Everyone says you need a goal when engaging social media. Two years ago, when I started tweeting I had no earthly clue where my journey would take me. As a public relations practitioner always seeking the next trend, technology, or new practice, I had to launch into Twitter because everyone was talking about it. My Facebook page is relatively young, but it’s growing, and I need to give it more TLC.
It took me awhile to earn my stride and slowly my goals took shape. It was never to monetize; after all my products are my words, strategic counsel and educating the profession and business about my passion (PR, if you haven’t guessed by now).
My goal was to be an influencer. There have been so many blog posts written about influence. What exactly does that mean? In my opinion, I like to think it’s authoritative, authentic and accessible leadership.
Let me explain a bit; there are influencers who encase themselves in their glass houses and rarely respond to tweets or questions posed on a blog or Facebook. These people are inaccessible. Being authoritative comes with seasoning. Having an opinion and presenting it genuinely implies authentic authority. Blogging allows for opinion, and comments create accessibility to the blogger. Being authoritative could also be considered arrogant, and that’s not a positive characteristic.
And then came Klout. I have only looked at my score 3 times ever; most recently over the weekend because someone mentioned scores were rising after Social Slam. I had a score of 52, and this weekend it is 60. It says I am an influencer, and that means I have attained my phase one goal.
What’s interesting about Klout is the detail and quantity of information available about your social media activity. I have not heard of anyone putting emphasis on Klout scoring for people hunting for a gig or being considered for a speaking position, have you?
But the more people jockey for position in social media and claim expertise, I’m thinking Klout is going to have greater influence defining who the influencers truly are. Will this become an authentic rating of the influencers? Should it?
I haven’t looked at others’ Klout analytics and I don’t know if I can dissect the data for other people as deeply as my own analysis, but this score may just become the defacto measurement system to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Here are some thoughts for you:
1. What are your professional social media goals?
2. What is your Klout baseline (your score prior to working on increasing it?)
3. Examine your social media behavior; do you ping from blog to blog and comment excessively?
4. When you blog, are your topics focused and do they command any comments? It takes awhile to find a voice; it’s helpful to have a year of blogging before things take off.
5. Are you active on Facebook or do you refuse to let social media control your every waking hour?
6. Is your Twitter stream littered with topics and Tweeps who don’t advance your goals?
7. Are you following a disproportionate number of Tweeps compared to followers? I was just introduced to Tweepi; it’s a wonderful tool to weed out those you followed who did not follow you back.
8. Have you latched onto a rising star and are you retweeting their content to your stream?
9. Is the content you publish from tweets to blogs and comments authoritative rather than just a few words in reply?
10. At the end of the day are you being you?
You may regard much of this as bunk, and it very well may be; however when I see an analytical tool that can track my online behavior that also points to places I may improve, it is certainly worth more than a passing nod. If, that is, your goal is to become an influencer.
(Image: SocialFresh)
I always love how thoughtful and thorough your posts are, Jayme! Thank you for taking such care when you write. 🙂
I would agree that Klout can be a good measure of your social media activity in that your score increases when you have more engagement (@replies, RTs) and when your followers increase, but I cannot agree that it is a measure of influence. Perhaps I’m focusing too much on semantics, but influence is far more situational and contextual than something automated (not just Klout) could ever truly measure. At the end of the day, I think you are influential because you write about topics I care about, and you do so in a careful and thoughtful way. But are you influential to my younger sister who is interested in fashion and linguistics? Probably not.
Unfortunately, automated tools just can’t yet take these kinds of factors into account, and so their measure is really more of an index than an absolute. I love the idea of using your Klout score as a benchmark to track your own engagement and activity online. That’s brilliant, and I’m going to be using it. I would not recommend using it to measure your true influence, though. That would really sell you short (I’d give you much higher than a 60 for PR or measurement).
Hey, Rebecca! So jazzed you’re reading here; thank you. You raise excellent points — especially the word “index.” Spot on, and a much better valuation of Klout, I have to agree.
There’s such fascination with these numbers; people were competing with their Foursquare check-ins recently, their LiveFyre points, and of course always the Klout scores. We’re competitive beings and always want to win and be on top.
