Personally, I’m of two minds about Klout. I think the effort to quantify and qualify online influence is an interesting one, yet I am sympathetic to some of the criticisms of Klout’s approach.

But I pay attention to Klout and I’ve tried over the past couple of years to incorporate it into my social routines. This has led to much gnashing of teeth and rending of clothing. But I keep coming back to it.

Here are the 12 things I find most frustrating about using Klout:

1. Love it or hate it, you can’t afford to ignore it

This is the biggest frustration about Klout. I like the idea of measuring influence, but I don’t like the way it’s been executed by Klout. Problem is, no matter where I turn, someone else is relying on Klout as a shortcut to assess online influence and action. Despite ample competition on all flanks, Klout can’t be ignored because of the strength of its brand. It’s just frustrating that Klout can’t seem to deliver what it’s brand promises. Ugh.

2. Klout measures something, but it isn’t influence

By tracking your social media activity, Klout purports to be the “standard for influence.” To start with, Klout only measures online activity, so there are lots of influential people online and off who don’t score well on Klout. If that counterfactual is not enough, there’s the whole question of the Klout’s proprietary algorithm: what is measured and how is it weighted? I’ll grant that Klout is measuring something and that something has meaning, but let’s stop referring to it generically as “influence.” Puh-lease.

3. My Klout score falls twice as often as it rises

Rather than gradually growing, which is my actual online trajectory, my Klout score lurches upward then gradually falls back for several days in a row. When I recently counted over a 30 day period, my score declined on 20 of those days, though it rose overall for that period. This just seems stupid and frustrating to me: why give your users the daily impression that they are failing at their social media engagement activities when, in fact, they are succeeding? Argh.

4. Klout thinks I’m influential about kilts, but I’m not

The list of things Klout thinks I’m influential about makes absolutely no sense. Once, I tweeted:

Just saw a guy in a kilt wearing a t-shirt that said: “Think outside the boxers.” #efmf #DadsTalking

Some people retweeted it. Then I never tweeted about kilts again. Yet, according to Klout, “kilts” was now a topic in which I was influential.

How hard is it to discern what people Tweet about? PeerIndex seems to do a good job and so does Twylah — why can’t Klout? Some people even use Klout’s topical ineptitude to mess with other people (See Screwing with Klout). Huh?

Read full post at 12 Most

Great content is the fuel for valuable conversations and productive interactions between you and your followers. In a world of too much information, the simple act of finding and sharing great content that is relevant to your audience is among the best ways to express and differentiate your brand.

Content curation refers to the process of finding and sharing the best content on a particular subject. When done effectively, it is based on three key activities:

• Discovery of content
• Contexualizing or adding value to it
• Sharing it effectively

This article presents 19 practical suggestions for how to discover, contextualize and share great curated content. While I use specific examples of financial services content because I work in this area, the methods and tools are universally applicable to virtually any subject matter.

Read full post about how to curate great content.

Unlike other tools, technologies and strategies, social is not just a tactic that is employed to market and promote and, ultimately, sell products and services. In order to be effective, social media demands to engagement and participation in relationships with your markets. After all, markets are conversations — and you need to be participating in them to be relevant.

So how does a small or medium-sized businesses get into social media if they’ve been sitting on the sidelines for a while?

Mark Schaefer addresses this question in his excellent piece: How does a small business move into social media marketing? I’ve used Mark’s basic responses as a framework and tailored them to the specific situation of professional practices in financial services.

Read full story about getting your small business into social.

Social media needs a strategy, like a navigator needs a destination

In regulated industries such as financial services, it’s only a matter of time (usually minutes) before conversations about social media turn to compliance. These conversations, however, often miss the most important factor contributing to social media success: having an effective strategy.

As many investment and wealth management firms begin to dip their toes into social media, they are typically focused on two main activities. First, they draft social media policies to provide guidelines as to what is acceptable and compliant behaviour for financial professionals in social networks. Think of these policies the “thou shalt nots.” And second, firms deploy some kind of compliance monitoring software to ensure they can fulfill their regulatory obligations as their employees begin blogging, friending, connecting, following and tweeting with clients and prospects. This software becomes part of the social media “plumbling”.

