The Equations of Green Building

(Note: This was previously posted on my retired grad school blog, Building With Intention, oldie but still relevant to today's green building standards)


Every green building standard out there deals with energy, but what's the difference? I take a quick look at Net Zero Energy, PassiveHaus, and Living Building Challenge standards to find out.

The Net Zero Energy Building (ZEB)
Let's start with a ZEB. Now it would seem that a ZEB building would be fairly straight forward. It is a building that is net zero energy. For the net, we are presumably "netting" over the course of a one year cycle.
The assumption with ZEB buildings is that you have some sort of power production on site, most likely solar, that is over the course of a year, going to produce as much energy as the building and the occupants inside consume. The building will not produce enough electricity during the winter and night to equal the energy demand, but will produce more than necessary during days and summer months.

But again, we are needing to produce enough energy for building AND occupants…So when designing a ZEB, careful consideration must be placed on who the occupants are, what their energy loads will be, and how the planned building systems can reduce and compensate for those occupant loads. This is one of the hardest things to factor and plan for when designing a ZEB, because people's actions and consumption habits are difficult to accurately plan for.

Buildings like this are also called net-zero carbon or carbon neutral buildings due to the fact that the onsite production of electricity produced and put back on the grid with be equal or greater than the energy consumed from the grid. It is also an assumption that any energy produced on site would be a clean, renewable energy such as solar, wind, or mini-hydroelectric. Running your building on a diesel generator would not count because, though you are producing electricity on site, the energy embodied in the fuel is being extracted elsewhere.

If we were going to make a ZEB house an equation, it would look something like this:
Energy Consumed On Site x 1 year =Energy Produced on Site x 1 year.

Passive House (PassivHaus)
A Passive House (or it's more common brand name and official standard, German created PassivHaus) is a house that uses almost no energy to heat or cool the home. Heating and cooling are done through passive methods such as trombe walls, passive solar heating, low energy heat exchangers, and planned vegetation in conjunction with building being extremely airtight and super-insulated. The requirements for a PassivHaus are:

• The building must be designed to have an annual heating demand as calculated with the PassivHaus Planning Package of not more than 15 kWh/m² per year (4746 btu/ft² per year) in heating and 15 kWh/m² per year cooling energy OR to be designed with a peak heat load of 10W/m²
• Total primary energy (source energy for electricity and etc.) consumption (primary energy for heating, hot water and electricity) must not be more than 120 kWh/m² per year (3.79 × 10⁴ btu/ft² per year)
• The building must not leak more air than 0.6 times the house volume per hour (n₅₀ ≤ 0.6 / hour) at 50 Pa (N/m²) as tested by a blower door,

When it is all said and done, a PassivHaus, compared to United States energy standards, uses 70-95% less energy than the typical American home through a reduction of heating needs, use of natural daylight for lighting, use of super high efficiency lighting such as LED's when necessary, and high efficiency appliances. As a comparison, In the United States, a house built to the Passive House standard results in a building that requires space heating energy of 1 BTU per square foot per heating degree day, compared with about 5 to 15 BTUs per square foot per heating degree day for a similar building built to meet the 2003 Model Energy Efficiency Code.

If we were going to make a PassivHaus an energy equation, it would look something like this:
Total Energy Consumed on Site= 120kWh/m^2 per year


Living Building
A Living Building is a standard managed by the International Living Building Institute, and created originally by Cascadia Green Building Council. The Living Building, is at least to me, something that satisfies the right and left brained people of the world, while at the same time, is a standard that is extensive, and ultimately challenging.

The vision of the Living Building is modeled after a flower (See Jason Mclennan's speech as Bioneers). A flower can power itself completely from the sunlight it collects on site, and can sustain itself merely by the water that falls on it. It does not produce toxins, but habitat, and is ultimately beautiful.

This is roughly the vision of the Living Building, a building that can get all of its needs from the site it is placed on, is made of non toxic materials, provides habitat for other creatures, and is not ugly (a swipe at other building standards such as LEED and Net-Zero, which critics have long described as an eyesore.) The living building-flower metaphor continues with each requirement a "petal." Notice that these are absolute requirements, whereas most other green building systems have points you collect to make a grade (silver, gold, platinum for LEED).

