Anyone running affiliate marketing or influencer outreach programs requires a mixture of automated and human analyses to design and operate their program.  Automated algorithms are great when you need a quick decision in real-time, but when you are choosing 5, 10 or 50 influencers for long-term relationship development, you need to be sure that they are the true influencers in your category.  That requires human analysis.

While Klout can now include LinkedIn connections and activities into the calculation of Klout scores, brands should be very careful about using Klout scores for affiliate marketing or influencer outreach, for the following reasons:

1. The only way to identify influencers within a category is through a combination of automated and human analyses.
2. Klout can not measure influence within a category.  For example, Ariana Huffington has a high Klout score, but she is not relevant to most brands.  For example, if you sell baby diapers or desktop virtualization products, Ariana is not an influencer.  And Klout is not capable of telling you who influences the conversation around baby diapers or desktop virtualization products.

In recognition of the need for category-specific influence scoring, Klout recently launched a +K button, which lets Klout users tell Klout when someone else influences them, but the method has two weaknesses:

• +K is subject to significant self-selection bias. The inputs come only from Klout users who choose to contribute, and
• +K does not capture the extent to which one person passes along another person’s messages. Therefore, the scoring does not adequately allow a brand to choose influencers based upon the extent to which the influencer will drive messaging into the market.
• +K does not associate the influence with a category. For example, I might say that Seth Godin influences me, but does he influence my decisions about car purchases, laptop purchases or the foods that I consume? No.

Converseon’s monitoring dashboard, Conversation Miner, includes Klout scores for authors because we recognize the value of Klout in real-time decisions.

For our clients who are managing influence outreach or affiliate marketing, we offer more sophisticated research services to identify the top influencers in the categories that the brand is targeting.

Both are useful tools. The key is to choose the appropriate tool for each purpose.

UPDATE: Alex Braunstein posted a nice analysis of Klout’s usability on his blog.

This post was co-created by Chris Boudreaux and Jasper Snyder of Converseon.

Jasper Snyder oversees all Listening and Research efforts for Converseon clients. Jasper can be reached at via email at jsnyder@converseon.com or via Twitter.

Private sharing defines an emerging class of social applications that let you share content with a limited set of people. While utilities such as Facebook, Twitter and FourSquare tend to encourage you to share with more and more people, emerging applications such as Path intentionally limit the number of people who can see your photos, videos, etc.

What? Doesn’t that limit their network effect — their ability to quickly grow on the backs of their users’ address books, and someday IPO?

Maybe. But it also fills a gap in most of the mainstream social networking applications: privacy. Most of us who use Twitter, or LinkedIn, or Facebook have added so many people that we’re afraid to share our most intimate thoughts or memories. Yes, Facebook offers Groups as a way to control who sees what, but the reality is that most people don’t use Groups very effectively because it’s too much work.

In Path, you are allowed to select only 50 people who can see your photos and videos. While 50 may seem like a large number, most Facebook users have far more than 50 Friends.

Of course, private sharing sites are not completely new. A Small World has long billed itself as, “A private online community designed for those who already have strong connections with one another. By invitation only.” In fact, A Small World has special rules for determining when a member can invite new members. I know folks who have been a member of that service for years and have never been allowed to invite even one new member.

The Future

As these services evolve, some people may divert some portion of their thoughts and opinions into applications which offer greater privacy, such as Path or A Small World. That data may not be visible to search engines or conversation monitoring solutions. On the other hand, some of those services may choose to share the data in limited ways, like Sermo and PatientsLikeMe.

I also wonder whether services that launch with such limited sharing ultimately plan to remove their sharing limitations. For example, they may limit sharing while they are small, in order to create a sense of scarcity in their membership. Let’s remember that Facebook started by allowing each member to communicate only with people within their college campus.

For now, these services are not having any measurable impact on public conversation volumes or the ability to mine online conversations for actionable insight. But we shall stay tuned.

Contact Chris at: cboudreaux [at] converseon-dot-com

50% of professional bloggers and 25% of hobbyist bloggers say that they’ve been approached by at least one company to write about a brand or product, according to Technorati.

Even though content marketers have published thousands of articles with tips for blogger outreach, 64% of bloggers believe they are treated less professionally by brand representatives than they are by traditional media, and only 20% of bloggers characterize their interactions with brand representatives as positive.

