What I learnt at KredLDN

What do you get if you put a couple of hundred social media fans in a room? Answer: a lot of tweeting, whizzy gadgetry, business card swapping and fabulous shoes. Last night I had the pleasure of attending the Kred London Influencer Summit 2013, aka #kredLDN.

In the incredibly (or should that be inKredibly?, sorry, first and last time, I promise) luxurious surroundings of the May Fair Hotel, people came together to talk all things social media and, more importantly, meet each other face-to-face.

I went along for a couple of reasons: I’ve been reading about Kred and following its CEO @andrewgrill on Twitter for a while and was intrigued to hear first hand what it’s all about. I also wanted to meet some of the people that I have tweeted with via @AllthingsIC for a number of years now, and my Twitter timeline showed that many were going.

It was a real pleasure to finally meet Neville Hobson @jangles face-to-face. I’ve been a regular listener of his fantastic podcast, do check it out if you’ve never listened, and really enjoy reading what he writes. I woke up with no voice today, which gives you an indication of how much talking (and listening!) I did last night. My brain was buzzing with all the new information and I’m going to share some of it with you. I also met @mr_mcfly who had come over from the US as a competition winner from the NYC Influencer Summit, and was sporting dashing electric blue shoes.

The photo further down this page is me being shown a Pebble watch by @therealSJR, which was seriously smart (it showed my tweet on its face, among many other whizzy functions). Photo credit to @harrym. I made a Vine while I was there, which you can view here.

What is Kred?

I like this description from Thomas Kilroy (@mykitchensync): “On the internet there are a couple of tools  – think of them as websites that you sign into – for measuring how much ‘influence’ one has in their social groups online. The two major players in this arena are Klout and Kred.”

In a nutshell, Kred is composed of two scores: Influence and Outreach. Its website states that Kred scores “reflect trust and generosity, the foundations of strong relationships” and defines them as:

Influence: the ability to inspire action, scored on a 1000 point scale. Measured by assessing how frequently people are retweeted, replied, mentioned and followed on Twitter. Also optional to connect Facebook accounts to a Kred profile.

Outreach: reflects generosity in engaging with others and helping them spread their message.

All about influence

To find out more about influence, I recommend my fellow Share This author and CIPR social media panel member Philip Sheldrake’s book on the topic: The Business of Influence: Reframing Marketing and PR for the Digital Age (Wiley, 2011).  You can find him on Twitter @Sheldrake and the book introduces his Influence Scorecard.

Philip defines influence as: “You have been influenced when you think in a way you wouldn’t otherwise have thought, or do something you wouldn’t otherwise have done”

If this is the first time you’ve read about the topic, do check out his downloadable material and models, particularly if you’d like a comprehensive overview. If you’re interested in learning more, do check out his excellent website.

Philip is currently calling for feedback on a deck of slides regarding the standards setting process for the concept of influence ahead of the International association for the measurement and evaluation of communication (AMEC) European Summit in June. If you’re interested in knowing even more, do let me know, and perhaps Philip will be kind enough to answer questions we pose on influence.

I’ve linked to some further reading at the foot of this article on the subject but am going to highlight a quote by my fellow Windmill Networking contributor Raymond Morin:

“The amount of influence exerted within the social networks has now become part of any marketing strategy devised by professionals and companies. Today, they have access to more than 30 different applications on the web. This new market has evolved very rapidly and the current leaders are continually competing against one another, by incorporating new platforms into their metrics and by offering new functionalities. And, if the trend continues, then we shall be seeing a number of other, serious players, with a more contextual approach, emerging in 2013. Whether one likes it or not, within the new brand-name and professionals’ business environment of the social networks, the level of influence is absolutely essential in deciding any new marketing strategy.”

But, for now, let’s get back to Kred. You can watch an overview video of it below:

What does this mean for internal communication?

There were around 200 people or so in the room last night and we heard how Kred works, what it can be used for and the impact it has.

The main purpose of me attending was because I wanted to hear how and if it is relevant for internal communication. During his presentation, Andrew Grill, CEO of Kred, outlined some of the developments and launched Kred for brands – you can watch a video of it here to find out what it is.

However, the question of Kred use for internal communication wasn’t mentioned explicitly. So during the opportunity for questions, I asked Andrew to explain whether it has uses and benefits for internal communication, and also if he had been working with any companies to try it.

A video of the session is available (my question is at 13 minutes in so you can watch Andrew’s answer in person), but he said: “We are talking with the Yammers and Chatters of this world and have Kred scores on those and we’d love to talk with anyone that has an internal network. If you can give us access to the data that you have privately, we can process it. We process a lot of public data (such as Twitter mentions- Rachel) but we can also process private data. The scenario that might work is imagine you are a big consulting firm, and tomorrow you have to pitch to someone about QR codes (Quick Response- Rachel) and you don’t know who the QR code expert is in the company; it’s not on the internal directory.

“KredNet could tell you ‘the person who has the most influence’ in this area or ‘the person who is the subject matter expert on QR and mobile is in the Singapore office’, then you can contact them ready for the pitch tomorrow.  I see it as an internal communication tool – for knowledge gathering, but also, what companies might like to do is see whether people are talking about the brand – it’s about being a fun place and an honest place to work – it allows you to you ‘do our people talk about this stuff’ – have we got a real problem because we’re all moaning about it?”

What do you think of it? Can you imagine having something like this in your organisation? I think there is real value to be drawn from knowing where employees are influential and what in. I’d like to see something like this in action, does anyone have any stories they are willing to share? You can contact me @AllthingsIC or via my contact form.

Some more of my thoughts from last night:

• Services from Kred enable brands to track their fan demographics
• Its Social Simulator replays key events, as they happened, through social – which I think could work well for crisis communication training
• Leaderboards could be useful for large employee events to encourage interactions
• “Influencers is basically stories -people who say ‘this happened to me’ and tell their friends”
• ‘Flash networks’ that were also mentioned, could have a role for change initiatives or internal communication campaigns in organisations.

I don’t think this is going to be the last time I’ll write about influence and I hope I’ve given you a taster and given you some food for thought. I’ll leave you with some further reading in case you want to know more. Happy Easter to everyone and thank you as ever for stopping by, Rachel

Further reading

Influencer Marketing: One-night stand or long-term relationship? By Neal Schaffer
Social media influence: For the prosumer, context will always be Queen, By Raymond Morin
The pillars of influence and how to activate cause and effect, By Brian Solis