There is no question that clear social media policies and effective compliance monitoring software are required aspects of any financial firm’s foray into the social media space.

But these rule-setting and policing efforts are primarily motivated to mitigate the perceived risks associated with a firm’s representatives engaging in online settings. They don’t prescribe to an advisor or other financial professional within a firm what actions they should take online in order to succeed — in order to position their personal brand and firm’s brand effectively online and grow the business.

Read full story.

When I read Brian Solis’s post – The 6 Pillars Of Social Commerce: Understanding The Psychology Of Engagement — I realized the extent to which our buying decisions are influenced by social factors. Referencing an infographic entitled Social Commerce Psychology, Solis highlights the 6 heuristics we use to make buying decisions.

Read full story.

Social media and online social networks have catalyzed disruptions in many businesses. Most of us are familiar with what digital music sharing did to a music business built on CD sales. Some of us remember the good old days of paper airline tickets booked through a travel agent.

The same forces are at work transforming financial products and service delivery models. Payments, banking, investing and financial advice are all on the verge of seismic shifts.

Social media is changing everything for professionals and their business practices.

Read full story.

My work with the following individuals and organization spans a wide range of services – from social media training and coaching, to blog design and content development, to online personal branding and content marketing. Some engagements have been modest, while others involved more significant time and resources. In all cases, I feel I’ve received as much value as I’ve (hopefully) delivered.

So, here is a list of mostly local, Edmonton-based clients that I have the pleasure of working with:

Chris LaBossiere - Principal of Yardstick Software and founding member of the Aberta Party, Chris tweeted one night that he was looking for help migrating his personal blog to WordPress. I responded and together we re-launched Chris’s personal blog – chrislabossiere.com – on a WordPress platform. Chris is an exceptionally accomplished entrepreneur and tirelessly committed to building a future for the province of Alberta. And he’s a heck of a guy, to boot. I would do almost anything he asked of me. (Oops, was that my outside voice?) Follow Chris on Twitter – it’ll be well worth a few minutes each day from your short attention span.

Jessie Radies – Jessie is the co-owner of the Blue Pear Restaurant in Edmonton and founder of Live Local Alberta. She has spearheaded a movement among local businesses and food producers in Alberta toward strengthening local economies and food systems. She is part of a leading edge group of leaders across North America who are rebuilding local economic infrastructure within communities. Her passion and commitment are inspiring. Jessie tweets actively and is an occasional blogger at jessieradies.ca when she’s not running a restaurant, a non-profit organization and changing the way we think about local economies.

Jennifer Fisk – Jennifer is a public relations professional (Freestone Communications) with considerable skills and experience in media relations and crisis management. Also a tireless community builder, she is active on numerous non-profit boards throughout the city of Edmonton and is a strong supporter of the local culinary scene. Jennifer tweets regularly and maintains an insightful and beautifully written blog at actuallyhappening.ca.

Randy Boissonnault - I met Randy for the first time one morning. By that afternoon, we’d had our second meeting and were well on our way to working together. That’s how Randy rolls – there’s no time to waste. Never a better time than now. Successful entrepreneur and trusted strategic advisor (Xennex), Randy combines a razor-sharp mind with a boundless energy to get things done. Equally passionate about helping, Randy is an active Rotarian and founder of Literacy Without Borders. What’s the point of building a successful business if it isn’t facilitating positive development in its clients, employees and the community at large. Randy tweets and maintains a compelling blog at randyb.ca.

Travis Blake – Travis has an entrepreneurial and transformative vision to save the planet through sustainable deconstruction and demolition (R3Demo.com). Where others see construction waste, he sees opportunity – through reclamation, recycling, and reuse – to lighten our ecological footprint and build a business offering unique value in an old-fashioned sector. Travis tweets, but he’s a networking superhero and he does it the good old-fashioned way – face to face. If you’re planning on taking down a building somewhere in Alberta, you really ought to call him.