The 20 petal requirements for a living building are:

Click To Enlarge. Image from The Living Building Institute

As we can see from the table, the living building challenge is something that is quite different and more holistic that our previous two mentioned standards, each progressively more complicated.

A Comparison of the Three
A ZEB home allows you to use as much power as you would like, as long as it can be offset onsite by a power source such as solar. Because of the cost of large solar installations are prohibitive, most ZEB houses try to be as efficient as possible to reduce the production offset they must install.

Thus, a Net-Zero energy house really has nothing to do with the requirements of being energy efficient. Energy efficiency is a byproduct of the desired cost savings when building the home, offset feasibility (can our roof/property support 100KW solar array?), and the building owners good intentions to actually reduce consumption. In reality, it is much easier to add a large solar array than it is to plan and build an energy efficient home. Which leads to the question, in the future as solar installation prices go down, will ZEB houses and buildings become less efficient? Can Zero energy homes stay relevant as a deep green building standard? (perhaps a question for a later post)


A PassivHaus on the other hand is an actual standard that's dynamic towards energy efficiency does not alter as external prices shift. There are energy load and air exchange requirements that need to be met, and the standard leaves it up to the builder on how to achieve those goals. An important thing to remember is that a PassivHaus can easily meet the standards of a ZEB with onsite production, but it may not always hold true that a ZEB can meet the standards of a PassiveHaus. Ultimately, a PassivHaus makes the best kind of ZEB currently because the electrical load is so low that on site electric generation would be minimal.

A Living Building, as shown by the chart above, is much more than either the ZEB or the PassivHaus. In reality, both of these only address one (maybe two because PassivHaus addresses air standards) or the 20 requirements of the Living Building.

In the end, the two rough formulas on how these three interact with each other are as follows:

PassivHaus = ZEB + Extremely Energy Efficient

Living Building = ZEB + 19 Other Requirements

Living Building ≠ PassivHaus (But Ideally it should)

Energy Modeling and Your Retrofit Project

Via Noesis Energy 

Setting out to retrofit an existing building for energy efficiency upgrades can be a daunting task‐ understanding and selecting the multitude of upgrade options available to a retrofit team, from insulation to PV panels is a challenging mix of building science, available resources, and intended outcomes. While many retrofit teams consider worthy metrics such as occupant health and comfort, most retrofit projects will eventually come down to the simple bottom line metric of return on investment. Building owners want to know their investment in the property is well spent, and going to show a return for them in the long run. If a retrofit doesn’t pencil out financially, more often than not, it’s dead in the water.

Energy modeling paired with analysis such as an investment grade audit or energy life cycle cost analysis (ELCCA) is a useful and increasingly critical tool for a retrofit design team in making educated financial decisions and maximizing returns. But what is energy modeling and how exactly can it help guide your decision making process on a retrofit project?

What is Energy Modeling?

Energy modeling in simplistic terms is the practice of taking the unique characteristics of a building and entering that data into computer software. The software in turn has the ability to simulate those building characteristics, as they would act in the real world through visual and data output.

An energy modeler’s role is to collect the multitude of data used in a simulation, including architectural components, mechanical system details, occupancy schedules, building loads, utility bills, and weather data, using all of this to recreate how a building works as a whole system. Often an art as much of a science, a skilled energy modeler needs to have an understanding of not only how buildings function, but also how the software they use simulates the inputs.

In a retrofit project, the first goal is to establish an accurate baseline model depicting how the existing building performs currently. Armed with a model that accurately depicts the way the building functions, an energy modeler can then create deliverables that help the building owner and design team make informed decisions. This includes simple deliverables such as rapid comparative analysis, to more in‐depth investment grade audits and ELCCA reports that measure energy impacts over the lifetime of the building.

How Can Energy Modeling Help My Retrofit Project?

The value of an energy model for your retrofit project is its ability to be used as a comparative tool for evaluating retrofit scenarios that provide the greatest return on investment for a building owner. The detail of analysis, and accompanied confidence in those predictions, is unique to the needs of each project. This is one of the benefits of energy modeling as a tool – it has the flexibility to be used at different evaluation levels based on the needs of the building owners. Once a building baseline model is established that accurately mirrors the way the building is operating, an energy modeler and design team has the ability to use this data many different ways.

