The Klout Squad is an invite-only group of individuals who are passionate about social media, technology and Klout. The Klout Squad brings a unique perspective of views from Mom bloggers to social media gurus. Read their expertise on specific issues and questions. Click on their images to check out their Klout profiles.
What is your most used social network and why?
Our Klout Stars series highlights top influencers and how they got to where they are today.
About Leah
I’m a professional blogger, marketer, community leader, and mom. I’m what you would consider a “mom blogger” but my niche is in fitness and health. I started up a community in 2007 after losing over 100 lbs. because I wanted to share my experiences and mentor other moms who were interested in healthy living & weight loss. Today I run a blogging network and consulting firm that only works with healthy brands wanting to reach out to moms in social media. My background before I got into blogging was in corporate public relations, campaign fundraising, and event planning. I have a Masters degree in Communication Management from the University of Southern California and I was the speaker for my class graduation at USC when I received my Bachelors as well. Oh, I have two young boys and am about to deliver another one. I’m a very very busy girl. :)
2. How did you get started in social media?
I got my start in social media in 2007 when I started up a Ning community for moms into health and fitness. At the time, it was very unique and caught on very quickly in popularity. After about two years, I wanted to do something that was a bit more “hands on” with other moms, so I created Mamavation. Mamavation is an obesity prevention campaign for families. We teach moms the basics of healthy living so they can share that at home. The campaign has two parts to it. It houses the first virtual sorority in social media history & it also puts on quarterly virtual boot camps for moms who are at risk for obesity. The boot camps are organized very similar to a reality TV show but everything that happens to them in Mamavation is in real-time and very “open” in social media. The moms who participate in these boot camps must apply and go through a voting process. Thus far we have finished 11 campaigns and are right in the middle of our 12th campaign. Mamavation will celebrate it’s 3rd Anniversary on June 30th and we are encouraging everyone to celebrate with us by walking or running a virtual 5K. I’m also a marketer, so I make my bread and butter consulting for brands that want to reach out to moms online by utilizing my own blogging network OR working with other mom blogging communities in specialized campaigns. Like I said before, I’m a very busy girl.
3. What does influence mean to you? Who influences you the most online, and why?
Well, influence is basically someone or something that shapes my opinion or direction. I’m a tough person to influence and it’s not always the people you would think, but I do have several people who I respect a great deal. I’ll list them by twitter: @Resourcefulmom, @JessicaNow, @Unmarketing, @Cecilyk, @MrBookieboo (my hubby), @Momma_oz, @Typeamom, @5Minutesformom and @thebloggess. The people I just mentioned I have an amazing amount of respect for and value their opinions.
4. What recent social media trends do you think are interesting or helpful?
Well, I’ve noticed that twitter isn’t quite what it used to be and my audience has been gravitating more towards forums, Facebook, private Facebook groups, and Pinterest of late. I think that’s just the way it goes, but as a social media community leader I have to be aware of the changes to ensure that I’m not left behind. At the end of the day, I have to make sure that people are supported within the means and platforms they are comfortable around.
5. How did you get involved with Klout? What would you like to see from Klout in the future?
Watch out for the brutal honesty: Klout invited me to an event the other day where I was given an Audi that was worth over $100,000 for the weekend. My husband and I took it for a getaway weekend and after that I was sold on “the perks.” The funny thing is my husband actually gets more of the Perks than me because he’s always getting something in the mail and he teases me about it.
I would love to see Klout do more outreach into the mom blogging community like show up at conferences and host some parties there. I think Klout could do a better job of reaching out to them and getting them involved in their campaigns.
I’d also love to see Klout recognize community leaders more. There are so many leaders in the social media space that lead a great deal of people that I feel could be given some additional recognition for their hashtag, etc.
Connect with Leah on Twitter at @Bookieboo
Klout believes everyone has influence, and influence comes with responsibility. Klout for Good aims to help you leverage your influence to help make the world more a better place for everyone.
