Klout and the Incalculable Value of Surprising Influencers

Kevin Rose had a fever. And, because he’s a nerd, he tweeted about it. That prompted the writers behind the deadpanned-but-hilarious TV ads for Old Spice to create a video response just for Kevin. You can see it below:

This video has been the talk of the web in the last few days — not so much for its content, but that the company would pick one person to direct a response to. But Kevin Rose isn’t just any ordinary nerd; he’s a well-connected and highly influential one. More than a million people follow his Twitter account.

The amount of publicity Old Spice has generated from this single well-directed message is incalculable.

Can you do the same with your business? Absolutely. And you should.

Take Canadian coffee chain Blenz. It reaches out to specific people through its Twitter account — sometimes rewarding them with gift certificates. While Blenz apparently pings random people, you may want to consider being more strategic.

Tools exist today to let you determine who the most influential people who follow your brand are.

Klout.com, for instance, gives you a score between 1 and 100 that estimates a person’s level of influence. It calculates everything from how often they are retweeted, how many influential people follow their social media accounts, and so on.

The recent release of the excellent and free Hootsuite social media dashboard now lets you filter tweets by Klout. In other words, you can see a stream of people who are tweeting about your brand — and can tell Hootsuite to only show those people who are very influential on the Internet. These are the people you should focus on. Invite them to participate as advisory board members. Send them a gift certificate. Invite them to your next staff party.

This screenshot shows one of the Hootsuite columns I run — a search for any time someone mentions my Twitter username, but only people with more than a Klout Influence Score of 39. These are the people who others trust to bring them valuable content. They are paid attention to.

When you randomly surprise influential people with something of value, they’ll talk it up. And your brand wins.

Have you ever randomly surprised one of your brand’s followers/friends? What did you offer them?

NB: You can do surprise your fan base and customers offline too — this summer, some Virgin Mobile customers will get replacement phones hand-delivered right to their door. To kick the program off, Sir Richard Branson made one of the first deliveries in Toronto earlier this week to an unsuspecting Virgin Mobile customer. “I don’t even know what to say right now. I can’t believe you guys did this!” said Morrison.  “I got my new phone right away and Richard Branson is here. He’s the coolest delivery person ever – and I didn’t even have to tip him!”

Related Links:

• Shirtless Old Spice guy replies on Twitter with hilarious personalized videos (thenextweb.com)
• Old Spice Guy is social media rockstar (cyberjournalist.net)
• Old Spice Man connects with the Web (news.cnet.com)
• Hootsuite Just Took the Lead in Third Party Twitter Apps (dannybrown.me)
• How Your Business Can Twitter Better with Hootsuite (windmillnetworking.com)
• Unpacking Klout: True Measure of Influence? (conversationagent.com)