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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

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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

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Our Klout Stars series highlights top influencers and how they got to where they are today.

About:
Sumaya Kazi is the founder & CEO of Sumazi, a service built on top of Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter that empowers your network to introduce you to the people who can change your world. Sumazi was selected from more than 1,200 international startups to compete at the prestigious TechCrunch Startup Battlefield where it won the Omidyar Network award for “Startup Most Likely to Change the World.”

Sumaya is an internationally recognized innovator, leader, speaker and award-winning entrepreneur who has recently been recognized by Reuters and Klout as one of the “Top 50 Most Influential Executives on the Web” — the second woman behind Oprah. She has also been recognized by BusinessWeek as one of America’s “Best Young Entrepreneurs,” CNN as a “Young Person Who Rocks,” Silicon Valley Business Journal as a “Woman of Influence” and by UTNE Reader Magazine as one of “50 Visionaries Changing Your World.”

Previously, Sumaya served as the senior social media manager at Sun Microsystems, where she was responsible for the global strategy and implementation of social media. While at Sun Microsystems, Sumaya founded her first startup, The CulturalConnect. It grew from one weekly e-magazine to five weekly e-magazines and published more than 800 interviews of amazing young professionals in the for-profit and not-for-profit industries to a readership in more than 100 countries.

Sumaya has a strong passion for progress and has been deeply committed to the nonprofit community. She has served as a mentor for BUILD, a nonprofit social venture that empowers underprivileged and under-resourced high school students with an education in entrepreneurship. She is also on the steering committee for the San Francisco Muslim Women’s Giving Circle and on the advisory council for Jolkona Foundation (a Bangladeshi led non-profit). Sumaya graduated from UC Berkeley. She is a Bangladeshi-American residing in San Francisco, California. You can learn more about Sumaya on her website. You can also subscribe to her on Facebook or follow her on Twitter

1. How did you get started in social media?
I studied marketing and strategic planning at UC Berkeley. While I didn’t know exactly what my career path was going to be at the time, I knew I was fascinated with the marketing industry.

After graduation, I spent a year at a high-tech PR agency. There, I found myself increasingly frustrated with mainstream media, which inspired me to start my first company. The CulturalConnect started as a media platform dedicated to young professionals around the world. It spotlighted amazing stories of young business and nonprofit professionals with the goal of re-defining what success looks like in different ethnic diasporas.

At age 22, I was recruited as the youngest manager in the Global Communications division at Sun Microsystems. My day-to-day role was initially to support our executive management as well as handle the analytics and measurement for my division.

However, because of my experience building the CulturalConnect and using the tools of that time — MySpace, Friendster and Facebook (which was only for college students then) — I understood early on how businesses could benefit social media platforms. I became the crazy kid who kept coming up with all of these crazy ideas of how Sun could use Myspace or Facebook or YouTube for their business objectives. My vice president didn’t exactly know what opportunities there were with social media at the time, but she liked my ideas and we decided that I would be a social media manager; so I became one of the first social media managers that existed at a Fortune 500 company.

I started driving strategy and implementation of social media just for my division and then the program quickly grew to support social media for the entire global company. I led social media for over 5 years.

In 2009, Sun was acquired by Oracle. I began consulting startups and large companies on their social media strategy and the following year after realizing there was a huge gaping hole in how individuals and businesses connect with the people they need, I decided to start Sumazi.

While Sumazi was still an idea on a napkin, we were selected from more than 1,200 companies to compete at the prestigious TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield, where we won the Omidyar Network award for “Startup Most Likely to Change the World.” We got interest from our first angel investor, one of the founding team members at YouTube, and I then decided to quit consulting and start working on Sumazi full time.

2. In what ways does social media play into your current job or industry? Do you have any examples?
Sumazi is building the technology for the next generation of social media. Sumazi is built entirely on top of existing social networks: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and soon mobile. Sumazi is in the business of making life-changing introductions. From my experience at Sun Microsystems and the Cultural Connect, I saw a lot of the pain points on how businesses and organizations can connect with their users, as well as tap into their users’ networks. From a consumer’s perspective as well as a user’s perspective, I want to be able to leverage my networks and my extended networks to help me at the time of need. Sumazi is really focused on solving these problems.

