Sometimes while pondering the meaning of life my mind strays to other matters, namely the state of affairs with social media. It’s in most of our faces every day and keeps many of us captive whether we like it or not. The streams of information whiz by chock full of pics of grumpy cat, words that most of us don’t say in public, news about the latest controversy or a friend in need who’s having a bad day. However, for many of us that get paid for our social media prowess, our minds go a little deeper into what’s happening out there in cyberspace. Social media continues to frazzle and frustrate us as we forge through the muck. So here's just a few frustrations:
Dear Facebook: How come we can edit the text on posts that have photos in them or posts that are text only yet we can’t edit our words when it’s a video? Folks, you are aware of the capabilities to edit, no? Suppose we could say two out of three ain’t bad. Why does Klout only have a Klout score of 85? Mashable’s score is 89; Techcrunch has a score of 95 and CNN 99. One would think Klout’s Klout would be higher! After all, they know all the workings of their algorithm. Ah, perhaps they are holding back so that they don’t look TOO good! Customer Service is an attribute associated with Klout’s K’s, yet they never respond to emails or tweets. Who are those people that give them K’s for this? Would love to know if the folks that gave Klout K’s for this have actually had communication with them and broken through the great wall of silence. Why doesn’t Kred take activity on Google+ into account for calculating your score? Certainly hoping they'll roll in a user’s activity on Google+ soon. And where is Pinterest in regards to both Klout and Kred? Oh, and Klout: Kudos to you for having Instagram included; Kred there’s another one for you to consider. Facebook, why did you change the friend request methodology so that a message can’t be sent with the request? Okay, this is an oldie but goodie that truly annoys me. Seriously, I would like to know who all these people are that send friend requests to me all the time. Could you at least message me too and explain our alleged connection? And to make matters worse, if I hit ignore Facebook is going to penalize you from friending others. There’s got to be a better way to handle introductions, Facebook! Why do Facebook users continue to use personal profiles as their business page? There is NO advantage to this; no stats, no opportunity to advertise, and you’ll run out of the ability to add “friends” eventually. For more on this see my past blog about being friends with a movie theater. Hello, Google+! Didn’t forget about you. Is there really an advantage to having a page? You don’t provide easy to access stats like Facebook does. It would be nice to have some demographics and regional breakdowns to see who is finding the page. Data on participation would be nice too. And the possibility of advertising if one wanted to do so. I suppose you’ll catch up eventually.
Neil Young had pondering on his mind when he came out with this song with rockabilly styling back in 1978 (see below). And if you're wonderin' where to learn more about social media and marketing at large don't forget to visit us at our website, or stop by on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+.
Subtitle: Be like the turkeys in the photo below and don’t stop; just keep going! A friend of mine (let’s call her Kathy) had a Klout score of 71. Not sure how she achieved that since she doesn’t tweet much, and when she does, it’s about sweepstakes. She has just over 1,000 followers. On Facebook, she has over 1,500 friends and again, posts mainly about contests and sweepstakes. Often. Apparently Klout thinks her practices are important enough to grant her a score of 71. Klout doesn’t find my tweets valuable even though they mostly consist of giving Klout, original blog posts providing the reader with marketing insights, and greetings to various followers. Oh, and I have 35,000 more followers on Twitter than Kathy does yet my Klout is presently at 66. Sigh. However, that’s not the point for today. Kathy was busy for a couple weeks; not with Klout, but with life in general. She didn’t tweet; she didn’t post much on Facebook. You already know what I’m going to say next. Kathy’s Klout score took a nose dive, down to 64.
Now, apparently, Klout doesn’t take the quality of your tweets into consideration. They loosely claim to take who you interact with into consideration though, however, Kathy rarely interacts with others on Twitter and Facebook. Yet her score was that high! So what happened to Kathy’s score? It was a quantity issue. There she was, breezing along at a good clip, with several tweets a day, then, nothing. Klout wants to see you out there on a regular basis and participating in some fashion in the world of social media. WHAT you post isn’t all that important to them. This does bring up an important point in social media. For a change, I agree with Klout on this one. You need to be consistent and build-up that momentum. And keep it up! Once you “fall off the wagon” much of your effort can slide and the build-up needs to start all over again. And in Kathy’s case, a two week absence cost her about a point in score for every two days that she was gone from social media. You’ve heard the expression “out of sight; out of mind”. In the social media realm whether you’re an individual or a business, this is true. If you’ve got momentum going, don’t suddenly stop! This applies to your activity on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram, any other social network that you are a "regular" on, and of course your blog! Little Eva sang about turkeys trotting in the early 1960’s tune (see below) and now that your momentum is picking up again DO stop and visit our For change that’s positive and refreshing, visit our website, or on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+.
