Here is the deal.  Social Media is an undeniable force.  Is anyone even talking about anything else?  Nope, not really.

I went to a Competitive Edge luncheon today where a panel of tourism industry experts regaled us with “How To Operate In the New Norm”.  They talked about team building, communicating with your employees, looking toward the future, networking in industry groups and…You guessed it, Social Media.  I could sit here and list off a handful of examples where I attended a luncheon and was lectured on the importance of Social Media.  I won’t bore you with the details, I think you get it.

So why am I blogging on this blog?  Well, I have been tasked with telling you, the fine readers of Don’t Drink The Koolaid Blog, how I, Megan Capizzi, convinced my employers that Social Media was an important avenue for Seaport Village to explore.  And to be honest, it was a gradual process.  The folks at Bailey Gardiner sat me down and said, YOU NEED TO WRITE A BLOG.  How awesome.  I LOVE reading blogs!  I was really excited about it. I could finally talk to the Seaport Village “customer” the way I had always talked to my friends and family about my job.  I would get to divulge the behind the scenes stuff!  What my favorite store was.  Where I liked to sit and people  watch.  My favorite lunch item at Edgewater Grill  (on days I’m not working of course) – coc0nut shrimp and a Mojito, in case you were wondering.  I was finally going to get to shout from the rooftops my love for Seaport Village.  And by shout from the rooftops I mean unleash my blogs onto the Internet.

Where I saw awesome opportunity and a two-way conversation, my company saw… well, a two way conversation.

Them: “What if they say something bad about our parking?”
Me: “Then I will remind them that we are the cheapest parking in downtown!  I will give them the parking tips they need to know!”

Them: “What if there is a complaint about a store?  And it is on the Internet for everyone to see?”
Me: “Then I will help right the wrong!  I will be the connection that that customer is looking for.  I can help!”

Them: “Are you sure?  You will monitor it…”
Me: “Yes! Yes! Yes!  This is going to be great.  Let’s give it a chance.”

And to their credit, they gave it a chance.  And from that, Boardwalk Betty was created.  Boardwalk Betty is Seaport Village’s social media persona.  She has gone on to create a Facebook, Twitter, Flickr & YouTube account.

I believe they gave it a chance because they believed that our product, Seaport Village, was and is a quality product.  We take pride in our little shopping
center on the water.  We want our customers to be happy.  And let’s get serious, our customers are vocal about what they like and don’t like.  Why would we not be a part of that conversation?  It is a privilege to be part of that conversation!

After everyone saw how wonderfully Boardwalk Betty and all of her blogs were being received- we were actually getting comments and feedback, hooray!- we moved into the Facebook and Twitter arena.  Similar apprehensions,  but there I was again, “People are talking about us!  People actually really love us!  Let’s make them love us more.”  These were my cheers when I put on my social media cheerleading outfit.  I wish I had a picture of that outfit, because it’s cute and cheery.  But that is beside the point.

Now, not only does the company allow me to “run with it” they are applauding my efforts.  They see the valuable conversations that are being had, the community that is being created.  On top of that, I encouraged our stores & restaurants to get on board.  We now have 14 stores on Twitter and 24 stores who have individual Facebook Fan Pages.  The conversation between the stores alone is amazing.  The cross promotion opportunities, endless!  Social media- undeniable my friends, undeniable.

So my suggestion to you, if there is apprehension in the upper ranks, ease ‘em in slowly.  Start with something that you have a lot of control over, like a blog.  You control the content and monitor the comments then hit ‘em with the big guns- FACEBOOK!  TWITTER!  The benefits are overwhelming and if done right the results will be undeniable.

PS- While I would like to take all the credit, I have to admit that Bailey Gardiner played a gigantic role in getting Seaport Village on board the social media train.  I owe them a million thank you’s for all of the support and guidance as we navigated this new and exciting territory.

Megan Capizzi is the Marketing Manager at Seaport Village in San Diego. A client of Bailey Gardiner’s for four years, Megan has overseen Seaport’s advertising, public relations and now social media campaigns.  She runs the Seaport Village Blog as well as their Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube accounts.