3. What does influence mean to you? Who influences you the most online, and why
If someone is influential to me, I either care about or respect their opinions around a topic of interest. It carries more weight in my sphere. Someone can be influential in my life, even if they don’t have a lot of friends or followers. I believe influence is a combination of importance to somebody’s life, impact and respect for their opinions. They might not always say something that I agree with, but I respect their opinions enough to consider that an influence to me.

I respect and have followed people like Tony Hsieh (Founder of Zappos), Michael Arrington (Founder of TechCrunch), Padmasree Warrior (CTO of Cisco), Rania Al Abdullah (Queen of Jordan) and Oprah. There’s probably another 100 entrepreneurs or nonprofit leaders that I also follow closely online that I consider influential to me.

4. What recent social media trends do you think are interesting or helpful?
I’ve definitely seen a trend with companies focusing on the intersection of social, consumer and mobile technologies. More and more, new companies are being built just on the mobile device and never needing a web component. I’m also seeing a new crop of social media companies that are trying to figure out how to make use of all the rich social data that exists today to help facilitate smarter decisions about new connections and purchases.

The innovation in the social media world is so quick to change that it’s fascinating to see how fast this space is growing.

If you are also interested in Sumazi, we are currently giving early access to Klout users. Just go to http://beta.sumazi.com/early/home.

Connect with Sumaya on Twitter at @sumaya

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Our Klout Stars series highlights top influencers and how they got to where they are today.

About:Benedict is the oldest of three kids of immigrant parents in a Filipino family from Stockton, CA. His first language was Tagalog and learned English from Sesame Street and when he started pre-school. Benedict made my way through high school, then to college at CalPoly: San Luis Obispo, CA where he started in Aerospace Engineering and switched to Teaching.

Benedict has worked at two private English schools in San Luis Obispo where he worked with students from 16-80 years old that came from all around the world to be immersed in an English program here in the USA. After teaching, he became a flight attendant and also co-founded CS Toys International with a physical store in Japan and two web stores (CSToysJapan.com) and smaller satellite (CSToysUSA.com) where we use social media to interact with our customers. Benedict is also the on again, off again mayor of San Francisco International Airport on Foursquare. Find him for some at SFO for some random swag!

1. How did you get started in social media?
Back in high school, I found out about the Internet and never looked back. Back in the day it was all about local BBSes and using Compuserve, Prodigy, or AOL to get online. I remember using AOL v1.6 for MS-DOS to connect to the Internet with a 9600 baud modem. I frequented many chat rooms and made many online friends and chatted via AIM, MSN, and Yahoo Messenger.

I used to share photos on my self-published website. It was a lot of work. Friends always wanted me to send them pictures. Social networks made this easier. I started out on Friendster where most of my friends already were then moved to MySpace and Facebook as many people have done. Those sites made it a lot easier to share. More friends have popped up online on one network or another. These networks made it easier to share, connect, and stay in touch with friends here and abroad.

At one point in college, I worked an 11PM-7AM shift at a hotel and being online kept me sane. It was easy to connect with a friend in Europe or Asia while all of my North American friends were asleep. From then on, social media became a must to keep in touch with old and new friends both near and far as well as making new friendships and connections. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Foursquare…I love it all.

2. In what ways does social media play into your current job or industry? Do you have any examples?
Since I work as a flight attendant, it was normal to be away from home and friends for days at a time. My computer and phone were my windows to the world. I’m constantly meeting new people from many different places. Rather than exchanging phone numbers, many now exchange Twitter handles and Facebook friend requests now to keep in touch with me.

3. What does influence mean to you? Who influences you the most online, and why
Influence is a trust. Some people influence you more than others, the same way you trust some more than others. I’m more apt to take a suggestion from someone in my circle than a review that I read or a spokesperson telling me to do so. Most of the people who influence me online also influence me offline.

My cousin @heycheri and my brother @brianwcorpuz influence me for too many reasons to list.

My combination SF Bay Area/San Diego crew of @lehea1212, @sdwifey, @eyemusing, @sukhjit, @richandcreamy, @csix, @mymelodie are the people I like to hang out with when I’m at home in or my second home of San Diego.