Flashback: January 29. I received an email from the head honcho at Kred with this title: Add your Top 1% Kred Elite Badge to your Blog and email signature Wow! Top 1% for @modlandUSA, huh? The email itself said this:
Oh course I took the html provided and immediately displayed my new badge in all of its shiny gold colored glory on both my blog and website! However, it gets even better. I received the same email for my other biz that resides in Twitter as @groovyreflctns. This was interesting since Groovy Reflections' influence points were at least 100 below ModlandUSA’s at the time. This suggests that it's not all that hard to be in the 1% then. Oh, but times have changed. Just today, the shiny gold badge changed to the familiar green/blue combination today; and it's the same, unchanged, html! And the text within it proclaiming my crowning achievements was gone too. Of course I immediately wrote to Kred by replying to that very email. Now, if this were Klout I was contacting, I wouldn’t expect a reply. I’ve written to Klout so many times about issues and only once did I receive a reply which looked a lot like a canned response to me. However, Kred replied in about one hour to let me know they were looking into the issue.
A couple hours later I received a tweep from a Kred staffer that they were working on it. Shortly after she sent another stating the issue was fixed (and it was!)...Yes! The point is that Kred actually communicates with the users while Klout is not engaging in the least. And I have other examples where Kred has gotten back to me in a timely matter. They rock! We’re all waiting for the changes from Facebook to happen. One of my admins for the Groovy Reflections page received a rude awakening. Suddenly, there was more data about the page at the top of the page! And that’s fine; however, Facebook decided at the same time that they would cause him great difficulty if he tried to make any posts on the page!
Thank goodness we have a backup profile; he signed on to it and was able to post; no problem! Just a warning folks…if this example is any indication, we may be heading into some rough seas as Facebook attempts to steer us forward. And last but not least is Google+ and the size increase for the cover art. Bravo! Finally got around to updating all of my accounts today. It took a while because the dimensions are not the same as Facebook’s so it required some major “tweaking” and “trickery”. For example, the solution for the Groovy Reflections artwork was to add a dark blue border behind it, thus shrinking the original art to a more suitable size which allowed a little more "play" with placement:
Change, change, and more change! Somehow we deal with it all and adapt; grumbling and muttering under our breaths! Dylan sang about change in the days before he plugged in his guitar (see below). For change that’s positive and refreshing, visit our website, or on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+.
Social Networks. So many of them. Not enough time. When they don’t behave as they should, it’s maddening. Making the social network “rounds” this morning it seems like the powers that be wanted me to have a challenging day. First up was Klout. Hey, I like to give K; it’s a friendly thing to do, giving Klout to those I’ve been tweeting with for a while as well as a few new tweeps. Here's what happened when I tried to tweet a K:
Have I crossed a line somewhere and attempted to venture where no other man has gone (or woman)? Is Klout a "Forbidden Planet"? Next up was StumbleUpon, a site that has never benefited me in any way. Yet, I press on. Wanted to add one of my blog posts (have added 174 of them previously). I selected marketing as the subject matter, added in my 75 characters of key words with high hopes for the slightest chance that my blog may be found by someone on StumbleUpon some day, and hit enter.
Hello! I can't even add ONE from "this site"? Guess it’s going to remain at zero for now. Oh, and Kred has caused Shockwave to crash on my computer yet again. I think there’s a tie-in to YouTube and Chrome that enables this to happen. More research needed. Sigh.
