So Omar Gallaga wrote an Austin American Statesman piece about how our lives are increasingly becoming measured by our online presences. It was a well written piece and probably opened a lot of people’s eyes about how they are being judged in a way they had not previously recognized. You should read it if you have not already.

The piece talks about Klout, a startup that created a scoring system to measure one’s online influence. Klout uses algorithms that evaluate who you are talking to and how often in social media circles the same way Google PageRank does. Some PR and social media firms are using it to reach out to influencers, and Klout now has perks for people who have Klout scores above a certain number. To reach people with high Klout scores, you can contact the company to “get in”.

This approach is too simplistic, like an easy button PR firms can hit so they can say to their clients, “Hey, we got you covered on this launch”. While I myself value what Klout offers, it is a factor within many factors when considering how to expand your brand’s presence.

Let’s use this graphic/scenario on the right to show why brands really should take more care in managing their online reputation.***

1.) Influence is never static. The influence this would wield today would be much more damaging to my brand than it would a month ago. Although Klout scores do change over time, they don’t change overnight.

That being said, an awesome potential subject matter expert and influencer could have a low Klout score today, but could increase it over time. Is it wise to make that person feel less important than Rupert Murdoch?

2.) A person’s influence on a subject matter depends on his or her expertise in that field. Rupert Murdoch and crew don’t seem to get new media and the blogosphere. If people judged me by News Corp’s record in new media, I could actually lose influence by association.

3.) Influence must always be considered qualitative as well as quantitative. I don’t respect Rupert Murdoch. Say I went to a PR firm and said, “I want media influencers with Klout scores above 60 to tweet about my blog”, they could very easily return to me with someone like Rupert Murdoch. Do I want his endorsement, or the types of clients he would bring? What if he becomes my #1 nightmare customer and his followers are almost as bad? I marketed to him because he’s big instead of paying attention to whether or not his followers would benefit by my product.

4.) PR is just as much about building community as it is “spreading the word”. When you judge people purely on their influence number or Googlibility, you get a bunch of people who are “kind of a big deal”. People who are “big deals” can be demanding as customers, and often demand completely different things. That can make a product that appeases the majority of them very difficult.

I’m not saying you should ignore Klout completely. I just question practices like judging customers based on some sort of score instead of taking the time to evaluate how much value you can offer their friends and followers. Klout works best through a software API and paired with other metrics.

**Relax. I don’t actually know Rupert Murdoch and I’m not tapping your phone. I do sometimes sneak in your house and rearrange your furniture though. Anywho…

People have told me that I shouldn’t expect companies to be perfect. Good advice. I don’t expect companies to be perfect–I do expect them to accept responsibility when it is appropriate and learn from the experience so it isn’t duplicated again. Basically, if you mess up, just do what you can to fix it.

So about a month back, I had some big headaches caused by an issue with Expedia. I’m happy to report that @Expedia referred me to their team at Corporate, who promptly issued me a credit for my inconvenience and recorded what my issues were so they could hopefully prevent issues in the future.

At a bigger company like Expedia, it makes sense for their social media team to act like a point guard for the company. In this situation, @expedia followed up and got me directly to the people I needed to speak to. So good job picking the ball up where you dropped it, Expedia. I will continue to book trips on your website.

What’s worth more–having your brands’ tweet retweeted a bunch, or having a tweet ABOUT your brand get retweeted a bunch?

It depends. If the tweet is about basketball shoes and it’s by me, it’s probably not worth anything. If it’s by LeBron James, it could be worth millions.

Numbers like retweets and reach can be addicting to a marketer, and it can be easy/fun to get caught up in them all day. Don’t get me wrong–I measure just about everything, primarily as a means to listen. I love tools like HootSuite, Radian6, and obviously Google Analytics because they help me determine what resonates in a community and what doesn’t. But there’s no use to bringing in a lot of people if they are just going to be unhappy with the product I am selling. Marketing is only one aspect of communicating with users.

I hate to define this role so broadly, but the only defining characteristic of a Community Manager is that he or she uses social media tools. Social Media tools are just communication tools, like telephones. You can use telephones for a lot of different purposes within a company. The question shouldn’t be “How can we get more followers?” The question ultimately is, “How can this Community Manager leverage online communication channels to help us serve our customers better?” You can have zero followers or one million followers and actually accomplish this result depending on the channels you use, and different Community Managers have different approaches.

Successful Community Managers aren’t just given follower metrics they must hit. They contribute to business goals that come from the top. This could mean reducing churn, or helping establish thought leadership which brings in more talent to build a better product, or reducing negative PR. The metrics depend on an individual company’s business objectives and you can’t blame a Community Manager if you don’t tell them what you are looking for. If my blog brings one superstar into my company or influencer on board to my product, who cares that my RSS subscriptions are low? I can get hype in arenas that are much more public than a measly company blog when I have the right people on my side.

Build rockstars. Everyday.

*insert LeBron joke by Mavs fan here.*

I like Andy Sernovitz from GasPedal.com. Andy seemed completely straightforward when I spoke to him on the phone, and we both agree that the humanizing elements of social media allow us to break barriers of trust so necessary in sales and marketing.

Andy and the crew at GasPedal help large companies leverage social media. As most larger companies I’ve seen are very metrics oriented, this can’t be a very small feat. Big companies are often too concerned with getting masses of fans, versus engaging existing fans who can bring the masses to them. They fail to see that one consumer really has a lot of power these days and mass marketing just doesn’t work anymore.

I liveblogged GasPedal’s BlogWell conference in Austin because I thought they were a good group of folks and the topics seemed interesting. In the mail, I received both a hand written thank you and a big box of popcorn from GasPedal for doing so. Can Andy measure how much this box of popcorn earned him? No. Was he anticipating I would write this? I doubt it. If your employees are not empowered to appreciate your community and fans the way Andy and crew showed some appreciation for me, you don’t get it.

In this digital age where everything is an email or a tweet, it’s the analog forms of kindness that actually stand out. They indicate some form targeted efforts towards individuals, a scarcity in a world where people have 800 loosely joined friends. There is also a certain level of intimacy in such transactions because we either have to see that person or know their address. In these respects, analog transactions are better indicators of our actual friends and fans.

How do you react when you get a physical gift or hand-written letter from someone? Is it any different than it was pre-Facebook? How about pre-email?

The other day, Jeremiah Owyang asked if people with high Klout scores should get preferential treatment by brands. Apparently the Palms Hotel in Las Vegas allows you to use your Klout score to get into certain special parts of their hotel.

Umm…

Let’s put this in perspective here. Social media guru and honorary member of my blogroll Brian Solis’s Klout score of 86 is only slightly lower than the Dalai Lama’s at 91, but higher than Ashton Kutcher’s score of 80. So while Brian Solis and His Holiness could be slamming sake bombs at the blackjack tables, the Palms door guy who doesn’t watch movies could be telling Kutcher to take a hike.

If a bunch of Twitterers raid the Palms and take up all the space, does that mean Facebook investor and billionaire Peter Thiel is relegated to playing craps with retired vixens from Florida? After all, he isn’t even on Twitter.

The task of identifying influencers is becoming more and more difficult as media becomes more segmented. While Klout did a great job summarizing people’s influence on Twitter, the real power will come when someone starts mashing up metrics like Twitter influence, PageRank, Facebook Fan engagement, potential IMDB score and web mentions. Our web presences are too segmented to put too much credence in a score on one particular network. Who will be the first to put them together again in a credible way? Will it be Klout and if they do, should brands pay attention?