Marketing Technology Blog

Today’s conversation with Scott Stratten was a fantastic show. Bill Dawson, President of DK New Media, kicked off the show with Scott and discussed how Scott grew his following and influence on Twitter and what it’s accomplished for him personally and for his company.

Scott is a gifted public speaker and I’d encourage you to find a way to see him in action. He’s unapologetic, sincere, and honest. His book, UnMarketing, is a reflection of his personality and it challenges conventional marketing methodologies and pushes marketers to be both creative and courageous. A few moments with Scott and you’ll feel like you’ve been friends forever… and Scott discusses those challenges as well in this Friday’s Marketing Technology Blog radio show.

I appreciate that Scott spoke to how his network has grown somewhat unmanageable and that some folks have even commented that he’s an a**hole for not making time to meet with them. Although I’m on a much smaller scale than Scott, I’ve been criticized by some within my inner/outer circle. I’m difficult to contact, at times I’m late for get togethers, or I don’t respond to invitations altogether. I’d like to make everyone happy in my network – but it’s simply not going to happen. There are things I’m going to try to remedy the situation… like hiring a virtual assistant of some sort to prequalify meetings and help me with my schedule… but I’m not at a point where that makes sense yet.

One of the topics touched on was Klout. Klout is a proprietary scoring algorithm assigned to social media members to measure their ability to influence others. While I love where Klout is going, I still believe there’s a lot of work to be done. Currently, Klout monitors Twitter and Facebook to develop your score… with LinkedIn in beta.

It’s an incomplete mechanism, though, since many of us have building our social influence long before Twitter and Facebook. I’d like to see an algorithm take multiple twitter accounts, facebook pages, search engine ranking, blog traffic and subscribers calculated in… providing a universal score of someone’s online authority and influence. We’ll see how the scoring industry progresses! For the record, I do believe Klout is the leader, though!

We also mentioned Scott’s TED talk, Keep Going Until We Stop… an amazingly sincere and transparent talk that Scott had with the audience on what’s truly important in life. Don’t miss this conversation.

Follow Scott at his blog – Unmarketing or catch him on Twitter or Facebook!