Touchy touchy Facebook! The wrong thumbnail shows up much of the time when posting from my blog or from my Groovy Reflections website. In fact, that happened today too! Mmmmmm….that little social network Facebook? I published my take on the recent changes and someone brought up an interesting point that ties in to what I wrote above. One reader commented “Hope it all works so we are satisfied with promises of a better Facebook.” And that’s a grand thought! Now, with the Facebook changes, it was stated during their presentation that the new features would slowly roll out to users so that they could get feedback from those that receive it earlier. This implies that there will be kinks to work out! More annoyance for us all while they “tweak”. The interesting part is that they never mentioned HOW they will get the feedback. Can we submit our thoughts somewhere directly? Or are they going to search and pull out all of our whines and tales of woe using the new Graph Search feature that most of us haven't received yet? How invasive is that? And they have every right to do so. At least they haven’t penalized my friends who refer to Mr. Z as “Zukerputz”. Mmmmm mmmm mmmm mmmm. The Crash Test Dummies have been reading my thoughts! After you enjoy this classic 90's tune, stop by and hum it when visiting our website, or on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+.
What are your social media peeves? You may or may not agree with mine, and that is okay. This list is not meant to alarm or insult; if you do currently do some of the things below and enjoy doing them, then by all means, continue! On the other hand, if what I’ve said below makes you think and perhaps make a change, that’s cool too!
Retweets on Facebook…c’mon now, it’s bad enough that we have to see tweets on Facebook, let alone RTs.
Direct messages on Twitter that say “Early FACEBOOK INVESTORS got FILTHY RICH! How YOU CAN GET RICH with the NEXT TWITTER growth story now: (link)”. Yeah, SURE they did! They are still lamenting WHY they ever went anywhere NEAR Facebook stock!
Posting or tweeting strictly to improve your Klout score. Don’t do this! Just be real. No need to force it. And besides, what’s the point? That’s a lot of effort for a four pack of Red Bull.
Endlessly posting your blog and blogs from others on your personal profile on Facebook. This tells me nothing about you.
Never posting anything original. Sure, it’s easy to grab stuff from elsewhere and post it. Who are YOU, anyway?
Posting photos of yourself taken with your phone. Please. Go out with your friends and have some fun and let them take the pictures. Share the joy of your evening out instead.
Political bashing before and after the election. I would be happy to learn why you choose to stand for a particular politician instead of seeing stones thrown at the one that you don’t like. For fun, I checked on many of the accusations for both parties and found most to be false; it’s so easy to share something and accept it as fact. Anyway, we have a President; wouldn’t it be nice if we can unify this country and support him? That will make us stronger in the long run.
Politics, part 2. The issue of posting politics goes far beyond your friends. Some business pages post their opinions as well. That’s a great way to alienate about half of your fans.
Causes. From what I can see, I don’t get bombarded with posts as much as other folks on Facebook (and those are the folks who tend to have looser rules about friending). I love animals support organizations related to them. In fact, I give to several organizations that I feel personal about. When there is a tragedy, I also donate. I’ve volunteered for Habit for Humanity. Trust me folks, I care and do a lot of stuff to help others. If you really want to reach me, send a PM or email and relay how important a cause is to you and WHY I should be involved. I will listen.
Sharing a post without liking it. If it’s good enough to share, it’s good enough to like too. Besides, it's a polite thing to do if you’re going to swipe something that someone else has taken the time to dig up.
Engagement (or, lack of). It goes hand in hand with the word social. It means to interact. However, it shouldn’t be one-sided. Engagement does not mean that you make a post and people comment on your post. That’s only part of it. The other part is about commenting on OTHER people's posts (they've found something interesting enough to communicate to you and are seeking your acknowledgement).
Sharing a post directly with me or one of my pages on Google+. Real example: Why would I want to purchase an orange Jeep in Chattanooga when I lived a few thousand miles away? Worse yet I received it THREE times! Thank goodness for the mute button!
Facebook’s authority over who sees my posts. This applies to both personal profile and pages. Why even post if I’m shooting in the dark? Sure Facebook, you put a band aid on it by offering a separate stream just for the pages I like. So tell me why one of my pages had several posts during a particular day, yet there is only ONE of those posts in the pages news stream? Google+ doesn’t do this. Every post should have a fair shot at being seen.
Oh, and about my peeves from 2012? They still exist (sigh); you can read up on those here.
Wait! One more! Please tell me why so many people share photos publicly of their children? Do you really want 1 billion+ people to see those pics? Would love to hear about your social media peeves and whether you agree or disagree with this list. All the best to you in 2013. Here's to a bright year (see below) and if you seek more sunshine stop by our website, or say hi on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+.