On one side of the spectrum, an energy model can help guide a design team through retrofit options fairly quickly, adding and subtracting options such as envelope or mechanical system improvements, gathering energy data on these options, and providing this feedback to the team. This rapid prototyping is a great way to create priority lists of upgrade options early in the retrofit process, while keeping the associated costs of analysis low.

On the other side of the spectrum, an energy model can be the basis of comparison for a much more detailed ‘investment grade audit’. The Level III Energy Audit, which is considered the standard process for energy efficiency upgrades in the US among many large corporations and government entities, utilizes computer-simulated energy modeling in creating investment grade deliverables.

An ELCCA report, similar to a Level III audit but with a more open and subjective format, also utilizes energy modeling as the basis of the report. Combining a model’s energy output data with first, maintenance, repair, and replacement costs of different retrofit options, an ELCCA measures long term cost implications over the effective lifespan of a building. Either one of these reports gives a design team a large degree of certainty and confidence that can significantly help make smart retrofit decisions.

Whatever level of analysis your project may need in helping guide retrofit options, it’s worth noting that the level of accuracy and confidence of your reports rely solely on the experience and talent of the building modeler. This is why selecting a qualified and experienced energy modeler is one of the most critical steps for any retrofit project using energy modeling.

What Should I Look for When Hiring an Energy Modeler?

There are two competing designations in the energy‐modeling field to help you identify energy modelers that have 3rd party credentials. The Building Energy Simulation Analyst designation is awarded by the Association of Energy Engineers (AEE) while the Building Energy Modeling Professional Certification is awarded from the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air‐Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air‐Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE).

Either one of these designations gives some clout to an energy modeler, verifying that they have experience in the field and a deep understanding of the modeling process. While this doesn’t mean that you must have one of these designations to be an excellent energy modeler, in this emerging and complicated field it is a good idea to seek out a modeler that has gone through a certification process.

In the end, a building owner’s due diligence in selecting an energy modeler is key to a project’s success. While 3rd party certifications provide some level scrutiny, energy modelers often specialize not only in the depths of analysis but building industry types as well. Checking references on an energy modeler’s past projects and matching their experience with your team goals will ultimately help you achieve your retrofit goals of saving energy, money, and maximizing return on investment.

Follow Ryan on Twitter: RyanSArnold

Adding Marketability To Your Retrofit With A LEED Certification

Bank of America Tower. NYC, NY. First commercial
high-rise to achieve LEED Platinum

With the average age of commercial buildings in the U.S. exceeding 50 years, energy retrofits for building owners are not only becoming more commonplace, but an absolute necessity as infrastructure and systems continues to be pushed past their designed life spans. While most energy retrofit teams continue to focus on gaining the best return on investment (ROI) for their dollar exclusively, many teams are turning to green building certifications tailored to retrofit projects to help with their retrofit project. A good example of such certifications is the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED Rating System, which has a specific compliance path exclusively tailored to renovation and retrofit projects called LEED-Existing Building, or LEED-EB.

For those who are unfamiliar with LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), the program is an international green building certification that is supervised by the U.S. Green Building Council. Though not the only green building certification around, it is definitely one of the most recognized and established in the United States.  Corporations, nonprofits, and local and national government bodies have all used LEED as their go-to green building standard over the last two decades. Points are awarded based upon a project’s documented achievements, such as a reduction in building energy use, and the points are tallied against LEED’s achievement scale of Certified, Silver, Gold, and Platinum.

Retrofit teams have not only noticed but flocked to the LEED-EB certification as a way to guide their project and give credibility to their energy efficiency efforts. As of the end of 2011, LEED-certified existing buildings have surpassed LEED’s flagship certification, LEED for New Construction, by 15 million square feet in the past year, with iconic buildings such as New York’s Empire State Building, San Francisco's Transamerica Pyramid, and Taiwan’s Taipei 101 jumping on board of the LEED-EB track.