The most influential bloggers receive requests every day. Gone are the days when bloggers starved for attention from brands or big media. As a result, brands can feel challenged to effectively engage influential writers and tweeters. Here are four tips for success:

1. Identify the right bloggers: Start by identifying the writers who are influential in your particular sector, and with your target audiences. As Andrew Chen explained in 2008, not everyone needs to target the early adopters. Some specialized products produce only a handful of online influencers. Know your audience, and know their influencers.
2. Use the right incentives: Understand the incentive that will pique the interest of their target blog most. For some, it’s pure compensation. They may already be earning steady income through paid placement or affiliate or performance based marketing. Others may want to increase readership. They may be willing to sponsor a giveaway or contest at no cost, just to keep their readers excited. Others want complete control and will allow you to submit a product for review – with no promises or editorial control.
3. Know each blogger’s value: Most bloggers know exactly what the real estate on their site is worth. They know what their readers want. They know the value of their site and the value of access to their readers.
4. Comply with FTC guides: 55% of bloggers and 70% of professional bloggers are aware of FTC disclosure requirements, and bloggers tend to say that they are offended by brands asking them to cross the line.

People often trust bloggers more than advertisements, so a product review or recommendation from a notable blogger can be more valuable than traditional online media placement. To be sure, blogger outreach can be an effective and measurable strategy for increasing awareness and driving traffic, but it can also tarnish your brand if not conducted professionally, intelligently and with integrity.

Know your goals, know your audience, and know their influencers.

We wanted to have a bit more fun this time around and add a unique twist to the standard networking events, making the experience more memorable and interactive for all our affiliates and partners, offering prizes for using Flickr and Twitter in a social media scavenger hunt. The attendees are given clues to solve and must find Converseon team members (Jamie, Stephen, Robin, Harmony and Stephanie) at various locations during the Affiliate Summit to win points towards our prize packages. To gain points participants take a photo with us and upload it to our Affiliate Summit Flickr account, It’s pretty simple but should be lots of fun.

Here are some sample clues:
• How can you go to Las Vegas without seeing ”The King”? 10 points if you get a picture with any Converseon team member with The King, and another 20 points if you are able to get the entire Converseon team and you posing with his eminence. And 25 points more if you’re wearing Blue Suede Shoes in the picture.
• There’s only one way to get around the strip, but don’t get derailed. Catch a picture of any Converseon team member and you on Vegas’ mass transit system and get 15 points.
• Going once, going twice – SOLD! 10 points for a picture with any Converseon team member at this Summit event on Monday at 3 pm.

We’ll also be offering additional prizes through our Twitter account such as coffee mugs or a free lunch with the team. The points will be calculated and totaled at the end of the game. We will post the final winner on the “Where in the Summit is Converseon?” website by March 3, 2008. Prizes from Converseon clients Edmund Scientifics, Relax the Back, MyWinesDirect, Get Organized and Mikasa will be shipped the following week.

What Evolutionary Psychology Says About Social Networking

This column sparked a lot of deep thinking and discussion in the office. The author analyzes some evolutionary psychology research that looks at how early humans communicated and interacted with each other for clues about how we communicate today.

Dunbar begins with the premise that back when our Paleolithic ancestors were still more monkey than human, understanding one’s place in the group hierarchy was exceedingly important. Compared to other creatures, primates are unusually social animals. And thus knowledge about relationships — who’s mating with whom, who became allies, who just had a fight — was crucial for primates to maintain or advance their place in the pack. It was, Dunbar suggests, the birth of gossip.

Show Series To Originate on MySpace

An interesting article about how TV producers are launching a series to be shown on MySpace. Producers are looking to generate story lines and even find actors online. Working online also allows them to take advantage of union agreements that allow actors and writers to work on terms more favorable to producers than those governing network programs.

Fifty Most Influential Bloggers

A new list of the 50 ‘most influential’ bloggers. This could possibly be more valuable than many of the ranking formats out there because of its qualitative focus. The ‘who’ and ‘what’ behind the blog are more important than the numbers.

Deconstructing the Incredibly Weak Mobile Web Experience

This year 115 million smartphones will be shipped and that number is expected to rise to 410 million by 2012. This article looks towards the future of mobile web browsing.

Crowdsourcing Site

It’s likely we’ll see more of these sites popping up, it is important to keep track of them and monitor them for your brand. Brands should also consider setting up their own open forums for discussion about their products and services, of course, rather than let third parties control the platform.

Selling Postcards from the Hanging: Reflections on CJU

A look at the changes occurring in affiliate marketing, especially how smaller affiliates will find it harder to continue in the affiliate space.