I also have to mention my Foursquare friends. Foursquare really brought me back into social media. I love the game aspect. I’ve made many online/offline friends via Foursquare including @nutzareus, @dwaynekilbourne, @rocktique, @redbridgeonline, @lesliempr, @funtobehad.

Calvin Lee, @mayhemstudios is one of my biggest influencers. We met at an event in Las Vegas and clicked in person. We have overlapping social circles and have hung out at CES and SXSW amongst other events. I want to be like Calvin when I grow up.

4. What recent social media trends do you think are interesting or helpful?
I see a huge trend with location based services and smartphones making recommendations for you. Foursquare has turned from a game into a recommendation engine. I like finding out who or what is around me. I can look up a certain type of food I am hungry for and see what restaurants my friends have gone to or left tips at. Foursquare’s radar feature also lets me know if I have a listed “to-do” nearby.

There are newer apps like Banjo that tell you when friends or people you follow are nearby based on the location data in their public posts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Highlight is another fun app that recommends possible connections for you based on someone you have been nearby during your day. I opened the app on my flight to SXSW, and Highlight had listed the person that was seated next to me on the flight. We connected.

I also like another app called Zaarly for buying/selling/requesting locally via push alerts. I’ve seen a couple good deals come up such as someone stuck in an office requesting a certain coffee and paying $15. There are quite a few requests for rides as well, mostly to SFO Airport. When I open the app and determine where the request is made, I can decide whether I can take them up on their offers.

I can’t wait to see where the next paradigm shift takes us. I try to stay up to date on the newest networks and try new ways to stay connected.

Connect with Benedict on Twitter at @superben

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Our Klout Stars series highlights top influencers and how they got to where they are today.

About: Alexander Howard is the Washington Correspondent for O’Reilly Media, where he reports on technology, open government and online civics, from mobile technology to health IT to social media. He tells his mom that he writes about how the Internet affects government, and vice versa. Howard was born in upstate New York, moved to Philadelphia in the mid-80s and went to Colby College in Maine, where he studied biology, sociology and built his first webpage in 1995. Howard remain intrigued by technological change and quite taken with ideas, good cooking, the great outdoors, notable books, big black dogs and media of all kinds. More on his background and biography can be found on his personal blog.

1. How did you get started in social media?
I started interacting with people online in 1992, using a bulletin board system (BBS) and a modem in my high school computer room. I’ve been logging on ever since, though the computers and connection speeds I use now have thankfully dramatically improved over the past two decades. While I built any number of webpages in the 2000s, I’d place my “start with social media” when I started experimenting with blogs in 2004, after Blogger.com launched. The big departure point, however, was when I was hired as an assistant editor at WhatIs.com in the beginning of 2006 and started blogging, podcasting, and writing about nearly every aspect of enterprise IT professionally. I joined Facebook that year and Twitter in March 2007, out of professional and personal interest. My approach initially was to try to be helpful, thoughtful, interesting, and relevant, including many links. That turns out to be a solid strategy.

2. What role does social media play in your current job or industry?
Here, I’d refer to two interviews I’ve given, with Zach Braiker and Elisa Gabbert:

In general, social media (or collaborative technology, as some now prefer in the enterprise world) is deeply woven into the fabric of both my work and personal life. On the IT journalism side, I use social media to find sources, provide live coverage of events, gauge sentiment, distribute content, track news and fact-check stories. When I’m not focused on work, I use social media to stay in touch with friends, family, former colleagues and classmates, find out what’s happening around whatever city I’m in or check on the status of events or government services. Basically, I try to use the various platforms to get smarter and tap into the zeitgeist around events or ideas.

In 2012, I’m still enjoying exploring and experimenting with what the right approach to each platform, from blogging to Twitter to having family, friends and subscribers on Facebook and Google+ to tumbling or staying LinkedIn to my professional network or sharing video on YouTube.

3. What does influence mean to you? Who influences you the most online?
Influence means that someone’s work, opinion or perspective matters to me in a given context, professional or personally. My father’s influence, for instance, has resulted in me deeply caring about good writing. My uncles have inspired me to be a better outdoorsman. My publisher has encouraged me to focus on substance and work on stuff that matters. Influence means that what you say or do has a substantive impact upon the world, from simple outcomes like someone clicking on a link or sharing content with their network to world-changing examples, passing a historic bill into law, starting or ending wars, or inspiring a young scientist to work on inventing a cure for a disease or a device.