The Empire State Building retrofit for example is predicted to lower the building’s energy cost by $4.4 million annually, a 38% savings for the 90 year old building. These energy savings led the Empire State Building to  earn a three year payback on the overall project while at the same time earning LEED Platinum, LEED’s highest certification level. Retrofit teams like those on the Empire State Building project are finding that following a green building certification system such as LEED-EB not only can help (and possibly improve) the energy retrofit process to achieve a quick investment return, but expand the scope of improvements beyond energy savings alone. But the LEED certification process goes beyond being a useful roadmap to designing a better retrofit- it can help build better accountability and marketability into your project as well.

One of the LEED’s biggest strengths is that LEED is designed as an independent third party verification process. While some argue that this extra layer of “bureaucracy” to an already complex project such as a retrofit is also LEED’s worst attribute, having a third party verifying the environmental, social, and economical claims of your retrofit does add a layer of verified accountability to any project. Whether it’s bureaucracy or accountability, ultimately going through the LEED certification process adds something financially tangible that no self certification or basic retrofit can provide: LEED’s attribute of being useful as an effective external marketing tool for your building.

As a recognized and popular brand that reaches beyond the building industry and into the general population, external marketability of your building to potential tenants or employees can be a real advantage few building owners consider when thinking about a retrofit. LEED has become such a well recognized designation for buildings that studies done over the years have found LEED certified buildings have been linked to lower vacancy rates, higher assessed and market values even the ability to attract, retain, and improve employee productivity. For building owners looking at doing an energy retrofit, this added value that a LEED certification provides is a real economic benefit building owners should be considering when moving forward on their retrofit. While focusing on the ROI of an energy retrofit is a smart business decision, considering going the extra mile and accomplishing a LEED certification can make your retrofit project an even better long term investment in the end.

3 Ideas to Maximize Your LEED Potential

Greenway Parking, Chicago. Photo Credit: John Picken

The US Green Building Council’s LEED certification has been experiencing not only substantial market penetration since it inception in 1998, but has gone through many progressive changes to make the program a more holistic and inclusive green building standard that can be applied to almost any type of building type or size.
The changes have seemed to work- LEED has become almost synonymous with the green building industry, and for those who work in the construction field, it is becoming a rarity to find someone on a project team that has never encountered and worked with the standard before.
For those of us who work under LEED guidelines in our profession, LEED can be a very rewarding process for the building team and ultimately, the occupants- It challenges individuals and organizations to push harder for creative design solutions. It can also  be a burden as well- it is no secret that LEED comes with its fair share of rigor to receive certification- meetings, documentation, and LEED reviews all add time and ultimately money to a project cost. This tends to drive many project teams down the path of least resistance, choosing points not based upon the necessity or positive impact of a LEED point, but based upon how easy or cost effective that point may be.
While no project team can throw cost considerations out the window, choosing specific points based on  cost or ease not only misses the essence of why the USGBC have given project teams the freedom and flexibility of choosing a point-mix towards certification, but also misses the opportunity for gaining the true environmental and economical savings that LEED was designed to facilitate.
Here are three things to keep in mind to not only build a cost effective and environmental superior building, but to best take advantage of the LEED certification process:

Take Advantage of Multiple Point Credits
Energy efficiency has long been the center piece of the LEED standard, and not by accident. The LEED steering committee has designed it that way, and for good reason- energy efficiency has the most bang for the buck in regards to lessening the buildings environmental impact from heating and cooling, and also lowering the operational costs of the building. It is also a group of points that is reliant and synergistic on other credits to succeed- attempting to reduce the heat island effect of the projects roof via SS Credit 7.2 will no doubt also help you reduce your cooling load and increase your efficiency in the summer months, all of which help your energy efficiency points.
The good rule of thumb is that if there is a credit that offers the ability to gain multiple points, it should be one that your team should be going after. LEED committees have spent a lot of time reviewing the impacts of LEED credits and is trying to steer you towards the good ones with additional points, so don’t overlook the opportunity to create the biggest impact and gain the most points at the same time.


