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Cause Marketing Your Klout

An article in the May 2012 issue of Wired magazine makes it clear that I have another thing to feel inadequate about; my Klout score, which is a very modest 31. (Maybe it's time to take that Facebook thing seriously. Hmm.) For camparison's sake, Justin Bieber’s Klout score is a perfect 100. Robert Scoble’s is 85.

But now I can use my inadequacy for good. Klout for Good is a promotion that asks you to support Charity: Water, the World Wildlife Fund, and the American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women. Klout also promoted a Christmastime tweet drive that generated gifts for underprivileged kids.

The Go Red and World Wildlife Fun efforts are primarily awareness-raisers, although they’ll certainly take your money. But the Charity: Water promotion is a fundraiser and a clever one at that.

Charity: Water asks you to ‘donate your birthday;’ that is to ask your social networks to donate to the cause in your name on your birthday.

As of this writing, 12,889 people had pledged their birthdays. Charity: Water promises to use all the money raised for water projects. When it’s all said and done, they’ll send you a photo and GPS coordinates of the water project your birthday funded (or, helped fund).

It wasn’t clear to me how the donations were processed or if Klout offers any more than just promotional support, but I dig it. The marketing was based around the idea that you and I probably already have plenty of stuff and don’t need more, positioning that I think can be very effective.

Your cause could almost certainly offer something very similar, even if the picture and GPS coordinates don’t make sense for what you do.
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