In terms of who influences me, who I’m following on Twitter or circling is a start. Individually, I’d include people like @MarcAmbinder, @SusannahFox, @TimOReilly, @SteveSilberman, @baratunde, @acarvin, @alexismadrigal, @TimBerners_Lee, @BrainPicker, @MarkKnoller, @rmack, @ethanz, @mathewi, @JayRosen_NYU, @palafo, @TimOBrien, @NYT_JenPreston, @glichfield, @NiemanLab, @participatory, @zephoria, @evgenymorozov, @patrickmeier, and @ahier.

I could list dozens upon dozens of other people. And that’s just on Twitter. My latent network of email and phone contacts is much broader and deeper — and it’s not an influence graph I want to map out online.

4. What advice do you have for someone who wants to take their online presence to the next level?
First, understand why you want to do that and in the service of what cause. Are you a musician or artist? A writer or editor? A government or industry executive? Are you a parent that wants to connect with other fathers or mothers? An athlete who needs sponsors to support training? A nonprofit that wants to change the world but depends upon donations? Do you make things and want to find buyers or other makers? Are you a politician that wants to get elected? Or, once elected, to serve the interests of the people you represent?

Each use case will have different context for what “the next level” of online presence means. In general, beware of snake oil and false promises. You can spend a lot of money on expensive websites, snazzy mobile apps and integrated media campaigns across search and social advertising platforms and still not accomplish your strategic purpose.

As with any community, listen first to see what conventions for a given platform exist before you dive in. On Twitter, I highly
recommend staying away from any services that promise more followers. Twitter monitors accounts that use them and may suspend or penalize accounts that have done so in the future.

Cover the basics. Fill out your bio, putting your real name in so you’re searchable and linking to an informative landing page will help enormously, no matter what social network you’re on. So will integrating all of your social media and online accounts into your email, your blog, website, or other social networks.

“Taking it to the next level online” is tied to who you are offline. They’re not so different these days. That said, being interesting and gaining influence online isn’t so different from other media or platforms. Online, you have less time to grab people’s attention in fast moving social streams. That forces brevity of thought and with on Twitter but you can write much more elsewhere. Posting pictures or relevant, topical stories is effective across platforms. Most people don’t have lives that are inherently interesting, so you’ll need to pick your spots and be thoughtful about what’s worth sharing.

Stay away from the cliche of talking about your lunch, unless it’s a dispatch from a foreign country or a special event at an unusual restaurant (add that picture!) — or if you’re a chef, food critic or foodie that shares new discoveries.

One effective method for growing an influential network relevant to a given topic is to follow hashtags or lists and then to reply or comment upon tweets, updates or posts by the supernodes in that community, resharing posts that are relevant to your intended audience. Ascribing authority in real-time search is both qualitative and quantitative. It’s important to work on both angles.

Connect with Alexander on Twitter at @digiphile

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Our Klout Stars series highlights top influencers and how they got to where they are today.

About:
Christine Kirk is Founder and CEO of Social Muse Communications, advising luxury travel, restaurant, technology, and lifestyle brands on social media marketing, traditional public relations campaigns, and online branding. She has amassed over 18,000 engaged followers on Twitter, and growing, and is a guest blogger and speaker on various social media, PR and luxury lifestyle subjects. Additionally, Christine is the founder of the popular live Twitter chat called #luxchat, which takes place on a quarterly basis, and is a live online discussion about the intersection of luxury brands and social media. Prestigious past guests include, Lexus, The Ritz-Carlton Hotels, Four Seasons Hotels, Exclusive Resorts, Bergdorf Goodman, and many more. Christine is also a freelance writer covering luxury travel and food for CBSLA.com, JustLuxe.com, and an editor for LAWoman.com.

1. How did you get started in social media?
My career started in social media 9 years ago – back when Friendster was the social network du jour and the word “blog” was not a mainstream word. I realized quickly that social media was going to be the future of public relations – and I wanted to be a part of building and growing a new industry – and not keep doing the same traditional communications that had been done for decades. Being part of shaping a new industry got me excited, and while for years my bosses and supervisors had no clue what I was doing, I stuck with it on behalf of my clients because I was passionate about it, and I knew that social media would change the way the world communicates.

