Clout Basics Explained

When we think about clout with a “C,” my colleague, Sandy, is wise to observe, “We all give people in our lives a “clout” score whether we realize it or not.” She says we start with nothing, but build clout “by being the sort of person that others admire, respect and listen to.” You can read more of her thoughts here.

Klout Basics Explained

From the Klout website, we learn online Klout is determined by “your ability to drive action.” With the additional points of measure to include the number of people you influence, the frequency by which you influence them, and the reach of your network also play into the Klout score online.

I would argue that Klout with a “K” and clout with a “C” are different, but you can easily build them using the same strategies. There are people online that believe I influence them. And, perhaps I do. But it’s only because of the content I share. We have never developed a relationship beyond sharing information and occasional guys blogging opportunities.

How Klout and Clout Are Different

Klout is superficial and is only a measure of the information one shares and creates online, in conjunction with how people share that information. So with Klout, I can influence professionals I may never meet in North Carolina, Los Angeles and Bangkok. The point is, the connection is very shallow. However, clout with a “C” is far reaching and more powerful — I think — than Klout with a “K.” It’s also more humbling and meaningful too.

For instance, take this quote from a colleague and friend of mine. In a recent books he published, he wrote “You were one of the fist people I started reading to learn how to do all this shit.” (The shit he refers to is social media marketing).

Yet another skeptic told me, “Rodger provided an outstanding series of social media classes for Lawrence Chamber members in Fall 2011. For Art With A Heart, the results were spectacular and our small non profit has just ticked over 1000 FB Likes. I went from being a social media agnostic to ‘cant wait to post this on FB’ by listening to Rodger and following his advice.”

Both of these are empowering, but and humbling at the same time. That’s how you know you’ve got clout with a “C.”

My Klout score is climbing, and I’ve been working on my other clout for a long time. It’s a never ending endeavor, as it should be. But rather you’re build Klout with a “K” or clout with a “C,” these strategies you should grow it quicker.

Three Klout, err,  I Mean Clout Building Strategies

It is possible to build both at the same time. I’m sure my digital colleague in North Carolina gave me a +K because of the content I share. But I would bet from the content he might also glean other notions too and strengthen my clout with a “C” too.

1. Don’t think too highly of yourself.
2. Honor people.
3. Make people SMILE.

Easy. Right? Well, wait a minute. There’s one very important question you need to ask yourself before using any of those three tips.

What are the organizing principles of your life?

Once you can answer that question, then, as Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.”

Here’s the six in a series on crisis and issue management:

• How To Plan For Issue Management And Successfully Engage The Marketplace
• What’s The Difference Between An Issue, A Crisis And An Emergency
• What Is The Life Cycle Of An Issue?
• How To Manage Issues Before They Become A Crisis
• What To Expect in A Crisis
• How To Repair Your Company’s Image And Regain Brand Equity

Managing crises and issues in an organization is important to its longevity. You owe it to your employees and the people you serve. You owe it to yourself.

• Columns are regularly occurring.
• Provide timely and thought-provoking commentary.
• They anchor content to readers expectations.

So, of the objectives of public relations, it is important to order blogging content as such. It is around these staples that other news, blurbs, and announcements find their home.

How to Build Feature Collections

It should come as no surprise, standing features should be old friends to readers — familiar, dependable and enjoyable. To be honest, they should generate the highest frequency of social sharing activity and attract the most comments of any content on your company blog.

This content not always  be text shorts, but they can be lists,  picture stories, or infographics. However, much of the content produced in these features should be text pieces such as essays, how-to’s, advice columns, and informative, investigative, revealing long forms that bring depth to the company blog.

Whatever you decide, these feature collections should be a treat for readers and not an ego boost to the marketing executives.

So, what do you need to know about creating a feature collections content for your corporate blog?

1. Be readable: The content you produce should be anecdotal, present charcters and contain descriptive detail and lively quotes.
2. Have a message: Content your produce should speak to the reader. Solve a problem for them; challenge them to think different.
3. Reflect your audience and your values: Your readers should easily identify with the content and conveys the values you share.

As you build features around a certain content topic, remember to create content resource pages. While these types of pages greatly boost your ranking on Google, the are an excellent tool to grow your corporate blog readership through list building. Here is a great content resource page as an example.

• PR Strategy: The future ain’t what it used to be
• Five Power Writing Tips for Your PR Campaign
• Social PR Campaign Strategists You Can’t Miss
• A PR Campaign Strategy Gives Your Business the Traction It Needs
• PR Strategy Tips: Don’t Ignore Small Media

Remember, public relations campaign strategy is different for every company. Hire a trained professional.

Spammers like to get things for free too, and their smut can soil your website rankings according to the Google Webmaster blog. These wackos use cheap and easy ways to deploy dozens or hundreds of sites that add little or no value to the web. Incidentally, this won’t help you.