They say the squeaky wheel gets the oil. Well, mine received some lubricant. You may already know that Klout had some methodology change recently. And it seemed to me that they were allowing a user to connect with both a personal profile on Facebook and a page; managed to do just that. All was groovy; I was plodding along with my newly reformulated score and happy as a clam. Suddenly my Facebook personal profile was disconnected from Klout So I reconnected it. Several times. All this time, my score stayed the same. Then…WHAM! Overnight, my score dropped seven points. Not acceptable without an explanation. I needed answers and had no intention of resting until I got some. So I started blasting Klout on Twitter, like the Dave Clark 5 song “Over and Over”. This went on for a few days. Meanwhile, my MODern Marketing 4 U Facebook page was still connected to Klout and it was unclear if my personal profile was attached as well since there was some odd overlapping of text on my settings page. Finally, I received an email! It was addressed to “Hello, “ suggesting that it’s some manner of form letter that gets sent to annoying people like me. However, I got the answer I was after! They said: Your Klout account may have experienced a score drop recently, and we'd like to explain what happened. We only allow users to connect one type of Facebook account to their Klout account: either their personal profile or a Facebook page they manage. You're one of our users who chose to associate a Facebook page with your Klout account. Great! If that’s the case, why did you let me connect TWO Facebook accounts in the first place? There’s more… Prior to last week, Klout used Facebook personal profile data as part of your Klout score, even for users with connected pages. Your Score dropped because we are no longer including your Facebook personal profile data in your score calculation. We've made some changes to our product, and are now only using your Facebook page data to better protect your privacy. Klout made a decision on my behalf; the wrong decision. Thanks a lot guys. And this raised a red flag for me. With the new Klout, they’re showing posts that influence my score on my Klout profile. My Facebook personal profile is for friends only. Does this mean that they are going to publicize my Facebook activity? Again, I sought answers. And found! Their support page states that they’ll honor privacy settings in Facebook and ONLY show those influencing posts to my friends. Whew! This means I’ll gladly use my personal profile on Facebook for inclusion in their “moments”.
A Happy "Kloutist"
30 hours after receiving that email, all was resolved. I disconnected my MODern Marketing 4 U page and connected my personal account where my dear friends seem to love my amateur photography and quirky comments about slices of life. My score now reflects that engagement. One interesting note. A fellow tweep @kstaxman and I had a discussion via direct message about the whole affair. He thought it amazing that I got a response from them at all. So Klout, if you are reading this, I’m available to consult for you. I will assemble a crackerjack team for you and train them on the fine art of engagement and communication and thus make your own Klout score of 84 much more realistic. I will gladly drive up to your fair city and meet with you. And believe it or not, as I'm writing this, the song below is playing on 60’s on 6 right now. No kidding! Wow. This is a sign… Looks like I’ll be going on a road trip! Thanks Scott McKenzie. May you rest in peace and thank you for all the beautiful music you've given us. Here’s where you can find me: Klout, my website, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ ...and thanks for stopping by!
Shifting methodology. It doesn't mean much to most people. I’m fascinated by it since I’m a market research “nerd”. And I want ALL the answers (which Klout will not be doling out). However, this time, I’m a happy camper. Why? Because my score went UP instead of down from the last time the methodology was changed. So you’re either grinning or you’re bummed right now. Is it good that Klout keeps changing their methodology? Yes and No. Yes, because they’re fine tuning it to better represent your behavior on social networks. Oh, but couldn’t they have gotten it right the first time? Unfortunately social networks tweak things too so some tune-up is necessary to reflect that. Facebook, for example, makes changes all the time (and without telling users first). I shudder to think what would happen if Facebook ever changed “like” to a ten point scale; all heck would break loose. And no, because frankly, it devalues what they're doing in the eyes of the user, especially if your score drops. A change like this is bound to create a few new skeptics. It can hurt the brand if it's not handled in the right way. The good news is we were forewarned and they've explained their philosophy as to the why (in very general terms, but hey, they're trying). Here’s a snippet from what Klout has to say about the change: Today we’re releasing a new scoring model with insights to help you understand changes in your influence. This project represents the biggest step forward in accuracy, transparency and our