As many have already quipped, there are few businesses or social media-related subjects that generate the amount of hate and public debate that Klout seems to inspire. However, this post isn’t about loving or hating Klout. It poses a question to those brands who have or who are considering paying Klout for access to their top ranked “influencers”.

Can an individual influence others while they’re “under the influence” of Klout?

Ok, so your business is no longer the industry leader. You’ve lost your market dominance. You’ve lost the support of your core audience and supporters. Your sales have plummeted beyond even the worst predictions. Your product has become a laughing stock.

What do you do? Well, I can tell you what you don’t do. You DON’T Wake Up Bold!

Research In Motion (RIM) recently staged a mock protest outside of an Apple Store in Sydney, Australia with the chant: Walk Up Bold!

Since 1776, when Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations, economists have been espousing the competitive advantages of “scale”, referencing to the almost guaranteed generation of revenue that enterprises enjoy when their sheer size provides a figurative barrier to a competitor’s innovation and price competitiveness.

Will “scale” remain a continuing business advantage where the barrier of entry is blocked by big business’ established and costly IT infrastructure and market reach? Where your competitors need huge cash reserves and many years to reverse engineer your success?

Or do you believe the social era’s new dynamics of fast, fluid and flexible will offset the prowess of scale?

There are many diseases that businesses face in developing and executing effective customer acquisition programs; many of which are self-inflicted.

In the business world, I’ve diagnosed organizations whose vision of long term goals were fuzzy or out of focus as having business-myopia. Leaders in these businesses tend to focus on short term goals that are more easily defined, more easily focused on.

Let’s start with the end: the goal of any business is profit. This has always been my filter when architecting customer experience programs and it’s the same filter I apply to the question of which a business should more heavily invest in: Customer Acquisition or Customer Development.

I apologize for my lengthy absence but I have been dabbling with cryogenics. Now several large scotches later and a lengthy thaw I am ready to lay waste to liberal marketing sensitivities and share with you my particular perspective on the coming year.

Another battle has begun in the war for our customer’s attention and by extension, our marketing dollars. This war is being fought on many fronts by many content producers and media channels, all of whom are vying for the attention that Brands’ audiences are currently focusing on television and cable programming.