Guildford Link-UP, Google + and Klout – what goes around comes around
Early last week I received an email invitation that began, “I noticed your profile on LinkedIn and thought you would like to attend our Guildford Link-Up networking event on 12th October”. I read through the attendee list and was surprised to see that I didn’t recognise a single name on the list. Having attended many local networking events over the past four years, organised by DigitalSurrey, 4N and Business Link, I’d started to see the same names cropping up on the attendee lists. So it was interesting to see that the organisers, Only Marketing, had built a completely new community. I was also impressed to see attendees from major local companies: Autodesk and BAE Systems, so I decided to go along.
Another major attraction to the #Guild-LU event was the presentation on Google+ from Thomas Power, social media expert, Chairman of eCademy and author of “Networking for Life” and “A Friend in every City”. I was invited to join Google + by Kevin Townsend, a philosopher, security blogger and journalist. Thus far, my involvement has been limited to adding fellow high tech PR professionals and journalists to my circles and +1 ing articles and blogs that I have enjoyed reading, so I was interested in hearing Thomas Power’s views on Google’s social media platform.
Despite being billed as a Google + presentation, the point that resonated with everyone I spoke to at Guild-LU was his comment that recruiters in the US are now using Klout scores to decide whether or not to interview people for marketing roles. Apparently, if a candidate’s Klout score is below 50, they won’t be interviewed because they are not using social networks sufficiently to be able to influence an audience. He pointed to the fact that Lady GaGa has a Klout score of 92 and that each of her Tweets goes out to 14 million followers. Thomas Power cited that the value of her influence means that Lady Gaga could charge $1million per Tweet.
In his YouTube channel Power talks about the key benefit of gaining a larger social network, citing that “1 in 100 people in your network will bring you business, 1 in 1000 will bring you good business and 1 in 10,000 will bring you useful information or mentoring”. He talks about networks improving the flow of information and opportunities to oneself, so the larger your network, the greater the chances of getting the right information and opportunities for your business. Power stated, that, based on social networks having a seven year cycle, both Twitter and Klout would reach critical mass in 2015.
From my own experience, this influx of information and opportunities has certainly proved to be Twitter’s biggest benefit. By following the journalists who write the most on my clients’ sectors, I can discover which news stories are breaking, trending and worth following and quickly pick up on the key issues facing their industry. But it’s not all about business, Twitter also allows me to enjoy banter with friends and former colleagues as though we’re still sharing the same office. As Thomas Power states, the power of social media is about sharing knowledge and ideas. I would add that social media also allows us to create a dream team of our favourite colleagues so that we can get the right information, be more productive and have fun in the process.
Huge thanks to Jane Sherwood for my invitation to Guild-LU. I’m looking forward to the next event.