In fact, if spammers hijack a free hosting service, Google removes the entire free web hosting service from their search results. That includes your organization’s web site too. People may google you, but they will find nada.

My advice. Invest some money in a hosting service that safeguards against spam.

If you’re resist blogging, that lack of content is valuable to customer, but you’re not giving it to them. After all, they visit your website to learn about products and services you offer. Additionally, they may be interested in the experiences others have had with your company. And by not blogging, you’re robing them of value.

You might want to reconsider that fear if you pay attention to The 2012 State of Inbound Marketing by Hubspot. Did you know, blogging has a direct correction to the number of clients you attract. Don’t believe me? Here’s the chart:

Godin gives us a very easy answer to this. He writes, “if you’re afraid of something, of putting yourself out there, of creating a kind of connection or a promise, that’s a clue that you’re on the right track. Go, do that.”

Here’s a social media public relations tip. If you’re afraid of blogging — whatever that fear — lay it aside. Go blog.

Here is an example. Recently the Cision Blog found my post “Use the ‘Law of Liking’ to Grow A Social Media Tribe Around Your Brand” and linked to it. First, Cision’s audience can read my content. Secondly. to people searching for public relations counsel, this connection can influence their decision to seek out my help because Cision has more influence than me. It’s bigger, more powerful and probably ranks better in search.

The decision of the Cision blogger to link to my post tells people she likes it. This behavior is best explained by the Balance theory, which my colleague and friend, Erik Deckers explained in his post, “Use Communication Theory to Boost Search Engine Optimization.”

With that in mind, there is one very distinct advantage of building social influence online. It cuts through the noise of competing messages and captures the attention and approval of stakeholders. Organizations that successfully build influence thrive, even when the economy isn’t.

Writing for TechCrunch, Aileen Lee is, “convinced the best way [ to build social influence] is by harnessing a concept called social proof, a relatively untapped gold mine in the age of the social web.

So, how do we build social proof cost-effectively?

• Social proof starts with remarkable products and services. If what you’re selling, providing or giving doesn’t delight the people buying or receiving it, you will weaken any efforts toward building influence.
• Create content around your remarkable product or service. This stuff must provide value.
• Don’t be afraid to point others in the direction of colleagues that can do a better job in certain areas. For example, I can’t build a website to save my life, but I know folks who can. So I point people in their direction.
• Appreciate, accept and affirm your stakeholders and other openly.

Lee also tells us, “people are wired to learn from the actions of others, and this can be a huge driver of consumer behavior.” So social proof begins with a remarkable product or service, and grows with the content produced by you and others — especially your stakeholder’s — and thrives when it is shared liberally and its people are appreciated openly.

Thank you Cision and Lisa Larranaga for including me in your post.

Let me tell you a story about a recent client of mine. My author wrote a powerful story about coming of age in the 60′s. Once we started her social media campaign, one of her readers reached out to use to share her story and reaction to my author’s book. The reader’s story was just as powerful as the author’s story. So, we asked her to write a guest post. Additionally, she was eager to share her work with her friends in Facebook,  Twitter, and her other networks.

Once we published the guest post, the author’s blog traffic skyrocketed and we quickly built an exciting tribe. With just one guest post, the author’s traffic to her blog doubled. Doubled!

So how did the author’s campaign take off so quickly? We used one of the oldest rules of engagement known to mankind, the ‘Law of Liking.’ Want to know how it works? Read on.

Most of us wouldn’t find this surprising, for the most part, we tend to say yes to who we like. What’s surprising, however, is that as simple as this Law of Liking sounds, we can use it to get hundreds of strangers to do what we ask. Even build a remarkable tribe.

Social media channels have given companies a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to shed the fortifications of the corporate culture and let employees, which is who they are, (a collection of people working toward a common goal) connect with stakeholders. Both are people who care and share and want to be recognized.

As a public relations professional working the Literary angle for the minute, I find empowerment through three characteristics of the ‘Law of Liking’ grows social media tribes efficiency:

• Appreciate stakeholders publicly.
• Accept stakeholders as part of the business culture and openly acknowledge their input.
• Affirm stakeholders commitments and contributions large and small for everyone to see.

Using this method, savvy companies have built empires out of friends of friends who like buy from friends that like the same products and services. In fact, when this law is applied to marketing, “the strength of that social bond is twice as likely to determine produce purchase as is preference for the product itself,” according to Robert Cialdini, a leading researcher on the psychology of influence and persuasion.

Let’s think about this and your brand. After all, your brand is  produced for mass consumption, so one way to increase the likelihood that people celebrate your brand lies with your stakeholder’s friends.

To increase the odds people will celebrate you brand,  consider two additional points:

1. Make sure your product is fairly priced.
2. Create a likable persona, because people buy from people they like.

An additional point to consider is the halo effect. This occurs when something positive happens to a stakeholder, and others view of that person. If your brand happens to be the catalyst that set things in motion, then your stakeholder’s friends will notice and spread the word.