Most informed agency leaders will agree that a big part of what our clients want, and are willing to pay us for, is our thinking. We bring years of experience, coupled with tactical knowledge and creativity to marketing challenges. So why is it that so many agencies are willing to give it away for free?

Over the past couple of months we have been told by more than one new business prospect that while they love our creative thinking and want our experience/approach, they are having a tough time making a decision because the other agency(ies) have given them a complete plan, and of course, we have not. What?! A complete plan? From the one hour conversation they (maybe) had when they were asked to pitch the business, they have enough insight into the company, its brand promise, its customers, competition, and goals to present a plan? Folks, I call BS.

Really experienced CMOs/Marketing Managers will know they are getting a cookie cutter approach, since it isn’t really possible for that kind of strategic development in the 7-10 days they gave as a deadline for an initial proposal. Unfortunately, there are lots of people making decisions about hiring an agency who know very little about marketing and even less about how agencies work.

I am tired of competing for business with agencies that don’t even respect their time or intellectual capital enough to get paid for it. People, you should get paid to write a strategic plan. I know times are hard, but if you set the expectation that you will just give away your thinking in order to get an ongoing retainer, you not only hurt your own revenue stream, you hurt the reputation of an entire industry.

In particular (since I’m on a roll now), we see this in social media pitches. Since most agencies have very little experience in social media planning or management, they have developed a cut-and-paste approach. Take one part Facebook, one part Twitter and insert client name in the blank. There is very little customized or original thinking happening. I believe we are going to start seeing the carcasses of that type of approach all over the business landscape.

It’s too bad too, because social media presents loads of opportunity for the PR industry. But only if we use our smarts and don’t treat it like another tactic to be added onto a long list of “to dos.”

Linkedin is a great website to find tailored job listings and potential employees, but the social network is often overlooked as a potential new business tool and a platform for personal branding. With more than 60 million users (80 percent of which have a college degree) Linkedin allows people to re-connect with past business connections in a professional setting. Even more importantly, Linkedin puts an emphasis on introducing you to people you need to know and gives you the place to have an expert voice in the industry in which you work.

In order to help you use Linkedin in this way, we’ve put together a list of some of our best practices for creating a Linkedin Profile:

• SEO Make yourself searchable. If your purpose for a Linkedin profile is to use it as a networking or new business tool, include key words that will enable people to find you.

• Link your blog to your Linkedin profile. Applications to link your blog posts to your profile such as the Wordpress app are great tools for this. Doing this will also help you get more views for your posts.

• Have a complete profile. Fill out all the areas- specialties, expertise, job role, education, etc. You will appear credible to people who don’t know you well if your profile is complete. Be sure to add a picture of yourself.

• Personalize the message in the invitation box when inviting someone to your network. This will show others you are personable and hopefully make them want to interact with you. Hopefully this will lead to a recommendation in the future.

• Use conversational tone: If acceptable by your industry, use conversational tone while maintaining a professional standard. Using a conversational tone makes you seem “real.” Uptight resume-speak makes you seem unapproachable.

• If you receive a recommendation, reciprocate. Recommending a connection may end up in a job lead or new business venture in the future and it’s likely you will receive more recommendations if you are willing to give them out.

• List your websites properly. When editing your profile, change the title of your website or blog to appear descriptively and searchable on the Internet. For example, change “my website” to “Bailey Gardiner-San Diego PR.” The second title is much more explanatory than the first.

• Include only relevant experience. Do you think your advertising colleague cares about your summer camp counselor job way back when? No.

• Customize your URL. This goes back to SEO. A customized URL makes your profile easily searchable and easy to remember if hearing it via word-of-mouth.

What else do you recommend? How do you use your Linkedin profile?

