Were you as surprised as I was to see your Klout score bottom out nearly 14 points lower yesterday? I looked twice and did a “huh” and then remembered it was planning a total revamp of its algorithm and people would not be as influential as they thought they were.
Yawn. Whatever. So what?
Let’s remind ourselves what influence is – there’s been so much discussion (the ‘sphere is alive and kicking with all the Klout posts today) about whether a number dictates your influence. It doesn’t! But, we’re all so competitive that when a number is associated with us that correlates to the frequency of tweeting and posting, we start to believe it!
Yesterday on the #MeasurePR Twitter chat with @Shonali and @JenZings, that question came up…is influence measurable? I believe, perhaps, but not via Klout. Is Klout monitoring key words and strength of message within each tweet and post? Who is awarding the +K and is it a game like for “cougar,” “sheep,” “wine,” or other non-influential word?
Imagine a software salesperson who RTs 100 tweets/per day; his Klout score would increase for sure. Now, look inside those tweets and see what they say – are they all tech oriented, or not? The latter…and herein lies the problem.
Klout is “measuring” frequency of exposure not the content within that exposure.
So, with your lower Klout score as of yesterday:
1. Carry on, Garth. It’s business as usual!
2. Create the engagement in your community you’ve been striving for all along.
3. Keep the conversations going about issues near and dear to you and recognize you will get something out of that communication but your Klout score will remain as is.
4. Don’t get so caught up about a number. Who are these guys anyway, associating their arbitrary algorithm to every peep who tweets? When you sit back and think of it that way, it’s clear – you are master of your own influence and no one else.
So, ready to ignore Klout and keep the momentum going?
Party on Wayne! (sorry I saw your Garth reference!)
Thanks for the mention re: the chat. It really is stunning that business are making social hires (either employees or consultants) based on this nonsense. It is a data point. One data point. And it has nothing to do with influence. Sadly, looking at the comments on the Klout blog post, many are putting a lot of stock–way too much stock–in this number. It’s baffling to me.
Jen! You’re so right…it’s a major baffle and woofer. (Aren’t those both speaker thingamajigs?) In all seriousness, and that’s asking for a lot from me, go ahead, employer, hire the dude with a higher K score and then stumble when all they want to do is re-tweet company messages someone else wrote. Heh.
Party on Wayne. Party on Garth. Dude.
That rocked.
Erica, you are a woman after my own thoughts. I was going to say those exact same words, but decided I’d read the comments first. Party on all!
Jayme? Are you sure that’s you not trying to get more points? Lol, mine had already plummeted from lack of engagement, so what was a few points less from where I stood. I knew what I had to do after staying mum with so many folks for so long, not for Klout, but for my relationships, and had already re-energized before I realized what they were plotting. It’s still fun to moan and complain about it, but I can’t motivate myself to rant the way I did when they first got serious.
Leave it to you to be so smart, catching me in the secret act of giving +K to actually boost my own score instead of someone else’s. In reality, I have no idea (who or whom) gets more score in that act. (Kidding! It’s “who!”)
Amen to that Jayme. I don’t have a clue what my ‘Klout’ score is. I think the whole system in many ways represents everything wrong with social media and manipulation.
The fact that so many freaked out over their Klout is a sad example of where we’re putting all our marbles these day. 🙁
Thanks for being a voice of reason there lady 🙂
Marcus
HELLO! Thank you for popping in to lend your Klout, er, two cents! I know, right? I do have to look because, as mentioned, I’m do darned competitive, but at the end of the day, we’re rolling in marbles if we think it matters two kicks. See you at the popcorn stand, Marcus!
Nicely said. I would stick to the M Galdwell rule ( and change it slightly 😉 ). The key to success (and influence) is practice. 10.000 hours of it – 20 hours a week for 10 years.
What you said, Dominque! Thanks for coming over to remind us all…Practice Makes Perfect indeed.
Jayme,
I stopped paying attention to Klout months ago. Mostly because I didn’t have time for the numbers game. There is some stir over at https://dannybrown.me/2011/10/27/is-klout-using-our-family-to-violate-our-privacy/ and some others today so I went to check my score out. Yep, it dropped. Do I care? Nope. What matters to me are the PEOPLE. I go directly to Twitter, blogs and my blog toTALK to people. That is my measurement for clout. The quality of the conversation I am part of.
I was not aware that Klout just takes note of the frequency of a certain subject you tweet, not the content itself. This is so easily manipulated, it is sad. I can sit on Twitter all day a tweet and RT everything about social media, never read one piece and get a great Klout score. Hogwash! (I always wanted to use that word in a comment, lol.)
I’ll keep ignoring Klout. Thx.
~Allie
Hi, Allie! I’m hoping the recent move by the +K folks (kinda tired of saying their name) opens up more eyes to the hogwash of it all (and yet, my competitive nature does have me watching that stupid number to see what influences its increase or decrease). At the same time, more peeps will come on board b/c everyone is all over the topic.
Thinking further, how the heck is the platform monetizing anyway? I can’t see a revenue stream in this yet. I also can’t imagine anyone paying a premium membership to have more Klout than someone else??
At any rate, great thoughts, and thank you for being here.
They have that Klout Perks program, they must be paid by companies to advertise.
