Last night I went for the Online Marketing London Meetup on the HMS 1918 President boat. Yes, a digital meetup on a boat. It was a 3 piece presentation about reputation and influence, but somehow it turned again into a product presentation. First up was Brandwatch – a reputation and influence measurement tool, where the presenter made some points that I’ve summarized below:
- Do good work, don’t be a dick, repeat – reputation rules. You have to listen and not through Google Alerts, then identify probelms, fix them and be authentic. Also be where the audience is.
- Google Alerts misses loads of results. US has loads of analysts and social media rockstars that charge / speech or mention, in comparison to the UK or Germany, which don’t have as many.
Key takeaway – not really new stuff, old ideas, common sens, but the platform has really poor design. Might need some UX consultancy.
Next up – Peerindex – whose CEO started by asking: why should you care about influence? Here’s a quick sumup of the best stuff:
- The dictionary definition of influence is useless. The world seems to be much more complicated for marketers nowadays. The old locus of authority ment that ads worked like a sinch, but now more and more consumers refer to peers (84%) and shifted the locus.
- Narrow down to the 5000 people that dictate what the 1 million do. Influencers drive lots of attentition, so brands need to pay atention to them and deliver content that they need and will spread.
- And apparently clubs don’t want to attract the unwashed masses at first. They want the hippest clubbers. No, really?
- If your business gets really good or really bad reviews, should you address the really bad ones? Look at NPS and see if it’s a perception problem, not a product problem.
Key takeaway – influence is relative (doh) and they have a Klout competitor tool that does digital measurement on the panel of influencers they have in their database. Useful for brands who want to keep up with the ever-changing influencer list.
Last presentation was a courtesy of Lincoln Coutts. This is where I gave in and left the building…er…boat. It’s funny how a person talks about influence and reputation with under 1000 followers. The first part of the presentation was filled with generic “everyone is a publisher and builds a personal brand of some sort” kind of stuff.
Key takeaway – please, when you come and present to an educated audience (digitally savvy people), do come up with new stuff. Don’t present something that anyone with above 3-4k followers and a few thousand visitors/month can jot up in 45 mins in a semi-formatted power-point. That’s if you want to keep your influence.
I was expecting more of a debate over who is influential now on topics, on how to engage an influencer in a constructive way, based on past experience, not common sense, but hey, maybe they’ll get it right next time.
Photo via: @cmooki