When we’re caught up in our own lives, sometimes it’s easy to forget that there are others in the world who are worse off than us. In Africa, there is a region called the Sahel just south of the Sahara desert that spans about 8 countries. About 15 million inhabitants of the Sahel region are currently being affected by a drought and food crisis. About 1 million of these people are children who are severely malnourished and may not see past their 5th birthday. Without proper nutrition, these children are also at high risk for stunted growth and other diseases.
UNICEF’s efforts to treat malnutrition focus on water, sanitation, hygiene, HIV and health education, but they need us to raise global awareness. Klout has teamed up with UNICEF to spread the #SahelNOW campaign about the critical situation and prevent these children from dying.
Please spread the word about the #SahelNOW campaign on our Klout for Good program on your social networks, learn more about the cause at sahelnow.org and join the movement!
We’re excited to announce a partnership with Little Black Bag, a new online shopping experience that will allow you to use your social currency like never before. Take an interactive style quiz and Little Black Bag will create a personalized mystery bag of fashion and beauty products for you. Once you open your bag, you’ll have time to trade items with other shoppers, see what’s trending, and discover new brands. With this Perk, you’ll receive an additional $1 of product for every Klout Score point you have with the purchase of your first bag! Is your Klout Score 44? Get $44 worth of additional product in your bag at checkout!
At Klout, we’ll continue to find ways to reward you for what you’re already doing online. Creating a 1:1 social currency partnership is just the beginning of the evolution of Klout Perks. Try out the sweet new Klout integration with Little Black Bag here!
This Mother’s Day, we’re celebrating moms everywhere. We asked you to share how your mom has influenced you in our Pin for Perks contest and we got some amazing responses that you can find on our #KloutMom Pinterest board.
You can also check out our graphic to find a collection of stories from our Klout employees, some friends of Klout, and some of our contest submitters.
Happy Mother’s Day!
How has a mom in your life influenced you?
Just a couple of weeks ago, we introduced Klout for iPhone to help people keep track of their influence wherever they go.
Today we’re announcing a great partnership with Cathay Pacific Airways that makes the benefit of taking your Klout with you even more obvious. Starting today, San Francisco International Airport (SFO) visitors using the Klout for iPhone app need only show a Score of 40 or higher to enter the Cathay Pacific First and Business Class Lounge. Previously, the only way to see the inside of a Cathay Pacific Lounge was by holding a First or Business Class plane ticket. Now, Klout unlocks access to this amazing experience. This applies to any visitor traveling through the “A” boarding area at SFO’s international terminal, even if they aren’t a Cathay Pacific passenger.
Among many other amenities, Cathay Pacific’s sleek lounge boasts the airline’s signature noodle bar, a comfortable seating area, workstations and shower suites. Check out a video tour of the lounge here.
Helping people understand and benefit from their influence takes many shapes and forms. We hope to do that in every way possible, whether it’s through Perks on Klout.com or by showing your Klout Score at a first class airport lounge. Cathay Pacific is one of the first partners to recognize the power of using Klout for iPhone to introduce their exclusive experience to a new breed of customers.
Download Klout for iPhone so you can visit the Cathay Pacific lounge next time you’re traveling through SFO!
Our Klout Stars series highlights top influencers and how they got to where they are today.
About Douglas
Day to day, I am the Developer Evangelist and Editorial Lead at Microsoft BizSpark, a program that is helping nearly 50,000 startups connect with each other, with partners and with events and other entrepreneurs around the world. The program is run as a media ecosystem, where we work with partners and startups to find the best content and the best avenues that build relationships that support a healthy startup world.
Basically, I am immensely interested in startups and I go around interviewing them and helping them connect to the right people by delivering them to the BizSpark blog and in the social networks, like the BizSpark Facebook page.
Before I did all this, I lived in Manhattan for about five years, running my own company that helped small businesses and small startups figure out their social media strategies and content execution. I was a conference director once, and I currently run a global series of meetups in the education technology space.
I’ve lived, worked, and slept in about 47 countries. I was a tv reporter in Hong Kong for a brief period, and a newspaper reporter. I’ve done some freelance writing stints in Indonesia and Burma.