Think Holistically
As mentioned, LEED has traditionally been synonymous with energy efficient buildings, but LEED has spent a lot of time being developed into a well rounded green building rating system that looks at a building through a multitude of lenses. While prerequisites in LEED make sure that you work with each of its categories, often many teams will lean heavy on one specialty to carry much of the weight to achieve points. For example, while going for as many energy efficiency points as feasible is encouraged, expecting an HVAC design team to earn 15 energy efficiency points in lieu of attempting points from other specialties abuses the flexibility the LEED standard allows for.
As a program, LEED is designed to work best in a collaborative process between design groups, and pushing the additional work load to one party not only flies in the face of the collaborative process and can overburden design team members, but can lead to occupants with unmet expectations. Remember, since the term “green building” is vague in its scope and particulars, a LEED plaque on a building means different things to different people. While some might expect an energy efficient building, others may put more weight on low VOC or locally-sourced materials. While a design team can’t meet every expectation, they can create a well rounded building that acknowledges the many aspects of what makes a building green by diversifying their point selection.  

Push your portfolio
Trying new things is hard, no matter what it is. LEED is no different, and for many project teams, once you figure out how to earn and properly document some of the LEED points, often they find themselves in a rut, relying on the same point mix for different projects.
While anyone working on a LEED project should be commended for their hard work and effort, they should also not grow complacent either. The green building industry is only becoming more competitive, crowded, and skilled as we move forward, and it has no sign of slowing down. Neither does LEED in its pursuit of a more refined, and more challenging standard. As we look forward into the next year, the USGBC is releasing LEED 2012, which promises to set a higher bar for green building. In an industry that is built upon the idea of pushing the limits of knowledge and design, there is no room for complacency, especially when it comes to achieving a LEED certification.

Making Twitter Work Better For You

Has your Twitter account grown like topsy? Are you having difficulty cutting through the noise? Ryan Arnold has three top tips on how to make Twitter more useful to you.

 (Originally Appeared on Social Media NZ)

Having a Twitter account has always been an accumulative process. You start with no followers and an empty news feed, and then you begin to fill it. A person here, a company there, each addition an attempt to build a better Twitter feed. But overtime, the opposite can occur. Your feed can become less relevant and increasingly noisy with each additional follow.

But while we all try to “build” a better feed by adding quantity, we often neglect to focus our attention on the quality of whom we follow and the necessity of reducing the number of people or organizations we are following. Three simple steps can not only prevent you from being overloaded, but also improve your user experience and enjoyment of Twitter.


1. Define what your objectives are
While having an objective for a social media account sounds a bit stodgy, it can help you get the most out of your Twitter experience. Platforms like Facebook have a loose, but inherent objective built in – to connect and share with others you already know. Twitter’s experience on the other hand relies much more on building connections with people you’ve most likely never met.

This difference often leaves people scratching their head on who to add. The hope always is, that if you add more, you will get more value in return from the platform. But Twitter is not about the quantity of who you follow, it is about quality and personal relevance to what you’re looking for. This is where an objective can help.

In the end, your objective can be as professional or relaxed as you wish, but it’s a good idea to ask yourself who it is you want to follow and why. Are you after insight into a specific industry? Building a stronger online professional presence? Making new local connections? Finding your dream job? Or perhaps you just want to follow your favorite celebrities. All are perfectly valid objectives.

As intuitive as it sounds, taking a few moments to define your objective allows you to evaluate if accounts you’re following and the tweets you’re sending are contributing to that objective. Once you’ve defined how you personally define “quality”, you can then move on to the right size of quantity for you.


2. Decide what (and who) really interests you
While Twitter can be a powerful tool for receiving lots of great information, from a whole range of sources, there is only so much information that a person can meaningfully digest in any given day. Overloading your feed is ultimately counterproductive to your Twitter experience.

One of the best things you can do to make Twitter not only more enjoyable but more efficient is to do a routine inventory of which accounts you are currently following, and if they are still interesting to you. With the Twitter follow button built into many websites and attached to anything or anyone interesting online, it can be easy to overload your feed by following too many people, only to later realize that they may not be worth following after all.

