Xenophon Strategies

Rewarding Your Influencers and Your Brand

Josh Stewart

According to Klout.com, Klout “…measures influence based on your ability to drive action. Every time you create content or engage followers you influence others. The Klout Score uses data from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Foursquare.” 

For those of you who don’t know Klout uses the following to calculate its much admired score:

• How many people you influence (True Reach)
• How much you influence them (Amplification)
• How influential they are (Network Score)

We have been using Klout to advise clients on how they are doing in terms of reach, amplification and audience.  Though it is not a silver bullet, it is a great tool for any PR professional. 

This week, Dick’s Sporting Goods partnered with Protecting Athletes through Concussion Education (PACE) on Klout Perks.  The backbone of the campaign is to reward key influencers or those with high Klout scores, with $50 dollar gift cards.  These influencers are Dick’s most loyal and supportive advocates for the company and the brands it sells.  In short, this is Dick’s way of saying thank you to these vocal supporters. 

The secondary goal is to raise awareness about athletic concussions and encourage young athletes to sign up for screenings.  Anyone who is following Dick’s Sporting Goods on Twitter is very likely to be engaged in the realm of casual, amateur or professional athletics, so sympathy towards this issue with its key influencers is both strategic and genuine. 

Klout Perks have partnered with marquee brands such as Nike and Disney, who are tapping their vast network of social media users and how they influence their online communities, in order to better target their products. 

Klout Co-founder and CEO Joe Fernandez has compared the use of Klout to what casinos have been doing for years.  Someone stays at a resort hotel and wins in the casino,, and get loads of complimentary service and room upgrades.  Has this ever happened to you?  Maybe, but we all can cite urban legends from “friends of friends” who have received the “royal treatment” room at a Casino.  Even so, everyone now has the thought in their head “if I go to Vegas, I could be in the penthouse suite!”  Unlikely, but the possibility is just real to enough to be a motivating factor.  Which is what Dick’s Sporting Goods, Klout and numerous other brands are betting on.    

The real question is, does this work?  Obviously if I was tweeting bout Dick’s Sporting Goods and I received a gift card, you would not hear me complain.  But companies should be cautious about using too many incentives to make influencers happy.  The reason this model works, is because it authentic.  And as soon as the social media universe deems something inauthentic, it loses relevance.

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