2. In what ways does social media play into your current job or industry? Do you have any examples?
I live, breathe, eat, and sleep social media on behalf of my amazing clients in the luxury hospitality and tech industries. I manage the online presence for brands on a daily basis across social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Ustream, Pinterest, Instagram, and Google+. Social media offers luxury hospitality brands the ability to provide their guests and customers with 5-star service before that guest even sets foot on the property of the hotel, or walks through the door of the store. Many people plan their vacations online, asking their friends for recommendations, and tweeting or Facebooking about how excited they are to be going on a trip. If the social media presence is managed correctly, the hotel can greet a guest before they are even on property, arrange for any special requests or in-room amenities in advance of their stay, and then interact with the guest while on property, providing concierge services or addressing any questions about the hotel or the destination itself. Finally, the hotel can keep in touch with their guests after they’ve left the hotel, thanking them for their stay, and continuing to stay top of mind. Now THAT is 5-star service! Luxury brands – whether it be in the hospitality, fashion, retail, or automotive industries – pride themselves on the quality of their product and service. These days, a luxury brand not engaging in social media is not providing their customer with 5-star service.

3. What does influence mean to you? Who influences you the most online, and why?
Influence to me means inspiration. My goal on social media with both my client’s online presence, and my own personal brand is to INSPIRE – to be happy, to find your passion, to laugh, to enjoy the little things, and to enjoy the journey of life. If we can give that to our audience online, then we’ve done our jobs. As a luxury enthusiast, I am influenced and inspired online by brands like @Bergdorfs, @RitzCarlton, @FourSeasons, @Burberry, and @Lexus.

4. What recent social media trends do you think are interesting or helpful?
I think the social media trend for 2012 is VISUAL. Social networks and photo-sharing apps like Pinterest and Instagram will continue to thrive and go mainstream. Pictures really do speak a thousand words. Also, I think 2012 will be another big year for online video – including premium, user-generated, and live.

Connect with Christine on Twitter at @LuxuryPRGal

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Our Klout Stars series highlights top influencers and how they got to where they are today.

About: Brent Black, also known as “brentalfloss”, is a comedian, musician, and gamer. He is best known on the internet as the creator of the “With Lyrics” series, where he adds satirical lyrics to classic video game tunes and uses them to create music videos. He first gained notoriety in 2008 with the release of “Mega Man 3 With Lyrics”. Since then, he has expanded his base of YouTube subscribers to over 130,000, released a CD that reached #8 on the iTunes comedy charts, and has appeared live all over North America and in the UK. His brand has expanded from YouTube videos to albums to even a webcomic based on his internet persona.

1. How did you get started in social media?
I was in one of the first generations of Facebook because I was in college when it first became popular. At the time, I just did it because everyone else was doing it. I got a Myspace page because a pretty girl wouldn’t give me her number, but she was okay with giving me her Myspace information. I also took the advice of a friend and joined Twitter in 2009, which has ended up becoming a huge part of my brand.

2. What role does social media play in your current job or industry?
I’m primarily a content creator, so social media has a two-fold purpose for me: The first purpose is notifying my fans and followers about new content. Whether it’s a new video, a new album for sale, or a new episode of my webcomic, Facebook and Twitter help me get the word out while providing me with instant feedback and a fluid environment for spreading my work around. The other main role of social media for me is a place to express my personality (which ultimately IS my brand). As a kid, I was always trying to get people to listen to my songs or to jokes I had written, but it was like pulling teeth to get anyone to really take me seriously as an artist. Today’s social media sites provide a fairly democratic, merit-based forum for ideas, so if I have a funny one-liner or even a philosophical point to make, I can get that validation that every artist needs while allowing fans and followers to get to know me as a person.

3. What does influence mean to you? Who influences you the most online?
To me, influence is like water. If you throw a bucket of water at a sandy beach, it won’t make much of a difference. Now let’s say you throw a tidal wave onto that beach. It’s the same water, but with enough of it, you can change everything. It takes a certain amount of influence to get a fan or follower to click a link. It takes more influence to get them to make a purchase or donate to a cause. It takes more to get them to travel a long distance to a live show, and so on and so on until you get to the top influencers online who can start a movement and permanently change the cultural vernacular on a massive scale. What amazes me about today’s internet is that you can be granted a huge amount of online influence very quickly, such as when Charlie Sheen got a million Twitter followers in a record time, or when Netflix decided to change to “Quikster” and suddenly the owner of the “Quikster” Twitter handle became momentarily famous.