If you haven’t done an inventory like this before, you will be surprised how many followed accounts you don’t recognize, have ceased to be active, or are just no longer interesting to you. If you’re on the fence about unfollowing someone, a good rule of thumb is to read through their last page of tweets and see if you feel they’re adding value to your feed, or contributing to your objective. If not, it’s time to let them go.
Finally, if you’re feeling you just can’t live in the black and white world of either following or unfollowing people, there is a third trick you can use to keep the functionality of following accounts without having them in your main feed. It is utilizing Twitter lists.


3. Decide who is worth following and who is worth listing
One of the most underutilized tools that Twitter provides for organizing your Twitter feed is the ability to put accounts into Twitter lists. A list is just like creating a separate Twitter feed, but with more specific topics. For personal organization, this helps in two ways.

First, building lists is a good way to organize your interests into a more coherent, separate feeds for reading. Your Twitter feed represents all of your interests, and at times mentally jumping back and forth between topics in one main feed can be a little wearing.

Instead, bundle your separate interests together so you can read one broad topic at a time. Creating and maintaining lists of your interests also has the nice side effect of preventing you from following odd topic accounts. If it doesn’t fit into any of your lists, is this really an account you want to start following?
The second thing that creating a list does is allow you to pick which accounts you want to see in your main feed and which may be less relevant but still worth keeping an eye on. This is because you can add accounts to your lists without following them in your main feed.

Use lists to keep track of your interests and instead of following someone in your main feed, test them as a trial on a list. If you notice they are providing consistently great content you don’t want miss, then follow them and add them to your main feed. That way you can isolate the really great accounts you always want to read from the others that some days you can do without but you don’t want to eliminate completely.
Using these three steps will help you reconfigure your Twitter feed into what it was always meant to be: easy, efficient, and personal. Take the time to use these tips and tend to your feed and you will not only find using your Twitter account is more useful, but also more fun.

Thinking About Klout From the Outside

Last night I had the pleasure of attending the first Spokane Tweetup of the 2012 season at Ripples within the Red Lion Hotel. The beer was good, company better, and overall discussion was rather engaging.

One of the topics we hit on was how we viewed Klout as a SM tool. Some at the table knew what Klout was, some did not. The aggregate response from the crowd bordered somewhere between indifference and pessimism about the product/service. To butcher but recapture one opinion at the table, the comment was "If I'm meeting my internal ROI, who cares what my score is?" This seemed to become the default final say as we moved on with our discussion.

On the car ride home I thought about that a bit more, and how I use Klout personally, what we may have overlooked in that quick roundtable, and the fallacy of looking for Klout as a direct-benefit tool for a social media manager, when it's real benefit might be a little more obscure.


Klout if you aren't familiar is a tool that connects to your social media accounts, and give you a numeric score, from 1-100, based on certain criteria such as amplification, reach, and network impact. It's forward facing display of a creative use of game theory, using our ego and internal trained desire to measure your social media usage, and perhaps even self worth, against a number that is created in some black-box algorithm. Since grade school, we've always been taught to strive for a 100, and Klout takes great advantage of this conditioned response.

Sadly, I'm fairly trained to look at my score every morning, and be ecstatic when I go up a point, and frustrated beyond rational thinking when I'm down. It's a great example of how game theory is really a force to be reckoned with as social media and the web becomes more refined.

When I think about the comment "If I'm meeting my ROI, screw Klout and their superficial number" I'm in agreement- This thing drives me effing crazy trying to keep it afloat. But while the self facing metric is what we pay attention to, Klout is useful to social media managers in a different way.


Klout has less to do with how you see yourself. The value is about how others see you.

Klout's value really comes from you outward facing Klout number, and how your followers, and potential followers see you. I've noticed this in my own usage, and for a brand or social media manager, your outward image and message is everything, right?

Think of it this way: The people who sign up voluntarily for Klout by best guestimate are going to be the people who are: A) social media savvy/trendy (you want these people following you right?)  B) now driven insane by this Klout score (people externally driven to become BETTER/MORE ACTIVE followers).

 If these people are valuing themselves by their Klout score, you can bet your ass their holding you and your brand to the the same superficial judgement system as well! Sadly I know because like I mentioned, I'm already caught in this self-worth/judgement cycle. When I'm looking to follow a new person, a Klout score for me gives me a first impression of whether they are active and create good content (via Reach/Amplification). Klout's value to an SMM or Brand is less about who you influence, and more about how Klout influences your followers (potential customers) to want to follow you. 