For people lacking the confidence to believe themselves truly influential in their own right (I’ve watched your growth over the last two years in measurement, and that’s incredibly impressive), what is a useful tool to showcase that? Is there one?
I do like all the ways Klout dissects information; its relevance, as you point out, is suspect.
Our competitive natures will always get the better of us, huh?
You know, I’m not 100% sure, but I don’t think there is one tool that can help prove influence right now. I think a lot are trying to be the end all answer, but it’s just so hard right now to automate. I keep coming back to measuring influence with indirect metrics like referrals, recommendations and the like. If I get more people asking me questions about measurement, I’m going to consider myself incrementally more influential. It’s not perfect, but it’s something. And it feels more relevant to me than watching my Klout score creep up.
It always goes back to your goals, which you definitely touched on here. If you’re sole goal is to be engaging, Klout will definitely be a better measure than others. But for influence, you have to find some indirect, creative methods for now.
And I agree about the ability to dissect information in Klout. That is SUPER handy, and I’ve used their metrics to prove influence in other ways and track my own progress. Definitely a useful tool, and I hope I’m not implying that it’s not! 🙂
So, to recap: to measure professional influence individuals need to identify with their own metrics. Does that about sum it up?
People who are newly engaging in social media should do a Klout baseline and review the metrics it uses to track and score IMHO. Then, as you become more seasoned, there are more ways to measure, as you indicate.
Having a set of your own influence indicators is pretty smart, because what we both agree on is that there isn’t a single tool to measure influence that we know of. Where I think it begins is with something so innocuous as “confidence.”
I know you’re a measurement queen, and I know I’m passionate about public relations ethics, standards and education. I’d suggest we’re both influencers about the topics we most frequently engage on.
Does that make any sense? And, what you’re also suggesting is not to put all the eggs in the Klout basket; there’s so much more to include in influence valuation.
Perfect summary! You said it much better (and more succinctly) than I.
If Klout is going to succeed, then it is going to have to do a lot of changing. It is still too easy to game and is based too heavily on follow count. I have found many high scores for peope who have very high follow counts but zero interaction. Klout has the potential to be a very useful tool, but right now it is simply fun. IMHO of course 🙂 Great post. I especially appreciate point #10 “At the end of the day are you being you?” That really is the biggest part of social media, isn’t it?
There are tricksters who try to influence Klout scores; b/c as mentioned I have only looked 3x I have no idea how to do that and not time to try! I hear you, though. You have to give these guys credit for being first mover on some type of metric to gauge influence (whether it works or not). I am impressed with the extent of measurement considerations. Thanks for coming by, Brian!
Thanks, @aaronsachs for sharing this blog post https://wewillraakyou.com/2010/12/klout-is-broken/ on a well-deserved high five oriented to an 80-day study using bots to essentially prove Klout is broken. I love people who do this.
This is the first post I’ve read in a while that doesn’t completely disregard Klout’s capabilities out of hand. I was introduced to it via HootSuite when I first started. It offered the Klout score of every Twitter account, and, being new to Twitter at the time, I was curious about it. I checked my own and compared it to others. I liked the categories, and I thought they accurately described me (although I was a bit insulted by the “You don’t take this Twitter thing seriously” bit. I’d only been there a week or two, so sue me!).
I forgot about it for a while, though, when I took up TweetDeck, which doesn’t have those scores. When I did remember and checked again, my score had tripled. I thought, whoa! And from then on I watched as my score dipped and soared and whirled as my activity rose and fell each week. This happens because I can be deeply engaged in Twitter without actually engaging anyone (reading, observing, RTing, DMing, checking profiles, etc.). But there’s no way to measure that–no status for “silent activity.” In order to have Klout, one must be a social butterfly in all senses of the word, and I’m just not, in most of those senses. At least not all the time. It’s literally exhausting, so I turn to other social media-related activities instead. And thus my score rollercoasters at least every two weeks. This probably happens for others, too. So I’d not put it on my resume or refer people to it, but still–still!–I secretly feel I must take it seriously on some level because others will begin to take it seriously.
What do you think?
I so totally agree! Your last statement sums it up for me, Shakirah, and that’s what I was alluding to in the post. Regardless of what we all think about Klout, there are others (not in the know) who will regard it as a measurement of influence. Just wait; this will indeed happen. How will we discount a potential client who has three social media experts and can’t discern who’s got the goods and they turn to Klout to pick the winner?