4. What advice do you have for someone who wants to take their online presence to the next level?
A lot of people look at successful content creators and they think “I could do that.” Just like a skilled magician, popular content creators make it look easy, even if it takes a lot of work and a lot of luck.

But for content creators, here is my advice: Every individual has a unique set of talents and abilities; we’re all like an incomplete kitchen. A person is blessed with only so many ingredients, cookware, and serving dishes. Sometimes, you see someone online with only savory ingredients trying to imitate someone else’s dessert and it’s awful because they just don’t have the kitchen for it. My advice to the online content creator (and any other artist for that matter) is to figure out a dish that could ONLY be made in your kitchen. Before anyone knew me on Youtube, I tried political rants, cute baby videos, and piano song covers, but I didn’t do any of those things in a unique way, so I just joined the massive graveyard of art that tries to directly imitate what others have already done. Only when I did something unique–which in my case was writing parody lyrics to video game tunes–did anyone sit up and notice. Every artist has a unique recipe for success in their kitchen, and the artist’s challenge is to experiment until he or she finds it. You’ll know once you find it. The proof is in the pudding; also the comments section.

Connect with Brent on Twitter at @brentalfloss

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Our Klout Stars series highlights top influencers and how they got to where they are today.

About: I’ve started and sold several companies. I’ve also failed brilliantly at several others. I write for the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and TechCrunch. I write for my own blog, jamesaltucher.com. I’ve published eight books, including 2 self-published (the last one was “I Was Blind But Now I See”) and one that was a comic book based on my blog (probably the first comic ever based on a blog).

1. How did you get started in social media?
I’ve been on Facebook since the beginning. In August 2007, I wrote a column suggesting Facebook would be worth $100 billion at some point and the amount of hate mail I got was staggering. I’ve been on Twitter almost since it was started. I usually try every social media platform that comes out. Working on my own ideas as well.

Expanding my profile in social media literally made me “social.” I made friends. Friends introduced me to other people. My “social network” became my real network. This real network expanded my investment opportunities, my self-publishing of my last two books (which never would’ve been possible without social media), the opportunities of my blog, and businesses I’ve been building that I have yet to officially launch. Without the trust afforded by an ever-increasing social/real network none of this would’ve been possible.

2. What role does social media play in your current job or industry?
Everyone in the tech industry connects via social media. This is a new cultural artifact. We all want to be around people who inspire us. 200 years ago we were limited to the people who lived next door to us. 100 years ago we were limited to the people we could take a train to and perhaps make a telegraph to (or rarer, a phone call). Now there are no limitations. We have 7 billion people we can reach out to due to social media.

3. What does influence mean to you? Who influences you the most online?
In general, I like to be around people who inspire me and uplift me. I think all people should seek that in their lives. Even 20 years ago we were limited in our inspirational choices by who was in our immediate vicinity. Social media has given us the gift of choosing our friends among the 800 million people out there who have signed up social networks. So influence for me is a direct measure of A.) how I am helping people and B.) my potential to be around people who can inspire me. And this is never going away. For the rest of our lives we will have more and more opportunities to help and, in turn, to be uplifted, by the friends we meet through our influence in social media.

Who influences me the most online? So many people it’s hard to list them all. I feel so grateful to be born in a time where I can turn on the computer and be instantly transported to a world filled with so many inspirational people that I never would have otherwise known or even been aware of. Friendship has layers and not everyone who influences you will become a “friend” but so far, several have and I am also grateful for that.

4. What advice do you have for someone who wants to take their online presence to the next level?
Three things: Bleed, Tell a Story, Provide Value that can’t be found anywhere else.

Connect with James on Twitter at @jaltucher

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Our Klout Stars series highlights top influencers and how they got to where they are today.

About: Ben Lang is the 18-year-old founder of EpicLaunch and MySchoolHelp. He’s now working on the marketing team at Wibiya, a platform for adding social features to your site. Ben sometimes contributes to Business Insider, Mashable and TechCrunch.

