!

Read more: Tool Tuesdays: What time is the best time to tweet? | The Social Network Hub http://www.thenetworkhub.ca/vancouver/2011/03/01/tool-tuesdays-time-time-tweet/#ixzz1FZJk9NvS

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Tool Tuesdays: How not to forget ever again… well almost never

Have you ever read an email or suddenly remember someone’s name but you don’t know how you know them?  You search your emails but if you are like me, sometimes your emails provide more confusions than clarity, especially if your email thread is a continuation of something discussed in person.  I host a monthly networking event for Vancouver Entrepreneurs with between 100-160 people attending each events on top of the numerous events I attend monthly, it is very difficult to remember every one I cross path with.   But I believe very strongly in making an effort to remember people’s name, what they do, how we met, where they meet and any other information they were kind enough to share with me.

Before it was writing notes behind every one’s business cards the specifics of the meeting and whatever I think is important for me to remember about the encounter.  NOW, Greplin is in my life.  Greplin is my very own social search engine.  No I’m serious, my very own because it is linked to my Google Apps Mail, Google Apps Calendar, Google Apps Docs, Facebook, LinkedIn, Gmail, Twitter with BaseCamp, Google Reader, Salesforce are coming soon.

Right now, Greplin has indexed about 273, 258 documents that I have produced in term of emails, status updates and calendar entry. All you have to do is type in a name, a place or bits of information that you can remember in the search bar.   You can filter the information to files, places, events, messages, or narrow down to the channel of communication – gmail, facebook, linkedin, etc.

The powerful thing about Greplin is that it also fills in the gap of information about the person, place and events with also search engine results – this is where all the search engines want to go except they can’t because we value our privacy too much to give it up.  If you feel uneasy about what Greplin will do with your data – read their simplified privacy policy.  I went through it and I feel very comfortable allowing Greplin to  index my information but that’s me, you have to do your due diligence.   It has helped me connect the dot and helped me put the best foot forward in the next meeting.   I was one of the fortunate few that got to be an beta tester last year but since February 17, 2011.  It is now open to everyone.   Give it a try after doing your own due dilligence and I hope it will help you too!

If you have used Greplin, let me know about your experience with it.  Otherwise, leave any questions or suggestions you have in the comment section, thanks!

Note: These are tools I have used for a substantial amount of time (> 2 wks) and have found useful for me, this is not a paid post and paid is defined as money, swags, free dinner, t-shirts, pens, free coffee, gift certificate… absolutely nothing!

Posted via email from Virtual Assistants