I’m not sure I’m in a position to discount that number when the impressive presentation of measurement scores it presents looks might credible.
A good analogy for Klout scores compares to those who diet — they watch their weight fluctuate based on junk food intake! Thanks for sharing!
When I started tweeting I knew exactly where my journey would take me: friends, fame, clients, success, thousands of devout followers clinging to my every word, untold riches stashed away in the Caymans. Enjoy your eyerolls.
First your questions, then Klout.
1. See above.
2. IIRC as I’ve only looked once it was 56? 58?
3. Are you paying attention, do you not see my needs-to-be-updated Gravatar all over? Yes, though not sure I’d characterize it as pinging or excessive. I’d say often and strategically. 😉
4. I am getting comments and it did take a while before they really started to develop. (Hadn’t seen you there lately nudge nudge.) Focus, Mack Collier just wrote – which I am going to include in a post hopefully someday soonish – about different goals for posts: SEO, comments, expertise. I do need to write more ‘core’ topics.
5. Refuse. For now. (Says she who can’t decide iPhone 4 or wait for 5?)
6. Less and less each day. I’m unfollowing feeds (get news elsewhere) and those I just don’t think contribute. I DO keep following a few leaders, other smart folks in the know who may disagree with me at times, keeps me honest. Trying to get better organized w/ columns, manage that clutter.
7. I have a decent balance, and a fair mix of those follows that don’t follow me back. Sure I think everyone should follow my silly tweets but the different voices is one of the plusses in my book.
8. Not sure about latched, but when I read something good – by a rising star or old pro or slacker – I’ll RT. I do like to find ‘new’ voices, share if it’s something or someone new to me.
9. Hmm……
10. Survey says yes.
Second, is Klout. What Rebecca said.
Okay fine. I’ve checked it once and have since been told the trend is on the rise, so that’s good. Rebecca is right: it measures stats, numbers, ratios NOT influence. Brian is right that in order to measure influence, that algorithm will need to be improved to account for many other variables. End of the day.. it’s who you know. You know I like WDW, so you may accept my recommendations on restaurants. My family thinks I am the computer geek, so I get stuck w/ the tech support gig. If you know I’m an LSU Tiger, again w/ the tips on where to stay and where to eat. My social influence? Just b/c I write it or tweet doesn’t make it popular or explode. Just b/c someone as smart and popular as Gini Dietrich made me a Follow Friday, doesn’t mean I’ll pick up hundreds of her followers. It takes work and time to develop real influence. FWIW.
OK, yes I accept the nudge; where is the time, please? Well said; like your approach and it seems to be working. I’ve not seen anyone who works as hard as you in this realm, either. So, great going and your approach should be featured in an e-book.
What Jayme said. And… there you go. What do the answers to those questions add up to? Influence or not influence? As you said, Davina, it depends on who’s looking at you.
The time is now or whenever you like my dear. Pick a post, I publish Monday and/or Thursday or maybe Tuesday/Friday if I fall off the wagon. 😉
I do find it difficult to believe influence can be measured at all. Even though follow count or engagement may be high, the impressions a single individual takes away can be 10 times greater or less than your entire Klout score, because of a single tweet or retweet. And we’re always careful anyway on social media because we’re aware that no matter how we rank on those metrics, they don’t measure people’s opinions.
I extend an invitation to everyone commenting here (for those of you for whom I don’t have your emails) to answer Please define influence, and what tools, if any, exist to measure it? I’m going to do a blog post, and already I know this group will help shape that discussion. Thanks, Shakirah, it’s an esoteric discussion.
Here are my two favorite posts on Klout:
1) Why Klout is flawed: an infographic: https://www.businessesgrow.com/2011/02/22/the-problem-with-klouts-an-infographic/
2) In defense of Klout: https://pushingsocial.com/the-drive-to-kill-accountability-in-social-media
I tend to side with Stanford, here. We are, as a group, really good at shooting down attempts to find a good way to measure success. I think everyone will quickly say “oh but you can’t use just ONE metric, you need to use several!” Agreed. Especially since some of these metrics ARE flawed – the easiest one to criticize being “number of followers.” How many of those are real people, how many of them regularly even LOOK at Twitter and then see my tweets, etc etc etc. So I guess I’m left uttering the tired phrase of “there is no silver bullet” for social media success measurement.