technology in Klout’s history. Influence is the ability to drive action and is based on quality, not quantity. When someone engages with your content, we assess that action in the context of the person’s own activity. These principles form the basis of our PeopleRank algorithm which determines your Score based on: how many people you influence, how much you influence them and how influential they are. Furthermore they state what’s coming up around the corner: Now, we can add more networks and other sources of your influence much, much faster. Insights help you understand why your Score changed. Each day, you can see which subscore and people in your network caused that change. You can also view insights on your friends’ profiles. Okay, I’m liking this part about seeing the people that caused the change. Now the market research side of me will observe and get to the bottom of all this. Curious me can’t wait to analyze the situation! Will I start altering my behavior to increase my score? No. I’m not overly concerned about what my score is and I certainly hope you don’t measure ME or anyone else by that. Look at the content that’s being delivered to you instead! Despite that, I can’t help smirking just a little bit since my score went up by eight points on my main Klout account. Yeah, I have three. And all of them went up, the second one by 19 points, the third one by 14. One of the accounts has a Facebook page with a very high level of engagement and activity. I couldn’t understand why the Klout score was so low since Facebook represented 90% of the score. So perhaps there was a flaw there that has been fixed. Now, what exactly IS that algorithm? Klout can’t tell us that; then their trade secrets are out! All I can tell you is be engaging and respond to people, be who you are and don’t change because of a score. Dylan sang about change and plugged in his guitar. Eddie Vedder does a stirring rendition of that historic tune below. And if you're in for a little change, thenstop by and say hello!Twitter,Facebook,Google+, or thewebsite.
We all played Life, Trouble, and Headache as kids, right? And in our adult lives, we still play games though they’re not necessarily on boards anymore. Lots of games come to us via the internet. And those online ones? Some are obviously games while others are not as obvious. Some rely on figures and of course the bigger the better.
Yeah, I know. We all get jazzed by numbers, especially when they go up. We love stats, we love data. Let's face it, numbers, including trended ones, are fascinating.
Our follower counts go up. We acquire a new “friend”. Someone new circles us. We get invited to connect on LinkedIn and accept. Wonderful.
It’s almost as fun as playing a game. Yes, these are exciting times. Then, Klout came along and entwined itself in our lives. We’re reaching, oh oh oh, for that higher number because we’re spurred on by Perks: Gift cards, tea bags, and if you’re lucky enough to be in the right metro area, a Chevy Volt test drive.
Personally, I’m not all that concerned about what my Klout score is. It was once up to around 70; that was before the methodology change last year. It plummeted overnight to somewhere around 45 after the reformulation; obviously not in my favor. Public outcry and abandonment of the tool ensued.
But I hung in there despite the mysterious algorhythm and other controversy surrounding the tool.
And wow; Klout has some very nice stats about me...2,500 mentions and 1,100 retweets in 90 days? That sounds pretty darn good to me!
Lately, I’ve been having fun experimenting, well, "playing around" with Klout. One day I removed the link to my personal Google+ account to see what would happen. Nothing. That’s likely because I never post publicly with that account. I’d rather connect it to one of my Google+ pages; however, Klout doesn’t allow a connection to them.
Same with Facebook. There’s zero impact if I connect my very private personal profile to it. For a while, I had my MODern Marketing 4 U Facebook page associated with Klout. It currently has 420 fans and about 7% “talking about this” (for the record, that’s well above the 3% to 4% average).
Then I had a bright idea; why not use my Groovy Reflections Facebook page instead? After all it has over 4,600 fans and a 28% to 35% “talking about this” rate. Wouldn’t THAT take my Klout score into the upper arches of the galaxy?
One would think.
Well, I can tell you folks, the answer is NO. In fact, overnight, my Klout score went from a respectable 58 to 45. And Klout even messaged me to tell me the exciting news! Have a look at the stats:
Now, I’m scratching my head. Something doesn't make sense here. More fans, more activity, lower Klout score? Someone explain this to me please. My response? I switched the Facebook page connection BACK to MODern Marketing 4 U. Now we wait and see what happens…
…a day has gone by now and ….NO CHANGE! My score didn’t shoot back up! But on the third day....
My score shot up from 45 to 57! I lost one point for my "goofing around". Eh. Will that stop me from my experimenting? No.
Oh, for the record, you can only connect one account from any given social network to Klout at any time. So choose wisely and make better choices than I have!