Peter Silverstone – Peter is a physician with a very inquisitive mind. He couldn’t understand why oil companies had to make so much of an ecological mess producing oil from the tar sands. So he studied it and found out, lo and behold, they didn’t. World’s Greenest Oil was the result, a compelling treatise explaining how Alberta could be producing the cleanest oil on the planet. Peter tweets and blogs about green oil and national/global politics surrounding this issue.

Bruce Winter – Following a successful career as an on-air sports broadcaster, Bruce started a sports entertainment production company (Aquila) and became a fixture in the Edmonton sports community. But he has other passions as well. Bruce wants to leave this world – and his community – in better shape than how he found it. He is an avid supporter of technological innovation and energy efficiency, in particular. Bruce tweets and currently blogs at Posterous (but is working on a new blog site).

Julie Hamilton – Julie never quite imagined she’d be where she is today. She’s the mother of a Canadian Forces soldier who’s served in Afganistan. And she’s been so moved by this experience that she has also taken on the role of executive director of Valour Place – a respite home for injured soldiers. Thing is, Valour Place doesn’t exist yet. But Julie and the organization’s many supporters are building it. Julie is beginning to tweet and maintains a blog called showyourvalour.ca. Visit the blog and show yours.

Brad Smoliak – Co-founder of Hardware Grill and Alberta House head chef for the Vancouver 2010 Olympics, Brad knows his way around a kitchen. He currently consults as a research chef, crafting and testing tasty concoctions that will one day show up in your supermarket. Brad loves cooking and is a master griller of flesh (he has a successful BBQ cookbook and a rub to die for). Brad is thinking about starting to tweet and blogs at bradsmoliakcooks.ca.

When people ask me why I enjoy living and working in Edmonton, I tell them it’s because of the people, because of the community. Thanks for your confidence, folks.

To anyone trying to get into Twitter and understand what it is and how it works, I recommend starting slowly. Walk before you run.

For instance, start with the Twitter client itself. Available on the web and on mobile devices, Twitter.com does a good  job with the basics – following, direct messaging, making lists, and checking who has mentioned you or retweeted your tweets.

However, I’ve found a few limitations:

• for the longest time, retweeting without editing was only permitted, however now you can retweet while quoting the original tweet;
• I find that some mentions and some retweets by others do not show up in the Twitter.com interface and this can be annoying;
• there is no scheduling function for post-dating tweets.

These limitations  prompted me to look at the layer of  clients that sit on top of Twitter and are used for sending and receiving tweets with greater flexibility. Of these, I’ve tried and used the following:

• Hootsuite is the client I like the most because it has a clean interface, allows retweeting with easy editing, permits post-dating tweets and supports tweeting from multiple handles.
• TweetDeck is also nice and can do all that Hootsuite can and a few other things. There is also a cool desktop version that has real-time notification like email clients. While this was initially a welcome novelty, I quickly found that Twitter monopolized my time and even though I could customize the notifications (or turn them right off) I just returned to Hootsuite.
• CoTweet is also a nice interface and supports all of the above.

All of the above clients have free mobile app versions that take only a bit of time to learn how to use. What invariably happens is I end of using multiple tools because each one has a strength that sets it apart from the others. This is not uncommon among Twitter users.

However, the tool that has been rocking my tweeting world recently is Buffer. A beautifully crafted user interface, Buffer essentially enables me to curate my content stream during fixed times of the day or night and queue my content stream. The free version of Buffer allows me to load up to 10 tweets which can be easily customized to be sent at intervals of my choosing.