If you happened to be on Twitter this weekend and follow the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (@LACMA) you may have thought their account was compromised – and you’d be correct. With tweets stating such things as, “My new sculpture is displayed in the 2nd floor men’s room. It’s made of feces & shaped like a big poo. #Rainn,” it’s hard to imagine that the institution’s director gave the thumbs up on a free-for-all of tweets. However, there was a method to the (sometimes disgusting) madness. It was actor, Rainn Wilson’s turn to take over the Museum’s Twitter account for the weekend as part of “Cell Phone Stories,” a summer-long “series of narratives and essays circulated exclusively via mobile phone technology.”

As a new initiative for LACMA, the series is overseen by artist, Steve Fagin.  Wilson is among the list of writers, fashion designers, artists and critics all scheduled through September 6 to mix things up on Twitter.  Though Wilson’s specific series was titled “I Hate LACMA” and his tweets offered a list of reasons to never go to LACMA, he happens to be a member of the Museum and has spoken highly of the institution.  He also happens to be a major player in the Twittersphere, with almost 2 million followers on his own account.  While I can respect an institution that doesn’t take itself too seriously, I’m still a bit baffled at how his tweets would lead to foot traffic. I suppose if anything, Fagin must have been optimistic about a new set of eyes and followers carrying over from Wilson’s to LACMA’s account.

If I were to plan a Twitter hijacking for one of my clients, here are the items I’d check before approving:

1)  Audience: who are my donors, supporters and greatest demographic? Will an initiative such as this lead to quality content my current followers will appreciate?

2)  Sample tweets from appointed “guest” tweeters: There needs to be some control over the content and the director should probably be aware of what to expect, both from the guest tweeting and the reaction of the brand’s current followers. Art writer for the popular blog Modern Art Notes, Tyler Green, put this stunt on the worst idea of the weekend, saying LACMA should have pulled the plug early on.

3)  Goals for an initiative such as a Twitter Hijacking: Is LACMA looking to stir things up and create controversy to gain publicity? Are they trying to drive foot traffic and sales? As noted in any other social media guides we’ve provided, always have a clear idea of your goals and objectives.

Do you think LACMA’s onto something allowing guest tweeters to take over their account? Or do you think, even with an increase in followers and interactions, that this may hurt the institution’s reputation over time?

I just had the opportunity to do some travel in Italy, and although I was there primarily for the pasta and wine, I am still a marketer at heart – and that’s hard to shake off, even on vacation.  What struck me about Italy was the lack of advertising and branding messages everywhere – we are so used to being hit with them from all angles in the States. But I can’t tell you how many times we met some nice Italian local who said “I know a guy who know a guy, and he can get you…”

Clearly, word of mouth marketing – the original form of advertising – is alive and well.  Perhaps this kind of communication was born in Roman times, and has smartly persisted throughout the ages as Italy and the rest of the world have modernized.

Nowhere was I accosted by brand-mania.  Althought there were occasional ads in the areas where we traveled, there were no roadside billboards, no digital signs in the airports, no poster ads above the urinals.  Yet both locals and visitors were clearly conducting business, referring customers to various locations, and communicating the benefits of particular products and brands.  All by talking.  Animatedly.

One great example was presented in a restaurant along the coast, where the simplest way to advertise the daily specials were to just show us.  Luigi, the owner and proprietor of the restaurant, brought around a platter of fresh caught fish to each table.  He told us what kind each one was, how it would be prepared, what kind of wine would be best served alongside. Very effective.  And delicious, I might add.

In another town, shops marketed their handmade local specialties by putting a few in baskets outside on the street.  As we walked by, we saw something that interested us and the shopkeeper picked up on that interest, nicely told us about the products we were eyeballing, and we were drawn inside the store to buy.

The concierge at our hotels became preeminently important people.  They deftly directed us to fabulous restaurants, wine and cheese shops where we could find the best of Tuscany, and where to get the best deal on gasoline.  Their word became fact for us, and we followed every recommendation.  No tourist magazines, no bus side ads, no peel downs or page take overs. Just one-on-one recommendations.

And when in doubt, we just asked someone along the way.

There’s something to learn here about the simplicity of direct communication. Maybe those Ancient Romans weren’t famous only for their aqueducts and gladiators…. perhaps they are also the original social networkers.

