I’m not sure what’s more relentless: Super Bowl hype or blog posts relating to the Super Bowl. Here are a few not-so-vital pieces of reading you may have missed:

“Ravens Fans Are 14% More Likely To Fumble Their Smartphones During The Super Bowl Than 49ers Fans” (Tech Crunch)

Astronauts Will Watch the Super Bowl from Space (Mashable)

Not Everyone in the World Cares About the Super Bowl (Social Media Today)

Pols, media tweet Super Bowl wishes (Politico)

Do you know your brand’s Ace score?

Probably not. A recommendation for Outwoot crossed my path the other day, so I thought I’d give it a shot with the non-profit for which I serve on the board, Gilda’s Club Delaware Valley.

According Outwoot, Gilda’s has an ACE score of 42.5 out of 100.

Awareness is seen as low, a midrange measure of “listener,” the lowest of three levels. (The other two are influencer and amplifier.) Outwoot’s analysis: “You are getting started with building the right muscles for driving reach through your social communities. You are either engaging too less or too often where the noise level is either very low or you are being too loud but its failing to appeal the audience. Areas: Reduce the number of tweets (if noise is >7). Increase conversations (if noise level < .3)

Community is seen a bit better, on the low end of “balanced,” the second of three levels. (The other two are “starter” and “fan club.”) Outwoot’s analysis: “Brand is experiencing a rapid growth in their community size but is still at a starting phase of building the communities.”

Engagement, finally, appears to be rock-solid in the middle of the highest category, “engaged.” (The other two are “passive” and “conversationalist.”) Outwoot’s analysis: “Brand is highly engaged with the audience. Community members are very interested in engaging with the brand on multiple fronts. The brand continues to provide multiple avenues for the community to participate in conversations by publishing different types of content/ activities.”

Here’s some more about the ACE score:

The ACE Social score is based on an algorithm that uses upward of 20 social media metrics and represents the impact of your efforts in three areas:

• Level of AWARENESS your content is able to drive.
• Size and mining potential of your online COMMUNITY.
• Level of ENGAGEMENT your efforts are able to drive.

Based on the activity driven by the brand, the ACE scores can change daily. Large or celebrity brands don’t necessarily have higher scores than the smaller size brands – it’s all about the efforts you are driving in the social web.

Ultimately, I think no one score will become THE social influence measurement mechanism. Just as your credit score is actually three credit scores (Experian, Equifax and TransUnion), social cache will come to be seen by a variety of measurements.

Meanwhile, ACE seems like it may be on to a decent way of providing brands a way to wrap their corporate heads and tactical ToDo lists around the whole issue of social media engagement.

I’m not a huge fan of Klout. It’s an interesting idea, but I think it has a long way to go before it has real credibility and heft. Too often my Klout score will go up after I’ve done practically nothing on my social media profiles, or it will go down after particularly busy days online. It makes no sense.

Over on Social Media Today, Hesham Zabida argues for the necessity of Klout. To each his own, I suppose, but I found this stat in his post interesting: “Only 5% of users have a score of 63 and above which is considered to be high.”

In other words: If you claim to be in the thick of social media, you damn well better do some work if your Klout score is under, say, 50 or so.

I’d agree with that. There’s not a whole lot of evidence to support that there’s real quantifiable differences between a Klout score of 59 and a score of 61. Well, except for the obvious 2. But does it really make a difference if you’re hiring a social media manager with a Klout score of 59 or 61? No, not really. However, it does make a difference if you’re hiring a social media manager with a Klout score of 59 or 21 — in that respect, I would agree: Klout does have some actual clout.

“My choice early in life was either to be a piano-player in a whorehouse or a politician. And to tell the truth, there’s hardly any difference.”
—Harry S. Truman

A trio of interesting and valuable SEO articles crossed my path in the last day or so. You may find them interesting, too:

New Rules for SEO Success in 2013 (Inc.)

The Value of Local SEO to Small Businesses (Search Engine Journal)

9 SEO Quirks You Should Be Aware Of (Search Engine Land)