Good news everyone: We have finally reached a point in society where you can get exclusive VIP access into the newest and hottest fashion boutiques, even if you’re not a celebrity or really, really, ridiculously good looking.
Chances are that if you have had more of a social life on the Internet than in real life itself, you’re probably going to have a high Klout score.
Yes, Klout.
Klout is a website that calculates a score based on a person’s online and social networking influence. It works by firstly connecting all of your social networks to Klout (such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Foursquare, YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr, Blogger, Wordpress and Flickr). From this, your Klout score is based on a variety of elements such as number of Facebook likes, fans and shares, number of Twitter followers, retweets and mentions and LinkedIn connections etc. Users are given a score between 1 and 100. The higher your score is, the more influential you are deemed to be online.
To put this into perspective, people with high Klout scores include:
- Barack Obama has a score of 99
- Justin Bieber - 94
- Julia Gilliard - 68
As the retail world jumps on the online shopping bandwagon, businesses are getting creative on how to generate excitement and draw attraction to their new website. A new Melbourne based online shopping website called Jasu has done exactly that by only letting online shoppers with a Klout score of 40 or above access to their website for the first two weeks. The reason for this is to create an exclusive barrier for the influential people of the online community so that they can then send out a positive word to their followers.
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| New online shopping website - Jasu |
This is something that is reasonably unheard of in cyberspace.
In the traditional world of retailing, a boutique fashion store’s grand opening has always been an exclusive event involving influential fashion trend setters, industry experts and celebrities to get the town talking. And now, we’re starting to see it happen online.
The real issue is, whether Klout is the best method of determining who should and should not get access. Discussions at Uni this week and research in social media has found that people believe that Klout is not a true indication of measuring influence, rather the potential for it instead. Others say it is flawed, irrelevant and “crap”.
Recent studies have shown that the average Australian has a Klout score between 25 and 29. So, like many other Australians, I’ll have to wait until Jasu’s website opens up to everyone to judge it for myself. But in my opinion, if you’ve seen one online shopping website, you’ve seen them all and creating an exclusive opening most likely won’t change that.
Do you think we will see more new websites use this exclusive access strategy in the future? Is there a better way to determine who the online influencers are?
Good blog. Marketers have been targeting social influencers by giving them special treatment, so i am not surprised by Jasu's tactics. Exclusivity breeds excitement which leads to these guys going nuts on SM. Great marketing.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment, Frank.
ReplyDeleteYes, certainly a different and creative strategy for online marketers. It would be interesting to find out whether any of the social influencers receive discounts to enhance their initial browsing experience and an as incentive to post postive reviews to their followers.
Oooh, how exciting, I can shop at Jasu when they open! (But somehow I don't think I'm in their target market. In fact, many of the geeks with Klout scores over 40 wouldn't be, I suspect!)
ReplyDeleteLet's discuss this in more detail in our seminar this week!
Haha, that's one of the aspects of using Klout to create exclusivity that I have been thinking about too! Looking forward to discussing this in more detail in our seminar and hearing classmates opinions.
ReplyDeleteI really like the way you write your blog. It is so easy to read and understand. I like the way you demonstrate it.
ReplyDeleteFor the content, do you think the launch of the fashion will really success? I am not too sure if it is too nitched. Pear