With BlogHer ’10 Conference starting this week, the women of the Internet, especially the “mommy bloggers”, are getting excited for the big trip to New York City, and you can bet that companies around the globe are getting excited over having all these influential women in one spot at one time.  But even if you are not planning on attending the Internet’s largest MNO (Moms Night Out), you can still effectively market to this ever-growing group.

Think of it this way: Moms are known for giving advice.  From baby-rearing to cooking dinner, your Mama definitely has an opinion that she will give regardless of if you asked for it or not.  According to Technorati, 70% of bloggers organically talk about brands on their blogs. From restaurants to dishwashing detergent, 46% regularly post about brands they love or hate, while 38% of them do proper, brand-pitched product reviews.  That’s a lot of advice-giving going on. Being a mom, and a blogger, I’ve come up with the top three things a brand can do to effectively market to this outspoken group.

Give them something to talk about
While many Moms online may not be “expert critics”, keep in mind neither are many of the people reading most critic’s articles. Can you tell when your local restaurant adds a pinch too much cumin to your entree? Probably not, but you can sure tell when your waiter is rude or your food is cold.  And the tale of both stories may get that restaurant equal amounts of attention.

Mommy bloggers want a good story, they want an experience, they want a picture to post that makes others out there think “Oh, how cool is that?! I want to do that too!” Brands obviously want to be mentioned with a good story– but remember that stories and experiences that are not good also get a lot of attention. A great example of that is last year’s Dooce vs. Maytag conflict. An outspoken woman with a huge national following gets a lemon of a washing machine that keeps breaking while she’s trying to wash clothes for her newborn daughter – great story for Heather Armstrong, but disaster in the making for Maytag.

While that is definitely the extreme case scenario, it’s a good thing to keep in mind. When going after a mom blogger, try and give them something positive to talk about, something to brag about or something that they can’t wait to tell their readers about.

Respect them as you would other audiences
Like Maytag has now learned, never underestimate the power of a blogger you are reaching out to. If you think a blogger has only a local, niche release, think again. With the majority of bloggers on Facebook and Twitter, you can never be sure which particular post will get picked up on Digg, re-posted and re-tweeted. Treat every blogger as you would treat CBS Nightly News, with respect and professionalism.  With that also comes doing your homework. Just because someone is a self-described “mommy blogger” doesn’t mean she is still your target audience; a mom who writes about her teen sons is probably not the best person to pitch for the latest trend in disposable diapers. Read past posts, and get to know the blogs and the writers that you are pitching.  When you do pitch, point out past posts in your outreach or why you think this particular story or product will be interesting for them. Keep in mind the wrath of an overtired, cloth-diapering Mama on a rant can generate a lot of negative attention.

The Truth About Gifts
Where your research will also be important is seeing who takes but maybe not gives…or perhaps who gives too much. While the new FTC guidelines impose rules on disclosure of gifts, it can’t make a blogger tell the truth about a product, nor does the FTC require a blogger to write about products that they receive.  Putting it in basic terms, everyone likes to receive things for free – and some will talk each gift up for days just to continue to get free things. While it’s not a bad thing, it’s something that a brand should monitor. You want someone to genuinely be excited about your product – not just excited to get something.  When researching the blogger, note the previous reviews and make a careful decision before handing out your goods. Also, make sure that you check to see if that blogger has a disclosure and review policy posted on their site.

While seemingly simple, many brands seem to forget these basics when going after parent bloggers. When in doubt, just remember to be professional, respectful and polite – just like your mother raised you to be.

In the past, we’ve given quite a few tutorials on how to best utilize Facebook or what to measure when reporting on Twitter, but we haven’t really broke down our recommendation for how to go about creating a fully-integrated, well-researched social media campaign.

While it may seem we’re going to back to basics, this list of to-dos can also be applied when you feel that your current social media strategy is getting stale.  I also believe that it should be integrated into your social media plan to reevaluate every six months to ensure that you’re best utilizing your social media budget.

1)  Right off the bat, when beginning a new campaign or revamping, you’re going to want to spend some time listening – where are people talking about your brand?  What platforms are they using?  What types of feedback are you getting – good or bad?  What confuses people and where can you implement customer service to streamline the process?

