Lithium Technologies Will Plug Klout Data Into Its Online Communities

Lithium Technologies, a leading provider of online communities for enterprise brands, announced today that it is integrating Klout profiles to give businesses a more complete view of customers who visit their community sites.

Lithium, which acquired Klout and its online influence measuring network in 2014, said the new Integrated Profile feature will make it possible for brands to offer consumers more personalized experiences. Starting in August, people who visit Lithium community and support sites — used by brands such as Sephora, HSN and AT&T — will be able to log in with Klout credentials.

Last month Klout added expertise badges to its profiles. This effort, part of a “Total Community” strategy, is a move to leverage Klout’s 600 million profiles with the 100 million monthly visitors on Lithium communities.

“We think brands have an opportunity to move the center of gravity back to a property that they own,” Lithium CMO Katy Keim told Marketing Land in a telephone interview.

That extra information can help brands do things like prioritize the service queue to make sure especially influential customers get VIP service. Or a business could personally tailor rewards programs to someone’s interests or expertise. By doing that, brands can build stronger relationships with the community members who can pay dividends.

“Our brands are starting to look at how can I enlist people like that to do more on behalf of the brand,” Keim said. “Today they might be answering customer service questions or providing feedback on my product in the community. How can I motivate them to go out and share something on a social channel and turn that close service relationship into a more of a marketing and advocacy relationship.”

Being able to powering that type of interaction, Keim said, is one of the main reasons the company bought Klout.

“Essentially, 12 months after the acquisition of Klout, we’re tying together the branded properties with the social networks through this portable reputation vehicle,” Keim said. “And we think that’s huge. We’re very excited. It’s kind of the crystallization of why we bought Klout.”

Integrated Profiles were one of a flurry of new products and features Lithium introduced at its annual conference in San Francisco today. Among the new features or upgrades:

• enhancements to the Lithium Social Web dashboard to make it easier to share service and support messages from social media with people in the organization who can solve the issue.
• a new social listening API that enables ingesting of data from any social network or third-party community
• a Lithium-Klout API that allows businesses developers to build their own integrations to the Lithium platform.
• improvements to its Ratings/Reviews product within Lithium communities, making it easier for brands and users to see which products or services are faring well—and why.
• Value Analytics, a new feature that uses integrated surveys and analytics built into the Lithium community platform to measure community return on investment.
• updated integration with Salesforce.

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About The Author

Martin Beck

Martin Beck was Third Door Media's Social Media Reporter from March 2014 through December 2015.