The kicker? Everyone has a Klout score whether you've signed up or not. So when I, a Klout user, open my Twitter page everyday, your score is right next to your name- whether you care to acknowledge it or not. In an article about business social media campaigns I wrote back in September, I mention that when it comes to branding and social media- you're either in or your out- but half ass will harm your brand more than cause good. Unfortunately (and wisely) Klout has opted you in as a brand- unless Klout falls to the wayside, you don't have a whole lot of choice. A great brand and content will be, and is being undercut with a poor Klout score stamped on your Twitter account.   


Is it fair to judge someone by their Klout score? Isn't the real value of SM in the connections and the content, which is not being accurately reflected in a score?

Fair may not be the word to describe this new ranking- but common would be. We make thousands of snap judgements everyday with one or two data points-Think about walking down the street and bumping into a person. A lot can be deferred by simply their clothes or demeanor.  Is if fair? No. Is it accurate? Probably not all the time. But it is how we operate in the real world. Klout is your customers first glance at your brand or company- what will they infer?

like it or not, your Klout score is now part of your companies first impression to the world. The value in Klout for you as a person, a brand, or a company may not be ranking and judging yourself everyday; but realize whether you do or not, you'll never stop others from passing the same quick judgement on you. If your a brand or SMM and not worried about your Klout score, I would take a second look.

Beyond PhoneDog- The Implications of Business and Social Media

"2012 will hopefully bring not only more effective use of social media as a business tool, but also a clear path forward on who owns what when it comes to social media accounts."

As covered by John Lai’s article last week, “Who Owns the Followers When Employees Leave?”, there has been a growing media and online uproar over a lawsuit filed by the company PhoneDog against its previous employee, Noah Kravitz. In simplistic terms, after Kravitz left PhoneDog in early 2011, PhoneDog sued Kravitz for ownership of any Twitter followers that he had gathered under the mix-branded handle @PhoneDog-Noah, while he was working at the company.

As stated by PhoneDog in a release to the New York Times:

“The costs and resources invested by PhoneDog Media into growing its followers, fans and general brand awareness through social media are substantial and are considered property of PhoneDog Media L.L.C.”

Since the name @PhoneDog-Noah was a mix of PhoneDog’s brand and Kravitz’s personal brand, it is now a battle, and perhaps a more philosophical argument as to who are Twitter users really following in a situation like this – the company, the person, or both?

A misgauged reaction

To be a fly on the walls of the PhoneDog offices would be an interesting one in the last week. From an obscure lawsuit looking to regain control of Twitter followers came a media storm from all levels – grass roots and mainstream alike. It has garnered the company perhaps more attention than I assume they had anticipated – and to PhoneDog’s dismay, the narrative has been set with Noah Kravitz as the underdog hero.

While no one can argue that the whole reason that social media is being utilised by businesses to increase revenue, PhoneDog seems to be the villain in many people’s eyes for bringing this non-secret to light. While PhoneDog’s metric of valuing each follower that Kravitz kept at $2.50 per follower, per month, is preposterous to most of us as a realistic valuation, we can all agree that Twitter followers are worth something to businesses. If not, professional social media management will become the passing fad of 2011.

So why the uproar from the Twitter community over this suit? It comes down to not what we know to be true when it comes to social media, but what we think is right. For many, social media is about social connections and interactions, not money and ownership. As business is slowly getting its feet wet in social media, it’s clumsily learning how to work in this new paradigm- and sometimes tripping itself up.

A lesson learned

This saga is nowhere near done being played out in the media, the courtroom, and online communities, so the verdict is still out on how this may all play out for Noah Kravitz and PhoneDog. But the lawsuit has finally stirred multiple discussions that have needed to take place for sometime. What lessons does this leave us on how we look at social media communities from a corporate perspective?