There are numerous tools to use to measure and evaluate your brand mentions.  Social Mention, Google Buzz and Vocus have all incorporated a tool where you can either log in or have an email sent listing all the platforms that are mentioning your brand (by keyword).  You may find right off the bat that the all-encompassing Facebook strategy you’ve been working on isn’t actually where all the chatter is about your brand.  Perhaps your customers are still using forums to talk about you.

2)  Now that you know where people are discussing your brand, what’s the chatter surrounding your competitors.  What’s interesting is organizations that you may consider your greatest competitors may have no social presence whatsoever – this makes for an even greater opportunity for your brand to capitalize on.    You also may find there are organizations that you had no idea were competitors.  If their campaign is successful, there’s no harm in incorporating some of their successes into your own campaign – just make sure to make it your own.

3)  Once you’ve done your research, it should be clear what platforms you should be using to speak to your current customer base and if it makes sense to join additional networks.  While numerous companies will only focus on Twitter and Facebook, think of what your brand offers.  If it’s a consumer product or service that you find customers don’t know how to use, perhaps YouTube is a platform you use for tutorials.  Are most of your mentions coming from FriendFeed or a particular blog or forum?  Perhaps start there and once you’ve established a presence there, let your customers know that you’re also on Facebook and Twitter and have your own blog.  If you’re looking for foot traffic, create a social loyalty program with FourSquare.

4)  While you may want to dive right in and begin making updates and tweeting to your loyal customers, you should first create a six-month plan and outline goals you have for social media: Do you wish to increase sales on-site?  Do you wish to increase website traffic?  Or are you hoping that you can give your customer service phone line a break?

Once these goals are outlined, the rest of your plan should be fairly simple to fill in.  I can’t stress enough how important it is to have quality content on your pages.  If you insist on having a presence, make it a strong one.  Before you begin interacting or creating your own Facebook tab with FBML, bullet out what initiatives you have monthly, and always check back to remind yourself of your overall goals.

5)  Measure, analyze and report your findings, both successes and failures, to learn what works and what doesn’t within the realm of your brand’s offerings.  Gather screen grabs from fans and followers raving about your social media campaign, or a conversation you had online convincing an individual to visit your venue.  When your client asks for the value of social media (which they will), these will be key in demonstrating the power and value in a successful social media campaign.

Do you think there are any other basics companies should remember when creating or revamping their social media plans?

So here’s my thing with social media measurement – there are like 40 programs out there claiming they can help you measure social media, and not one that actually measures any of the things our teams are reporting on. Every single one of these tools aggregates tweets and blog posts about your brand and then graphs mentions of you and your competitors. But in my opinion, that is such a small, small piece of the puzzle and says nothing about how your social media strategy is directly increasing revenue. Here is my problem with this as a measurement of success for your social media strategy:

1. So there’s a lot of chatter about you in SM - How is that a reflection of your social media campaign? Was there a lot of chatter about your brand before you began social media? Could it be that the chatter is a result of a great PR hit, a new product, a new ad campaign? Is the chatter even really about you? How much of it is spam, or a misspelling, or an unrelated mention? Is it positive, neutral, or negative? Measuring overall volume of social mentions is interesting, sure, but it doesn’t actually tell you anything about how the dollars spent on your social media campaign is influencing your customers spending habits. Rather than a measurement of social media strategy, I see these tools that measure the volume of online chatter as a separate (albeit related) function of online reputation management (and one that should come with its own budget line item).

2. Comparing your share of voice to your competitors - Again, how is this a reflection of your success with social media strategy? So what if your competitor is getting 1,000 more tweets than you are. Are they doing anything about it? Are they engaging with these people? Perhaps they are receiving higher chatter because they are just downright more popular. Social media isn’t magic. If your company isn’t well liked then that will be reflected in a competitive analysis of the social space. Again, there are just too many variables at work here for it to be a true measure the success of your social media strategy.