I was born in the Midwest and educated on the East Coast, but not at Ivy Leagues. My alma maters are Wake Forest University and Syracuse University, where I studied literature and fine arts, respectively. And I think I am the only person I know who has indelicately – and in an uninvited way – touched the first folio edition of William Shakespeare’s complete works.
BizSpark is not my only social media outlet. I also write for Fast Company, and I am editor-at-large for Current Editorials.
1. How did you get started in social media?
When I was a teacher in Northern Virginia, I would actually blog during reading periods, while my ninth grade class was relegated to leafing through paperbacks. During lunch, I would day trade, and in order to find interesting data that I would use to make decisions on investments, I would visit financial blogs. This was right around the time Yahoo! had a great financial porthole. I think they still do.
When I moved to Hong Kong, blogging was my primary way of making friends in the city. I found that using blogging was a great way for me to meet people, especially since Hong Kong is so filled with a variety of
people. Blogging was a way to process the incredibly jarring experience of living in one of China’s most modern cities. It opened up avenues to make money, and it even helped me figure out how to become a journalist. I am pretty sure that my blogging improved my writing and kept it sharp enough that people would have me at University of Hong Kong, where I got my journalism degree.
In fact, it was blogging that I focused on in my journalism. I joined a team with former HKU New media professor Andrew Lih that covered a live news event through a blog. It may have been the first one ever in Asia.
2. In what ways does social media play into your current job or industry? Do you have any examples?
Social media not only created my job, but it is my primary function at Microsoft. Blogging and social media are Microsoft’s way of telling far out stories in Silicon Valley and delivering them to the rest of the world, and vice versa. I am very much a hub mentality kind of person. I believe that media networks need air traffic controllers – or curators – who can find really great compelling content and form relationships and networking opportunities out of that content.
Social media smooths out some of the rough edges that I found in the traditional media cycles on mainstream press sites. You are not confined to one column, or one story at a time. You can manage and articulate several streams at once, which is something that the world’s largest software company benefits by, because social media puts them in touch with so many of their customers all at once.
I use social media all of the time, primarily for helping people solve problems in communication, network access and finding solutions for their product development. I sent two emails out today, for example, to a team in Montana called Submittable.
There were some people at the BizSpark Facebook page who were curious about how a team in Montana could get access to the kind of capital, networks and solutions they needed. This is exactly what BizSpark helps with – we connect people in the startup program to what they need.
So, I connected them to the guys at Submittable, gave them information about Azure and let them take care of the rest. I think of it as relationship media. It’s a constantly moving feast of information and most people are really hungry. You have to give them what they need.
Essentially, as social is related to my work, social is a meta-tool that helps me see how I am thinking and interacting in the world, and see how others are thinking, so that I can understand values to a point that I can link those values to interactions with other members, to offers, to stuff happening in the brand that is of benefit to the community in BizSpark.
3. What does influence mean to you? Who influences you the most online, and why?
Influence means that someone has some kind of relationship to you. I don’t argue that there is such a thing as impact. People might read a post and read a tweet and then react to it. Influence is a little different.
To me, influence is the ongoing relationship you have with someone who compels you to act, think, deliver, or have an emotion that connects you to what you do, what you like, or to that person themselves.
Influence is very subtle at times, and also very powerful and overarching. It depends on what you are doing. I think about it in terms of influence vs. impact.
Influence: People flock to Yankees games because over time, the Yankees have proven to be a powerful team in the baseball pantheon of champions. One could say that the Yankees have created a habit of influence. They created a devoted following. There is a brand there connected to a legacy of habitual actions. In this case, the habit of winning.
Impact: Mickey Mantle hits a home run, the crowd rises to its feet as the ball sails over the wall. The crowd goes wild. That’s one instance. That’s an impact. Mantle makes an impact, because it’s one action that produced a dramatic result.
I think in social media, we’re trying to blend impact with influence and calling it the same thing. Social media is a fast moving game. I think in terms of influence, it’s the kind of thing that really takes a lot more time than that.
