How Honda's #Pintermission Campaign Is Rocking Pinterest

Pinterest is big, but big doesn't always translate into useful for brands, that is, unless you're creative with your strategy.

And that is just what Honda has made strides to do in their recent #Pintermission campaign in which they paired Pinterest with the launch of their new CR-V.

Choosing Pinterest no doubt for their overlapping demographic of young, active families, Honda developed a simple, Pinteresque ad to drum up awareness of the campaign. They then chose Pinterest users with high follower counts and challenged them to take a 24-hour "Pintermission" to test-drive a CR-V. By setting up individual brand boards as well as group boards, test-drivers were able to participate and contribute to the campaign through brand-granted permission.

In an article from MarketingMag.com, it was expected that Honda received 4.6 million impressions just on Pinterest. The campaign also accrued 5,000 pins and 2,000 likes. And all this isn't including spillover into other networks.

It's important to point out, not only Honda's creative use of Pinterest, but an all-network-wide trend of identifying and marketing to influential users. This is shortly after General Motors Canada, along with French-comm company Orange, paired up with Klout to do exactly the same thing.

No longer are businesses merely pairing up with networks, but the power-players within them. It will be interesting to see how much leverage this gives social-media-aficionados in the future and what degree of an active role they will playing in our marketing schemes--because right now, it appears to be big.

Bing Partners w/ Klout, Search Partners Influence

On March 28th, Bing announced its new partnership with Klout to bring you more information about people when you search. The new partnership is two-fold: Bing will show people's Klout scores in search results (as well as which networks they're active on) and Klout will use Bing's search information to increase the influence ranking of users frequently searched for.

This is good news for Klout as it further legitimizes its heavily criticized method of measuring social influence. By incorporating more organic internet use outside of Klout's select networks, celebrities and thought leaders are represented with a high score even without owning a Facebook or Twitter account.

For Bing, in regard to its rat race with Google, the partnership seems to be a wash. While Bing will be listed as an influential network on Klout, Google+ has been there for quite some time and is doubtful the newly found partnership would be grounds to cut it. Yes, listing someone's Klout score and active networks as quickly as Google lists a Google+ page is an asset, but in the end all Bing can do is show this information--after all, Klout is a middleman, not the actual network--and to harvest user data effectively you must have a network goose that lays the golden eggs [cough] Google+ [cough].

What It Means to Have Klout

"What is your Klout score?" This could very likely be an interview question asked by your next potential employer. While the San Francisco start-up that measures social media influence has been heavily criticized by public personas such as President Barack Obama to American author John Scalzi, it is becoming a new qualification for those working in marketing and social media.

What is Klout?

Klout is a application built to measure a person's influence across all social media platforms. Currently including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Foursquare, YouTube, Instagram, Blogger, Tumblr, WordPress, Last.fm and Flickr, it compiles all posts, comments and shares into an algorithm that gives you a score from 1 to 100. And if you work in social media, you better hope you land somewhere toward the top.

In an article from Wired, they tell the story of Sam Florella--a fifteen-year consultant who had worked with major brands such as AOL, Ford and Kraft. During his interview at a large Toronto marketing agency they requested his Klout score. He admitted he didn't know what that even was. So, they pulled up the website and discovered across his social networks he had a Klout score of 34. The interview didn't last long after that.

Klout is also being used by retailers. According that same article from Wired, the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas had clerks look up customer's Klout scores upon check in last summer and high scorers received instant upgrades. After the so called "Klout experiment" the Palms went from being 17th-largest in social networking among Las Vegas casinos to third on Facebook and one of the highest among Klout users.

And this is just the beginning. In February, Salesforce.com introduced a service to monitor client Klout scores. A service that undoubtedly could result in quicker and more personal attention to those with higher social media presence.

Criticisms
As mentioned before, Klout is not without its critics. Not only for the method of breaking down complex online networks into one simple number but also for its societal effect. By quantifying these interactions many consider it a devaluation of human interaction. British author Charles Stross in his blog calls Klout "the Internet equivelant of herpes." Another author, this time American John Scalzi, considers Klout to be "socially evil."

While quantifying someone's influence may seem a bit barbaric, it is the business of measurable social media. And this business pays. In many ways Klout is merely identifying people we already knew to exist--opinion leaders--and the easier to find them, the easier to use them (or become them). So quit tweaking with your resume and open a browser. It's time to check your Klout score.