Jayme, as you know (and few do), we’re managing a social media account for 60 days for another brand. Trying to find ways to measure our influence, Klout was one of the tools we were using. But here’s the rub — as many times as I’ve tweeted using a certain keyword, been in conversations with folks in that keyword’s field, made lists of Twitter users in that keyword’s field and named the list with that keyword, replied to and retweeted tweets with that keyword, talked about topics of interest related to that keyword, and had my own keyworded tweets replied to and retweeted, — *takes a breath* — after 60 straight days of keyword overdosing, said keyword is not listed anywhere in the list of topics we’re “influential” about.
Instead, I see things like “Bucket List.”
That says a lot.
On the other hand, I love games, and there aren’t any games I can play while I work except for Klout. I compete with myself, and secretly with others. The game just got more interesting. It doesn’t mean anything (yet?), but it’s kinda fun. Let’s just keep it that way. Party on, dude. Friends for life!
Jayme, as you know (and few do), we’re managing a social media account for 60 days for another brand. Trying to find ways to measure our influence, Klout was one of the tools we were using. But here’s the rub — as many times as I’ve tweeted using a certain keyword, been in conversations with folks in that keyword’s field, made lists of Twitter users in that keyword’s field and named the lists using that keyword, replied to and retweeted tweets with that keyword, talked about topics of interest related to that keyword, and had my own keyworded tweets replied to and retweeted, — *takes a breath* — after 60 straight days of keyword overdosing, said keyword is not listed anywhere in the list of topics we’re “influential” about.
Instead, I see things like “Bucket List.”
That says a lot.
On the other hand, I love games, and there aren’t any games I can play while I work except for Klout. I compete with myself, and secretly with others. The game just got more interesting. It doesn’t mean anything (yet?), but it’s kinda fun. Let’s just keep it that way. Party on, dude. Friends for life!
OK. WOW. I would’ve thunk you’d be on everyone’s list for that key word…are you gonna share? Is it “perfume?” I wonder how I can help…? Make a list about perfume (if that’s it) and add you guys to it?
Your strategic approach certainly would’ve been one I enacted…hope you’ll do a post on this exercise…peeps need to know!
I’m here and it’s 30 freaking degrees out in Vermont and 1am sorry insomnia and was raveling today.
First: Rubber Stamp Post
Second I want to talk influence because it is being used WAYYYYY to broadly.
Every business has goals. A media property needs views of stories. A brick and mortar needs visits and purchases. An online store needs visits and purchases. Klout takes none of this into it’s number. In fact the biggest thing missing is Clicks.
What if I am Huff Post or NY Times and I need page views. And my link gets spread to 75 million people. And the reason? All your friends and all their friends just retweet every link from their friends. Yet no one clicks on the freaking story!
Topics go virals. Specific Content rarely does. and Klout is catering to content.
I can go on and on. But I posted this on @dannybrown:disqus ‘s guest post yesterday
Sorry for the reprint:
As for consultants and such any company, or person who chooses one
based on Klout or Peer Index and just that are total idiots, and not a
company I want to work with. Best in class businesses and business
people might see a score and investigate more, but they are not relying
on it.
And lastly to some of the comments in the post. If
all you have as a source of your business is Klout you are in trouble If
you don’t have a good enough game to get business on your own without
Klout you are in trouble. My opinion but I am sure many will agree.
Exactly. I’ll focus on your reprint comment (happy to have that!)…ignorance drives decisions based on Klout, Howie. That’s it. Great to have you here…now, what’s the url for your self-hosted blog, please? Ahem. P.S. Whatchudoing in VT? I thought you were LA alien?
LA nope. Was. 92-2008 was in LA living by the beach. Then came back east (NYC born Long Island Raised) but up in Albany the state capitol for now. Vermont is the girlfriend. If all goes well will be living here next year 8) Kind of digging the rural life of no traffic, dirt roads and covered bridges!
I just checked my score and it was down. I honestly don’t really pay much attention to my Klout score and, frankly, don’t really get what the buzz is about. I do pay more attention to my SproutSocial engagement and influence scores, but that’s because of the u.i. that puts them right there in my face as I use the application all day and into the night. But what’s the difference? I mean, there are several metrics tools out there and they all have their own algorithms (tweetlevel, bloglevel, etc.). Social media is a new frontier and until someone can give me some hard facts, I’ll keep doing what I’m doing – engaging people and businesses, sharing information and learning from those in my social media communities. With me it’s more about the vibe and my bottom line – the latter of which can definitely be measured.
Indeed. Well said…now am I missing something re Sprout Social? Something you might like to share more about? BTW, seeking new members for my Globe Spotting Tribe on Triberr. If you’d like to join?
I’ve been using sproutsocial for a week now and now wonder how I ever lived without it. It’s not unlike other smm products. But it gives you more bang for the buck, in my opinion. And it’s super easy to use, very intuitive, nice reporting. If only google+ were integrated. I DM’d @sproutsocial about this today and received the following response:
@mikepoynton We’re patiently waiting to see what G+ has to offer businesses then we’ll see about integrating.
MarketMeSuite is another product I’m going to test drive. But I’ve been very busy with contracts, interviews and proposals and it’s down my list (not complaining!).
Your turn to share more about Triberr 😉
G’Day Jayme,
I’ve never been able to understand why I should pay any attention to someone who can’t spell “clout!”
Didn’t sound like fun to me.
Regards
Leon
Leon, don’t you have the social media dictionary in Aussieland?