I find Klout helpful more than I find it hurtful. I don’t know why they won’t update their influenced by / influencer of for my analysis, but they’re right, I’m a Conversationalist. That’s the best way to get me to pay attention to your stuff – chat me up and I’ll take notice! Otherwise I might miss it.
I need to be better at pulling links from elsewhere like you and Davina. That’s very impressive, influential and pulls comments. Great practice.
While I agree with everyone, I side more with the future and Shakirah’s thoughts. When Klout catches on amongst those who are non experts, then where will we sit with this number? Will we debate it as non influential? Should we never use it when people ask us how many followers we have?
This just happened to me! Shades of “what contacts do you have in the media?” ARGH! I always cringed and negated that question with “it’s the news I have to share and not who I know in the media.” Similar to Klout; it’s not my follower number, it’s what I say.
Jayme if you’re interested in doing the link thingie – the way I do this is I save the links I like using a social bookmarking tool. Then when I go to write a post on a topic, I just search through the list to find what I had saved.
Previously I used delicious, am using Google bookmarks in the interim.
Definitely agree last statement. The targeting of users with high Klout scores is…well, I think our friend the Brand Savant has written about this 😀
I also like Evernote for this very reason. I can keep different sections of links and label them to help me remember why I saved them in the first place!
Great suggestions, Jenn and Rebecca. It’s obvious my bookmarking skills are nil. I need to change that absolute and immediately. What a difference that will make! Thanks for tips. Another blog post to write.
Still haven’t taken the Evernote leap – but it is on my radar!
Great shares Jenn and I’ve got two more from Mark. One, he wrote about how some celeb RT him, the sheep did too and basically nothing happened. Two, his post the other day is in line w/ your Pushing Social share, about justifying those expenses as social media ain’t free. https://www.businessesgrow.com/2011/04/19/how-to-save-your-butt-when-the-social-media-bubble-bursts/
Per my earlier comment and agreeing with Brian and Shakirah, and now you: the metrics are flawed. But that’s no reason to stop looking at them, to stop measuring. Forget the silver bullet and take a harder look at how those numbers are calculated. For example, I’ve now looked a second time and my score is 50 (I checked.. my old score was 48) and am still an ‘explorer.’ Which is about right: I don’t drop old friends and yet do add new ones to share and RT. Now two of the five listed as ‘”influenced by” are crap: BusinessWire, I hardly ever click or RT the posts. Like you said, room for improvement. Another thing I won’t do, in order to complete my profile, is add my FB account. Not gonna happen. Different network with totally different audience, goals and objectives and therefore has nothing to do with my online ‘influence’ as a professional. FWIW.
Totally w/ you on the Facebook thing. Thanks Davina.
Thanks Jayme for another great post. Thanks for the link to Jeremiah Oyang’s blog. I like to read his throughts because like you, he is sharp as a razor on even the muddiest things.
IDEA: If you made a chapter of each item on your list of 10 above, perhaps combining your items 6 and 7, you’d have a GREAT book…
(Guess, right or wrong, I really should check my own *Klout/score*) I’m a believer that if something can be measured… it can be monitored, improved, optimized and generally changed for the better.
Regarding #6 and #7 above, I sheared some chaff from the wheat yesterday going back and forth between TwitCleaner and Twitter Kharma. It made a noticable improvement in my tweet-stream quality. I need to do more, but it was SO time-consuming. I will try Tweepi and see if thats less laborious.
John, I need an editor; how about it? Those darn e books are my nemesis; yes, I need one and want one and, and…
Tweepi was my first attempt at getting those following who don’t follow deleted. It balanced the numbers better (why do we care about that, anyway?).
Have to admit, Jeremiah Owyang pushes such provacative content; I reviewed a Slideshare and learned more in that prez than trying to poke around blog posts.
To influence someone or something, you must get them to take ACTION on what you said or did.
For instance, let’s say that I read an article about helping the local homeless community in the newspaper. I had it over to my husband. He reads it. That’s the offline equivalent of a RT, right? Well, it’s a TINY action – maybe a step towards awareness, but that’s about it.
