Written by Rachel Friedmann, MA, MSM, former Senior Business Development and Marketing Manager
From the March 2011 McKinley Matters:
We have been staying current with some of the more compelling articles and blog postings related to the ongoing evolution of digital marketing. Recently, Young Association Executive Bloggers took over ASAE’s blog Acronym, Klout became mainstream and more people Digg it. Here’s a synopsis:
Recently, Young Association Executive Bloggers took over ASAE’s blog Acronym. I credit my association peers with providing some thought provoking content. As a “young professional” caught between the Baby Boomers and Millennials I enjoyed some posts like, The middle path, which explores the fine line many young professionals walk in the office when they fit in between their older and younger colleagues. The other topics that are good reads for young and mature professionals alike including the struggle between time and creativity, it’s ok to fail and showing up is not half the battle.
Klout is an online application that measures one’s influence. Like Google’s algorithms, which determine where your site is seen on a search page, Klout has its own way of measuring your popularity and reach. Their algorithm isn’t a secret like Google’s. The biggest indicator for your score is your Twitter usage – the more you tweet and the more followers you have – the higher your score. Klout has been around for a while, but recently there has been a flurry of discussions about its uses and worth. It is interesting to see where you fall in their Influence Matrix, which shows your influence style, who you influence and are influenced by and what topics you most influence. I recommend two uses for Klout – to discover how you compare to your competitors and to find the influencers in your community or industry.
I advocate for less is more when it comes to online social applications. Finding your friends on each application – LinkedIn, Twitter, Quora, etc. can be exhausting. But how do you easily share content? You may have seen Digg‘s little icon among the others while digging around on the internet (pun intended). Digg allows you to easily share content. You do have to sign up for it, but you can easily connect it with your Facebook account. On Digg, a user votes for the content and articles they “Digg,” which automatically gives the article or post a score. In theory, the application appears to be objective and useful, but beware. According to
Laura Roeder, Digg will soon experience some changes that include looking at your overall “social footprint” to determine your level of influence.
