This is a guest post by Jessica Edmondson.
Global brands have long clamored for the attention and approval of the most-influential celebrities, bloggers and journalists. In the past, you may have known these folks as “movers and shakers.” Now, they’re just as likely to be called “influencers,” their relative level of importance determined by score-keeping sites such as Klout, Kred and PeerIndex.
If you participate in social media, chances are you have a score, too—and it can affect your life in ways you didn’t even realize.
When you create content or engage in social media, these sites are analyzing your activity, gauging who interacts with you and measuring your influence:
So, what does all this mean? Companies recognize the importance of engaging with customers through social media. Now they have a way of measuring social influence.
The Pros
Marketers can cater to influencers by giving them more attention and rewarding them for their loyalty. Just as famous actors and athletes get paid to endorse products or receive free clothing, social influencing sites give companies a way to grant perks to everyday folks—as long as they have high scores.
For example, if you have a high Klout score, you might enjoy:
What’s in it for businesses? Buzz: that valuable word-of-mouth advertising from people others listen to. Offering special treatment to social influencers means creating powerful brand advocates. For many companies, free products, all-expense-paid trips and invitations to exclusive events are small prices to pay.
The Cons
Social influence measuring tools have limitations:
Social influence measurement feeds users’ egos and is a goldmine for marketers. As a result, it’s becoming a bigger part of the social media scene. More sites are jumping in, trying to improve upon Klout’s algorithm. And as long as there is a return in it, businesses will continue to woo influencers who have created a niche in which their content—and clout—spreads quickly.
This guest post was provided by Jessica Edmondson who writes about social media training and internet marketing training for the University Alliance, a division of Bisk Education Inc.
Editor’s note: At Lightspan, we see influence scores as social indicators, but we are convinced they are more social games than true measures of influence. Do we pay attention to influence scores? Yes. Do we make big efforts to increase these scores? No. The scores are too easy to game through repeated mechanical actions, and as a result we discount them as true measures of influence. On the other hand we want all voices, opinions and ideas on our blog. So we welcome this post and any others on the topic. Just email Mana [at] lightspandigital.com with your guest post idea.
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