Alternatively, for social media strategists, I’d  recommend creating a  social media audit (something we’ve done for several our social media clients) and updating this on a semi-regular basis. In this audit you identify top competitors and what these companies are doing in the social space. Then analyze the level of engagement they receive and the tactics they employ. This will give you direct insight into the changes you can make in your own programs and the success that these competitors are seeing as a result of their actions.

3. Finally, my biggest beef with these tools is that what they report are all things we have to gather anyway in the day-to-day execution. In order to run a successful social media campaign you have to be paying attention on a daily, real-time basis to info directed to you, about you and about your competitors. We have various team members set up searches for terms (everything from our client’s name to broader searches like “things to do in San Diego”) and these people are tasked with assessing the needed level of engagement with what they find. Having a tool that I have to log in, and then sort through tons of spam isn’t efficient. Furthermore, when I run these searches directly in Facebook or on Twitter or in Google blog search, I don’t need to switch screens to respond.

Oh yea, and all these manual searches are free.

I feel that I should re-iterate that I think all of these tools are useful, I just don’t think they fall under the umbrella of social media strategy or reporting. I think these tools help with a larger analysis on company success. Additionally, I think that capturing this data should be part of a larger online brand/reputation management (complete with influencer outreach programs, blog comment strategy and quarterly reports to R&D about the online perception of your products and services). Is there overlap, yes. Is this something you can squeeze into current social media campaigns/budgets? In my opinion – no.

So what is it that I do want? I want a tool that helps save me time measuring the success of my strategy. A tool that actually speaks to ROI. I want a tool that easily aggregates everything I am measuring to show the direct result of the actions we are making in the social space. Specifically, I want a tool that pulls everything in and then makes graphs for me.

I want something that pulls in my number of fans, followers and visits to our blog. I’d like to see the number of comments, wall posts, fan photos @ replies, DM’s, RT’s and lists without having to login to each account to capture. I want a tool that auto refreshes Klout score and includes Tweetreach functionality to show the possible Twitter impressions per month. I want a program to pull from Google Analytics to tell me how much traffic came directly from Facebook and Twitter and I want it to tell me how many bitly click-throughs I got per month. Essentially I want all of this to happen without me, or anyone on my team, having to log in and count over and over and I want it all to happen in ONE place. For those few measurements of success that I may never be able to have aggregated (eg. number of redemption from social media contests) I’d like a tool to give me the functionality to add in these few exceptions and then auto graph them. This tool, a dream tool, would simplify reporting the amount of direct engagement with your brand, the increase of traffic attributed from social media, and the money spent as a result of a comprehensive social media strategy. I believe this tool would be a true measure of the success of your strategy, specifically, and could help agencies prove why their social media strategy services are valuable.

So, what do you think. Any programmers up for the challenge? Any social media marketers think they could use a tool like this?

We have many opinions and blog posts at Bailey Gardiner about Foursquare. Most people get the basics of how to use the tool to check-in and how companies are getting creative with Foursquare offers. I’d like to continue the conversation on this tool, by sharing some of the new functionality that Foursquare has unveiled since its launch, as well as, a few of my Foursquare don’ts.

New functionality for users:

1. Find out what is “Trending Now.” By simply looking at the “Places” around you, you can see where the people are. These don’t have to be your linked “friends.” For example, I just saw that Hash House is trending. There must be something great going on there today, maybe I should check it out…
2. You can now see who is “Staff” at any given venue. If you are a marketer, and you manage a venue, you can mark yourself as staff and therefore users know the venue is being managed by someone and that the company is engaged in social media strategy.
3. The “History” section got an update. You can now easily add a category to a venue and see which of your friends checked in at the same venue.
4. The sign-up page was re-designed, making it even easier to sign-up and to see who of your Twitter followers and Facebook friends are using the platform. The ease of this new sign-up form is likely part of the reason Foursquare has seen such a huge growth in users, recently hitting the 2 million user mark.
5. Users now have the ability to opt-out of being a part of the business dashboard. For those who want to keep their check-ins private to business owners, they have that option. However selecting this would be a detriment to many users as they  may be unable to capitalize on special offers/promotions.
6. When you check a venue on the site, you can no longer see the profiles of those who have recently checked in. Now Foursqaure only reports a number, a move that is in no doubt meant to have users feel like their privacy is being protected.