Don’t treat followers as property (or money)

Social media is based on communities of individuals interacting together. Brands and companies have so far been successful at mixing into these daily personal interactions, but they must play by community rules. Those rules are debatable but they are definitely egalitarian at their root, especially on Twitter. There are no gatekeepers and there is no ownership beyond your own words and account. Each entity may say what they want and interact with who they please. PhoneDog got smacked with a lot of online criticism by stating something that counters these basic principles of online freedom: the implied corporate ownership of other personal accounts.

The lawsuit between PhoneDog and Kravitz defined all of the 17,000 users in question as a sum of corporate property and the Twitterverse responded in a fairly universal backlash. Adding a $2.50 price tag on everyone’s head was insult to injury to those who believe in these “digital individual rights”. Companies beware: You don’t own anyone here.

The value is in connections, not headcounts

The value of your social media network is based upon your followers maintaining, promoting and amplifying your brand- not just following you. As we learned with the Newt Gingrich Twitter scandal, followers can be bought easily and, ultimately, Twitter is not a popularity contest if you’re looking for business value. The real bottom line benefit to a company comes from a group of followers who strengthens, shares and amplifies your brand message.

Point your company towards gaining brand evangelicals – ones that really believe in your business and then interact with them, learn from them and, perhaps, even reward them. A follower like this spreading your message is worth a hundred (thousand?) purchased accounts. The age of “I have X amount of Twitter followers” is over.

If lawyers are involved, it is time to get serious about social media

2011 seemed like the year where the majority of the business communities were finally starting to grasp that there is real money in social media as a business tool. Case in point, we’re now seeing business vs individual cases in the courtroom for ownership of not only Twitter accounts but now Linkedin as well.  If lawyers are involved, then we know there is money to be made and value to protect.

This means companies need real internal social media policies that protect both the corporation and social media managers. If policies do not effectively balance the interests of the corporation and the social media personal, in the end, this could stifle individuals from using the account effectively and begin to negate the benefit of social media to businesses.

When you look at the case of Noah Kravitz, he was able to gain 17,000 followers because he was able to leverage his personal brand with his company brand. Personas are brand strengths in social media and businesses should encourage this blend. But if policies lean too heavily to protect only business interests, companies will find it increasingly hard to find quality social media managers willing to risk their own personal brand for the sake of the companies overzealous safeguards. Especially as more lawsuits like this hit the media.

2012 will hopefully bring not only more effective use of social media as a business tool but also a clear path forward on who owns what when it comes to social media accounts. Let us hope that we can all take a lesson from PhoneDog and Noah Kravitz debacle and develop strong social media policies that protect all parties this year.

Polish That Resume, See Where You Stand Instantly With RezScore

As the Job Seeker Luncheon approaches this Friday and us job seekers, freelancers, and others gather to talk about the local job market and how we can gain an employment edge, we must not forget that our resumes are still an important piece of the hiring puzzle that should not be overlooked. 

We've all heard that 80-90 percent of the jobs out there are in the "hidden" job market of networking and relationships, one of the reasons our Launchpad community is so great for Job Seekers and Employers alike. But just because you may have "an in" through a personal connection, does not absolve you from having a properly polished resume that has stand-alone-value. While an inside recommendation is great, more often than not, you'll still need to jump the customary hurdles of the application process for a company.  

One of the more useful tools I've found out there is RezScore, which allows you to upload your resume for free, instantly get critiqued, and get advice on what you can improve. While the process is a bit of a "black box" mystery, From following their advice on things such as length, sentence structure, and refocusing highlighted strengths, I was personally able to change my RezScore from a 52nd Percentile, to 90th percentile. The real factor for me is that when I read my resume, I can tell it's better after making their recommended improvements. 

While I take RezScore's ranking with a grain of salt, consider this: Many companies now use software to prescreen resumes for certain keywords, structure, experience, etc. and reject your resume based on these metrics. I've personally applied to jobs which I either felt I was perfect for or even overqualified, only to have an automated rejection sent to me an hour later. What Gives?

Well no matter how qualified you may be, if you don't communicate it properly through your resume, you may never make it to the interview process, or perhaps even get your resume in front of a human being! While it may seem unfair to some, letting a program like RezScore or a local professional help you optimize your resume for these automated services is critical in this day and age.  

Good Luck!