Now, if I read SEVERAL articles on this topic and share them with my husband each time, now we’re getting closer to [brand, cause, etc.] awareness. So, it seems that that Klout needs to consider how frequently I pass along the same type of information.
But, still, awareness isn’t really action . . . So, it’s got to be about what I DO with that information too. How many times are links that I RT clicked on. And, what are those links? If I get a bunch of people to donate money to a good cause by sharing the link around, that’s a pretty substantial action. And, do they spread
As a personal aside, I dislike the idea of your “influence” being affected by who you like. I mean, I could click on anyone and follow them. Now, maybe if someone with higher influence followed me, that would be useful. Or, better yet, if you DM someone with higher influence and they correspond with you, that would be useful. Then, your ideas are reaching the person who has more influence – offering the potential that you could have influence too. But, simply following a bunch of people with a lot of followers should not count.
Anyhow, I digress. I think what you’ve all said is dead-on. It will be important because people need numbers as justification. Just like people need a way to measure the progress of all other things online. It’s natural and it’s good for business. But, let’s just hope that as the tool’s popularity grows, more and more work is put into it’s algorithm too, eh?
As always, Soulati – you got me thinking!
Both you and Shakirah have mentioned clicks on shared links, and I’m starting think more and more that is something that we need to keep in mind. Of course, not a single metric, but does it really matter if 100 followers RT me if no one actually clicks the link? That’s not really influence.
Sharing the same kind of information or seeking the same kind of information is exactly the context Klout lacks and can’t automate, at least not yet. We can always dream!
Fascinating observations, Rebecca and Davina — I’ve often seen more comments on a blog than the tweet memes. The measurable factor are the comments; highly valuable fodder, yet certainly Klout can’t dive into this metric to decipher influence, can it?
Still thinking on influence… getting it jumbled with other things. Turning to a thesaurus, one word that was not used for influence, noun was ‘inspiration’ but for influence, verb ‘inspire’ is there. I write that thinking of some social, cause campaigns, on FB and Twitter. Some things may inspire actions but w/out influence or vice versa.
The other biggest obstacle to defining and measuring influence in the social arena IMHO is qualifying and quantifying motivation. IDK.. my motivations have been to make real connections that develop my expertise, build my credibility and yes, someday lead to a network and a community of professionals which just may include referrals and money-growing trees. I have a ball chatting and discussing and tweeting w/ so many folks, and yet.. if I found better, more effective and profitable ways to develop my skills, build my community and establish credibility, my motivations and therefore the influence would shift.
That said something by Gini may sway my opinion; she’s got my thinking of Livefyre – not today wonk wonk 😉 – and not holding comments in moderation, etc. though I won’t follow or RT everything blindly. Something from someone else, b/c of a connection and friendship, may pull my attention to a particular blog post, on which I may or may not comment; I may or may not RT. And someone’s perceived reputation and “klout” may bias my opinions on someone’s authority and prestige. The last of which is when I think we see this courting of Twitter stars for personal gain, the notion that if @BigName RTs our post or graces our blogs w/ a comment that followers and influence will just fall from the sky. Don’t work that way. And it’s also why we don’t always argue, debate or disagree with influencers or rather, those in positions to possibly help further our own goals and objectives. Now we certainly are NOT a bunch of kiss-ass sycophants and I love that, I enjoy the intelligent debates and discussions. But I’ll read posts from many a TopNoOneElseCaresBigNumberList and be unimpressed, yet see mostly praise in comments. I’ll follow their tweets that seem pedestrian, downright ordinary. But I don’t always jump in and say that, don’t comment ‘man this post is really lame’ with anyone really; I’m not motivated to do so.. plus it’s just not in my nature. I’ll agree or disagree w/ the sentiment of a post but if there’s nothing much to it.. I usually just don’t comment.
IDK I wonder WHY some have the reputation and influence they are reported to. Then I remind myself that they’ve built that reputation and cultivated their community over time, w/ lots and lots of hard work. And that anyone can think the same of me. It’s the WHY that’s the challenge. Things and people only influence us if we let them, right? So what influence I have (which is negative numbers) or who has influence over me gets into WHY I allow that, just not sure charting and graphing tweets and clicks will really reveal that. FWIW.