So what do all these changes mean for marketers?

Trending now, accessibly to staff members, improved history, easy signups and upgraded privacy, all make for a better user experience, and are all part of the reason the platform ms growing so exponentially. It’s important for us as marketers to be aware of these changes and adjust our strategy. (Hint, you can no longer tweet at just anyone who checks into your location.)

Foursquare Check-In Here Window Cling, courtesy Foursquare

It is also more important than ever to claim your location with the Foursquare team, so that you’ll have access to the additional analytics provided by the business dashboard.

Finally, from a fulfillment stand-point, it is good for marketers using Foursquare specials to keep an eye on the growth of the platform to ensure they are still able to fulfill their offer. As Foursquare becomes more and more popular, special promos may have to be adjusted or simplified.

And last but not least, some Foursquare don’ts:

As the platform continues to grow and evolve, we’ll see more and more newbies jumping on board. If you are just getting started, here are a few of my Foursquare Don’ts.

• Don’t use your home address to check in. Let’s avoid crazies and stalkers.
• Don’t cheat. Only check-in somewhere if you are really there.
• Don’t auto-sync with Twitter. Don’t clog your Twitter stream with where  you checked-in. Leave this feature as a manual selection so that you can Tweet something about your check-in when it is appropriate.
• Don’t auto-sync with Facebook for the same reasons as above.

If you are involved in social media marketing, you are used to the deluge of new “must-try” tools on a daily basis. For me, Klout was just another one of these tools. Neat. You check your score and then move on. However, recently I decided to delve a little deeper, and I discovered that it’s actually an incredibly useful tool. And apparently, I’m not the only one.

So first off- What is Klout?

Simply put, Klout measures your level of influence on Twitter. The scores range from 0-100 and a higher Klout score represents a wider and stronger sphere of influence. Klout takes into account 25 variables (the details of which are kept a secret) in assessing a Twitter handle’s ability to drive people to action (e.g. reply, retweet or click-through). It aims to show how effective a person or company is at engaging their audience and how big of an impact their messages have.

But Klout does more than just give you a score. It also tells you who you are influenced by and who is influenced by you, the topics you are most influential on, and what percentile you are in compared to other Twitter users. For those using the tool to report Twitter success for clients, it charts your growth and shows your top RT’s and links.

Best of all, Klout is pretty darn reliable. To test the tool’s accuracy I ran our teams’ and clients’ handles through the program to see if my perception of people’s/companies’ influence would roughly align with Klout’s. For the most part, it did. I was impressed

And so, Klout became a part of my life. And as I’ve used it more and more, I’ve discovered there are three distinct ways to use Klout.

How to use Klout

1. Personal brand strategy – Sometimes we spend so much time working on our company’s Twitter handles or our clients’ handles that we let our own personal handles take a major backseat. However, we are missing a big opportunity here. How helpful is a RT of your company’s handle if no one is paying attention to you? Look at each section of the Klout report and make changes accordingly. Hint: If your score hasn’t changed in a while, scroll down to the bottom of the page to refresh your score every once in a while.

2. Social media metrics – Include Klout into your social media metrics reporting for your company or your clients. Personally, I’d feel comfortable allowing it to take the place of counting the numbers of RT’s, @ replies, bit.ly click-throughs, lists etc. All of those aim to show growth in Twitter influence and all of those are included in Klout’s calculations. Using this tool could save you bundles of reporting time. Note: even if you aren’t ready to use it as a replacement, it is an easy addition.

3. Identifying and rewarding influencers - a couple of early companies have already figured this out and created programs based off incentivizing influencers with high Klout scores. Virgin Air was one of the first to launch a program like this when they gave away free flights to select people with high Klout scores. I expect we’ll be seeing more of this as the tool continues to evolve.

So how about all of you? Anyone using Klout regularly or planning to launch a Klout rewards program sometime soon?