Who influences me online, the most? It depends on the day. I think there is no such thing as time, and every instance is its own moment. It depends on what is happening in the moment. When I look at who has strung together the most enduring and effective impacts over time, I would have to say it is Sumaya Kazi. She’s always proven herself responsive, loyal to her friends and to her beta users at Sumazi. And that endears her to me and my sense of ethics online. She’s classy and intelligent. Stable. An influencer.
4. What recent social media trends do you think are interesting or helpful?
I think the trends of being able to find people through social search, and of being able to catalogue things based on what your friends think. I am thinking of HashTip and HypeMarks.
Connect with Doug on Twitter at @DouglasCrets and at @BizSpark
When it comes to influencers, moms are always #1. Mothers, grandmothers, stepmothers, godmothers, aunties, cousins, sisters, you name them, they’re always there for you. These highly influential women were there for you when you skinned your knee, walked you down the aisle at your wedding, or watched the kids while you had a night off.
Mother’s Day is the one day out of the year where it’s really all about appreciating moms for everything they do and the positive influence they have in our lives. This Mother’s Day, Klout wants to highlight these awesome women with our #KloutMom Pinterest contest. Share a photo of you and the mom that influences you most and tell us why. We’ll randomly select 1,500 of the qualifying submissions to get Perk’d by ONEHOPE Wine with $25 towards wine and gifts (Make sure you share a glass with your influential mom!).
And if that isn’t enough, ONEHOPE Wine donates a portion of each purchase to a charitable cause such as fighting breast cancer, autism and supporting children’s hospitals. So each purchase also helps out other moms everywhere!
After the contest, we’ll highlight some of these stories in a follow up blog post and share our #KloutMom Pinterest board. We hope you take part in honoring all the important Moms in your lives!
For complete details see the Official Rules
How as a mom in your life influenced you?
Klout wants to reward you for what you’re already doing online — connecting with other people over things that you care about. With Klout Perks, we try to hook you up with opportunities that are most relevant to your interests and influence. That said, there are some Perks everyone can appreciate.
Enter BeardHead. Male, female, bearded or barefaced, everyone can enjoy this opportunity to don a cozy knit cap with accompanying face cozy (that most suspiciously looks like a beard). Last year, Klout ran a perk to get your very own BeardHead.
And if this idea hasn’t grown on you yet, take a look at this photo where Klout employees get their BeardHeads on!
From the moment we started Klout, we had a vision that your influence would benefit users both on and off of Klout.com. Partners have pulled data from our API since 2008 to offer a wide range of services to influencers, be it room upgrades at the Palms Hotel , targeted match-making through Tawkify or cash back rewards from Capital One based on people’s Klout Scores. Platforms like Salesforce, CoTweet and Hootsuite allow professionals to see Klout Scores in the flow of social media content to offer better service to their customers.
Over time, demand for our influence data has dramatically increased. We now serve about one billion API calls per day – that is 80 times the amount of data we served this time last year! In just the last three months, API calls have risen from 10.5 billion to almost 30 billion per month. Our data-serving traffic has nearly tripled since the end of January, and we now serve over 6,000 partners – that’s up from 2,000 partners one year ago.
Indeed, the future is strong for Klout. But this demand requires a new approach to delivering on that influence graph, so we have bolstered our API to make it more extensible and reliable. In fact, our new Klout for iPhone app is built on the new API.
After a closed testing period, today we are ready to open our API for self-service developer registration. Version 2 of the Klout API offers a number of improvements over version 1:
The most significant change will be an oAuth2-based authentication system for Klout users. Among other advantages, this will allow Klout users to give +K to influencers across the Web, off of Klout.com. Reading a great music blog on Tumblr? Give them a +K in Music. Did a particular tweet from Steve Carell get you in stitches? +K him in Comedy. You get the picture. We expect this to be available soon.
You can follow our API’s Twitter account, @KloutAPI, the API blog, or just head over to http://developer.klout.com to sign up for a key and play with our Interactive Documentation. All existing Klout Partners will be required to move to the new API by December 31st, 2012, when the V1 API will be shut down. All new partners must use the V2 API going forward. But fear not, our developer relations team is here to help. We will be posting helpful documentation, language wrappers, and other convenient tools to assist in the transition.
