Think Big, Act Small Interview: What’s Your Kred?

This week Peoplebrowsr joins the “Think Big, Act Small” interview series to explain why social Kredentials matter. Peoplebrowsr, versus Klout, is unleashing (social) information that spells more than a four letter word. Learn how Kred can, and should be, the foundation for establishing your industry footprint. The secret is in the data, even for SMBs and start-ups.  

Interviewer: Michelle Fitzgerald
Interviewee: Shawn Roberts

QUESTION 1.

Get Scrappy:

Love Kred’s push to focus less on social popularity, but more on the value of industry credibility. Can you explain what that means?  How do you differentiate the two – popularity vs. credibility?

Peoplebrowsr:

Everything we do is based on real life relationships, as much as possible.  We start with the philosophy that ‘We All Have Influence Somewhere’ and expect people’s influence to vary based on interests and expertise.  Everyone has scores in over 70 interest-based communities based on their interactions and words.  I would expect a tech reporter, for example, to have lots of credibility in the ‘Tech’ and ‘Reporters’ communities, but would be surprised to see it equaled among  ‘Surfers’.

Kred’s scoring system is also built on interactions.  If people are not reacting to what someone says, then they can’t be said to have influence even if they have hundreds of thousands of followers.   We use mentions, re-tweets and replies to a person’s content as indicators that people are engaging with them.

QUESTION 2.

Get Scrappy:

To most small business owners (and start-ups) there’s a novelty surrounding social media. It’s often revered as the cheap, fast, I-can-be-a-superstar-without-spending-anything-on-marketing option. But frankly, many are still grappling with the implications (time, resources) it has on their business for the lesser-known ROI it will deliver. How important (or not) it is to build social presence today? And how does Kred, specifically, measure involvement in the online social community?

Peoplebrowsr:

There are so many good reasons to be active at all ends of the sales cycle, from thought leadership to prospecting to customer service.  Any of these on their own or in combination are good reasons to get involved, and stay involved.

Take prospecting, for example.  Involvement in social media offers the same benefit that real life networking does – opportunities to target and meet people who can help you achieve your business goals.

With Kred you can find out how influential prospects are, how likely they are to interact with you, and what you have in common before you make your first approach.  Increasing opportunities to get a message out to a pre-qualified crowd is super-efficient for both you and your potential customer.

QUESTION 3.

Get Scrappy:

Peoplebrowsr has invested a significant amount of resources and “Kred” on building a platform seeded on social data and analytics. To some, this might seem like data analysis-paralysis. Especially with small businesses, who have little time to analyze data and/or apply insights across their business. How does Peoplebrowsr/Kred simplify data extraction and analysis for SMBs?

Peoplebrowsr:

Playground is very easy to use.  Give our search function a try at rs.peoplebrowsr.com.  Enter any keyword and in seconds you’ll see all the tweets with that term.  (You can also do complex searches with AND, OR, and NOT.)  Viral Analytics also has a ton of useful (standard) reports ready to go, and Grid exports data into CSVs if you prefer to make your own. Did I mention yet that we offer a full-featured, two-week free trial? 

QUESTION 4.

Get Scrappy:

Accessibility of data for small businesses about people – what they search, buy and talk about – is limiting and poses a threat to making tangible decisions. How does this data become more available and actionable for small business owners via Kred?

QUESTION 5.

Get Scrappy:

You say that small business marketers can use Peoplebrowsr/Kred for reasons beyond social sentiment tracking – from market research, to competitive analysis to prospecting. Can you elaborate on that? And highlight how much time, on your platform, that a user should expect to set aside to make valuable conclusions?

Peoplebrowsr:

To start using Peoplebrowsr/Kred for your small business marketing, please visit here.

Shawn Roberts joined PeopleBrowsr as its Marketing Communications Director in 2011. Before PeopleBrowsr Shawn was an independent marketing consultant, a Senior Sales Development Manager with Premier Retail Networks and Director Of Marketing for international consumer publisher Future US.