1.How did you get started in social media?
When I was 14 I started an eBay selling business and was looking for ways to gain more clients. I played around with Facebook, Twitter and YouTube and started to understand how powerful they were in finding potential clients. Over the past few years I’ve continued to use social media as a means to stay connected to my network, build relationships and essentially learn about the world.

2. What role does social media play in your current job or industry?
Currently, at Wibiya, social media plays a huge role in my job. It’s the most powerful way for me to engage with our users and easily connect with the community we’ve built. Through different tools such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and now even Pinterest we engage the community in different ways and in the most effective manner possible. The fact that our product incorporates all of these social services on to one bar for anyone to customize and add to their site, makes it even more important for us to stay constantly be connected with out users through these channels.

3. What does influence mean to you? Who influences you the most online?
Influence to me means a huge amount of effective engagement with others. People such as Gary Vaynerchuck, Hiten Shah, Jack Dorsey, Eric Reis and Dharmesh Shah influence me every day by sharing fascinating content and responding to their followers through channels such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and more.

4. What advice do you have for someone who wants to take their online presence to the next level?
The simplest way to get started is by finding influential and interesting people in your niche. Find their profiles on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, About.me, LinkedIn, Tumblr and all the rest and see what they’re doing. Who they’re talking to. What they’re sharing. Use them as inspiration.

Focus on what interests you and start sharing everything that comes up in that niche. Start a Tumblr or WordPress blog and share your experiences and what you learn. Build your authority by guest posting on other blogs in the same area.

Connect with people that are passionate about the same things as you. The more you progress the more influential you’ll become in your niche.

Connect with Ben on Twitter at @Benln

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Our Klout Stars series highlights top influencers and how they got to where they are today.

About: Beth Kanter has worked in the nonprofit sector for 32 years and has been a Visiting Scholar at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation since 2009. She has worked with nonprofit networks and has trained thousands of nonprofit organizations in all areas around the world on using technology for socially-driven impact. Beth is the author of Beth’s Blog and co-author of the book, The Networked Nonprofit, She is also getting ready to publish her second book, “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit” with co-author KD Paine this year.

1.How did you get started in social media?

I started my blog in 2003 as a method to keep my trainer’s notes – not anything special. At the time, I was also a bridge blogger for Global Voices working with Cambodia Bloggers. In 2007, I was the first person to use Twitter for fundraising – I raised money to sponsor a blogger conference in Cambodia. My blog was a way to document what I was learning and my mistakes to avoid making them again. People started commenting and telling me how useful it was. Today, I have a huge readership.

2. What role does social media play in your current job or industry?

Nonprofits are at different levels of embracing social media. There is a segment of early adopters that are getting amazing results like Charity: Water and Momsrising. More and more nonprofits are starting to incorporate social media, but there are challenges. Many nonprofits don’t have a lot of resources in terms of staff and time, so it is hard to invest the time needed for an in-depth presence/strategy. Also, for some organizations, there are cultural issues in the way they work. Being transparent, the participatory nature of social media raise a lot of concerns. With that said, many nonprofits are overcoming those issues and seeing results.

3. What does influence mean to you? Who influences you the most online?

I’m influenced by great thinkers and great work and innovative ideas. Right now, I’m very influenced by Robin Good who is the best content curator on the planet! I am also very interested in Howard Rheingold’s work.

4. What advice do you have for someone who wants to take their online presence to the next level?

Follow your passion and be yourself, that’s how I got to where I am. In 2005, I was a bridge blogger for Cambodia for Global Voices. I was connecting with Cambodian bloggers because I was passionate about Cambodia (my 2 kids are adopted from there). Then in 2007, bloggers invited me to keynote their first conference, but they didn’t have resources to get me there. So, I took to my blog and embraced fundraising with Twitter and other tools. So, my passion is for learning and doing good in the world – and social media has helped me combine those qualities.

If anything, I would say the reason I am where I am in addition to following my passion and being myself is because I developed relationships first – and reached out to people to find out how I can be helpful – and not with any eye for getting something in return. I make it a habit never to have my first connection with someone be an ask for them to do something for me.

Connect with Beth on Twitter at @Kanter