How To Increase Klout Score With Online Video

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This past Thursday over 250 of online video’s top creators, producers, talent, executives, agents, distributors, and technologists packed into theStream.tv’s Hollywood Studios for Tubefilter’s Social Media Week LA panel, Social Video On Steroids.

This time around we pulled together a panel of social media experts with a focus on online video: Greg Goodfried, Founder and President of EQAL, which now builds influencer networks around celebrities and brands since its hit lonelygirl15 took YouTube by storm and and defined “viral series”; Garret Law, Co-Founder and COO of Attention Span Media, an audience development agency that created Dorm Life, the most watched series on Hulu, and supported Simon Fuller’s If I Can Dream and CJP’ Digital’s Leap Year; and Amber Buhl, Director of Sales at Klout, whose social influence metric is now included on the resumes of prospective job applicants.

Our panelists highlighted best practices in social video marketing, discussing the best places to socialize video to maximize click-throughs and increase viewership.

We kicked off the discussion with a question from a member of the audience, who asked about the tactic of hyper-distribution: should you publish your videos everywhere in multiple locations, or focus on a single network and build and audience there?

Among the panel there was consensus that marketers’ attention should be focused on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, where the biggest audiences live. Buhl noted that although Klout actually collects data from over 11 sources in computing the Klout score, the relative importance of the “Big 3” cannot be ignored. Or as Goodfried put it, “YouTube is the beast.” Klout is already tracking YouTube, and Buhl noted that YouTube will be integrated into the Klout score in early November.

Marketing online video with the standard social media tools isn’t enough, however, and our panelists  have developed new ways to maximize social media to put social video on steroids. Law announced Attention Span Media’s new product, Fanatical, that segments audiences on social networks so that marketers can target communications with greater relevance. According to Law, Fanatical enables marketers to turn down the fire hose and focus on “sub-audiences” that will be most receptive to the message, which cuts down on noise.

Goodfried explained how EQAL’s Umbrella platform coordinates social media tools to present more cohesive and robust offerings to audiences, providing a more engaging presentation of the content that doesn’t simply replicate itself in the social media echo chamber.

“Engagement needs to be personal, especially on social media,” said Law. “We don’t think robots and auto-follows are effective. There should be a human on that last mile of connectivity with the audience, because it really is about a relationship.”

By focusing attention on influence and less on gross audience numbers, Buhl noted, Klout addresses the problem of “dead matter,” subscribers and followers who are no longer engaging with content but are still “on the roster” so to speak. Klout’s true reach, amplification, and network impact measurements make it difficult to cheat.

Our Q&A produced a lot of stimulating responses, and you’ll just have to watch the program to make sure get all the good stuff.

Special thanks to our Meetup Sponsor theStream.tv, our Community Sponsors blip.tv, SAG New Media, and PlaceVine, and to our Media Partners Stickam and the PGA New Media Council.

Meetup photos on Facebook