Furthermore, researchers have discovered that talent, kindness, honesty and intelligence are traits to which we automatically assign favor. So, exercise these in your social engagement.

Creating Similarity with the ‘Law of Liking’ Drives Awareness

A simple fact about similarity is this. We are attracted to people like us. This holds true with opinions as well. Strengthening your social network online requires a creation and sharing of similar, and favorable opinions.

With this idea, business executives should invite one or two people with similar opinions about the their brand to begin a conversation and share those thoughts with others. You will find that shared opinions grow wildly when they are the topic of discussion, especially positive ones.

Use Compliments to Spread Positive Energy and Excitement

Earlier, I briefly mentioned the three A’s of the ‘Law of Liking.’ Compliments affirm and the simple ones are the most powerful. We soak up flattery like sponges, and we tend to like those who praise us often.

As a rule, we instantaneously  have a positive reaction to compliments. I might add, however, that these should be genuine. Research says we cling to false praise as well. This type fails to honor people and typically can be detected by any bullshit radar. Be genuine.

Spread Your Message Widely for Maximum Impact

Studies have also found “often we don’t realize that our attitudes toward something has been influenced by the number of times we have been exposed to it in the past.” Use this tactic to your benefit.

As you build a social tribe around a brand, look for opportunities to spread the good news and stories about your new product. Ask others to do the same. This is much like farming and seeding a field. Lay out seed generously wherever bare ground shows, you’ll find, that seed germinates into beautiful crops, and so will you harvest more people interested in your brand, and more stories about to share. This is truly a bumper crop strategy you can’t afford to pass up.

I’d like to hear your brand stories. Share them below.

• Public relations contact information
• Basic facts about your organization
• Repository of principal position
• Online media kits

A recent study by the Nielsen Norman Group highlighted reasons journalists visit online newsrooms. And numerous other studies have concluded similar findings. Your online newsroom needs at least have four basic components.

Offer the contact information of your organization’s public relations representative up front. The web is the Yellow Pages of the twenty-first century. Journalists get cranky when they have to search for information that should be easy to fine. They get testy because of the tremendous deadline pressure upon them. When you make this contact information easy to find, you make a journalist’s job easier. That might be just what they need to experience nirvana.  Include the following contact information:

• Phone number(s) including  mobile number
• Email
• Twitter handle
• Skype

Provide basic organizational facts, names of key leaders and dates of action. Media professionals know its easier to research facts on the Internet, than to call your public relations representative. Because both your organizations public relations staff and journalists are busy, offering this information in an easy-to-find format will eliminate the incessant phone calls from journalist about simple questions, and it frees up the PR staff to work on more pressing issues.

The online newsroom should be the repository of all official actions and statements an organization makes. The information should be organized logically by category and in sequence in which it happened in time. This is the living history of your company. Organizing information any other way seems to make journalists cantankerous.

Supply reporters with online media kits. In these media kits, make things easy to download. Provide images for print and web. This last point is important because journalists may come to your website to download artwork to augment their story creation. This includes written work that is ready to be downloaded and dropped into stories. Additionally, artwork should be 300 dpi for broadcast reproduction, 72 dpi for web production and high-res artwork for print production.

Building an online newsroom into your website is important for journalists to do their jobs better. It makes their work easier. More importantly, it could quite possibly turn out more media coverage for your organization. This always shows your stakeholders that the organization is on the move and gives an impression of growth.

How important are online newsrooms, any way? Read my post Using Online Newsrooms to Gain More Media Coverage.

Research conducted this year found a growing number of media professionals believe online newsrooms available and open to the press are very important. In fact, nearly every journalist surveyed for this study expected businesses to have an online newsroom. Additionally, nearly all of the journalists said it was very important to have public relations contact information readily available in the newsroom. And, these same people want to have access to news releases and over vital company information at their finger tips.

Here’s the kicker. Nearly all of these folks reported that the ability to search news archives within an online news isimportant.

Bottom line? Journalists expect you to have an online newsroom.

According to one report, “journalist have increasingly found online newsrooms useful and important.” And if you thought online newsrooms were for large corporations. Think again. “With the rise of social media and the increasing need for search engine optimized content, all organizations need to take advantage of online newsrooms,” cites the study.

To compare last year’s data read my summary: Are Journalists Discounting Newsroom

Since nearly all journalists prefer to use online newsrooms because they increase productivity, then isn’t providing easy-to-find, relevant, timely content  certainly one way to help increase your chances of coverage. Let’s not forget, journalists actually like working in these environments

In fact, next to providing newsworthy content, making it easily accessible is probably the most important media relations activity your company can perform.

So What About Driving Sales

Studies have shown time again, sales increase in proportion to media coverage. In one such study, researchers tracked sales in relationship to the amount of media attention a product received. I wrote about this study in “Do You Want to Increase Your Profits.”THe data is staggering. That’s how to gain more media coverage.