Twitter automation is a bit of touchy issue out there because there is an increasing amount of spam and bot traffic. I was swayed by data presented recently by Jason Falls and Eric Boggs in Data Driven Social Media in which they showed that automating feeds produced more traffic, but not necessarily conversions. Generating traffic and responses is very important for me, so I have all my Twitter clients notifying me on my mobile device and by email so that I can respond in a timely manner when a person reads something they find interesting and responds. This response time is key to engaging and ultimately converting the respondent.

Overall, Buffer is making me more efficient with my time and enabling me to share more quality information more frequently and across a wider time frame to capture more users’s attention. You can even share directly from Google Reader – which I use for curating my RSS blog feeds – making Buffer even more time-effective.

I’ve also been experimenting a bit with Triberr which also employs a combination of human curation coupled with automation to distribute tweets, but is geared more to the blogging platform at this time.

I am interested to hear about any tools or techniques that you are using to improve the efficiency and quality of your online curation efforts. Please let me know what’s working for you.

1. I would strongly recommend that you use WordPress for your web site and blog. It can easily function in an integrated way as a blog and a traditional web site, so that’s all you need. And here are 8 more huge reasons why WordPress is a great choice.

2. There are many professional WordPress theme designers who are offering top-notch designs that can be customized to your needs very cost-effectively. For example, see WooThemes, Obox, Elegant Themes, BizzArtic and ThemeForest, just to name a few.

3. As for hosting, I like to own my own domain and host it myself, rather than use WordPress.com. Go Daddy is a good host for a WordPress site, but there are many other excellent options. Basic hosting is inexpensive. However, there are many specialized service providers who bundle basic web/blog site hosting with other “soft” services and charge considerable monthly hosting fees. Buyer beware. Make sure the services and value fit with your needs.

4. Finally, everything I’ve described above – that’s the easy part. The hard part is feeding relevant content onto your blog on a regular basis, networking that content and building key relationships with other online influencers, customers and prospects. This is where the work starts and when investment of your time and resources really pays off. Here are some excellent suggestions for generating social content that gets clicked.

There you go: simple as 1,2, 3.

Chiefly among those barriers are the following two:

• Knowledge – How does it work? What am I supposed to write about? How do I promote myself? (And if you’re a regulated professional, you might be wondering: What am I allowed to say, do, and write?)
• Time – Even if I know what to do, WHEN am I supposed to find time to do it?

This post is about overcoming the second barrier to social media engagement: time.

Unlike other marketing and business development activities, social media is not entirely outsourcable. You need to invest your time in gaining some knowledge and literacy so that YOU can engage and interact online. It’s not about hiring an agency or staff to do everything for you. YOU need to learn how to use the tools and learn how to express your personal brand online. You need to learn enough so that you know what you don’t know and can hire out for those skills you don’t have and truly don’t have time for.

Here are six tips for how you can make more time for social media in your day-to-day business life:

1. Get up an hour earlier in the morning and read some blogs, then comment on some posts. Getting active early in the day has lots of advantages.

2. Skip reading the newspaper and follow your primary news sources via Twitter. Read the feed while you’re eating breakfast or working out in the morning.

3. Download popular social media mobile apps and use them on the fly – when you’re commuting, when you’re waiting in line, when you’re getting a mid-morning coffee. If you’re discrete you can even use these apps when you’re standing on the sidelines watching your kid play soccer in the early evening. (When your kid is on the sidelines resting, of course.)

4. Re-evaluate your commitment to golf. Unless you’re doing it entirely on personal time, the 6-8 hours of time you spend on each round represents a considerable investment of time. Be honest with yourself: is that relationship really worth that investment of time – or do you just LOVE playing golf?

5. While you’re at it, let’s look at some of your other networking activities: business lunches and breakfasts, conferences, etc. I’m not suggesting you drop everything, but that you continuously evaluate the return you are getting from each of those time investments.

6. Get your support team doing your social media legwork. For instance, have them find and suggest articles you should be reading and sharing. Encourage your staff to be your eyes and ears online. Work on blog articles together – you draft something and they finish it, or vice versa.

So, now that the time barrier is gone, the bigger question remains: How should YOU be using social media in your business?