Well, I desperately needed one, so about a week ago I was fortunate enough to go on a retreat with a few buddies deep into our lovely New Brunswick forest. We only had a fishing cabin, a river, and ourselves. There was no Facebook, no Twitter, no Youtube, and no internet. It was blissfully wonderful to disconnect from the internet, and reconnect with nature.
Yet, throughout the entire weekend, I could not resist thinking about how my Klout score would be impacted from this break. Pretty sad, but I was genuinely concerned that my score would drop.
And it did....
Damn you Klout. I can't even take a vacation? Really? I'm glad you're not my boss.
It wasn't a huge drop (61 to 58) but it was only in a matter of two days. Keep in mind, I had scheduled tweets, just not as frequently as usually. It seems as though Klout is putting more weight on the daily frequency of tweets, instead of looking at the bigger picture.
So all this makes me question: Did I REALLY lose my influence or reach because of a two day break? And really, should Klout even be that finicky and put that much weight on frequency?
For us to be asking these questions, means that Klout lacks transparency. We still really don't understand how Klout's algorithm works. Do a quick search in Google on "How Klout's Algorithm Works" and you'll see that many are asking the same question.
So what is the solution?
Simply put, don't view Klout as the ultimate authority, but as a guidepost. If you want to raise your own influence, track your own progress (interactions, conversions, etc) in a spreadsheet or use a tool like SocialMention .
Also, compare your Klout score to your PeerIndex score. See if they are telling you two different stories, or they are congruent. And be just grateful that Klout is not your boss at work. If it was, you'd never go on a vacation. ;)
What are your thoughts on Klout's way of measuring? Do you see it as effective in measuring influence?
I don't think you need Klout to tell you whether you're influential or not. Especially since they don't make the measurement clear.
ReplyDeleteI feel like my mother here, but as she would say: If you spend your time running around trying to be popular you're going to run right past being yourself.
I know being popular and influential aren't the same, but trying to play a game where the rules aren't clear is a recipe for frustration.
Having said that, I'm find myself obsessing over my score.It's addictive and sad. I'm thinking of forming a kloutaholic support group. You in?
Hi Ray,
ReplyDeleteI love your comment "If you spend your time running around trying to be popular you're going to run right past being yourself."
So true, it does feel like Klout is more of a popularity contest than anything else.
Sign me up for your first Kloutaholic member!
I like that you said to use Klout as a guidepost, that's exactly what I do. For business, I compare my Klout score to that of competitors as a general "guide" as to how I'm stacking up against them. You talk about how you thought the frequency of your tweets changed your score, from my personally experience it feels like it isn't the frequency so much as it is the engagement. If I have a couple days of active conversations back and forth on Facebook & Twitter, I'll notice my score go up. Down if I only post a bit and don't converse. Maybe your score went down because even though you had scheduled tweets, you still had no way of replying? Like you said, their algorithm is a complete mystery so who knows, just another thought for you.
ReplyDeleteThanks for you post Raechel.
ReplyDeleteYes, I would have to agree with you that engagement could have been a factor. Although, I reply via my cell phone a few times. :P. Also, I was mentioned and RT'd throughout the weekend. When comparing my activity to a normal day, the only difference was lack of frequency.
Who knows? I hope that we'll see the day that Klout is more transparent. :)
I completely agree! I think in social media we're all so obsessed with numbers - how many friends, how many followers, what's our Klout score. Thing is, we're not numbers on a screen - we're humans. We do human things (like go on vacation) and we shouldn't be judged (or judge ourselves) based on how "influential" an algorithm thinks we are.
ReplyDeleteHaving said all that, I wrote a blog post recently on how I think Klout ought to be including in its algorithm to make it a little more accurate and take into account other ways we engage and influence online: http://www.tuvel.com/blog/2011/06/22/how-klout-should-be-measuring-social-media-influence/
That is an extremely insightful observation. Influence is basically built through relationships. And how do you measure relationships by numbers? I think that we have to take all these measurements with a grain of salt. I mean.. you can tell the difference between a klout score of 35 to 55. But is not a science. Hopefully most people see that. Glad I don't work for you Klout.
ReplyDeleteHi Kari,
ReplyDeleteIt seems to have come to that, hasn't it? Numbers on a screen telling us how we rank. In an online digital world where everything is measured, it's hard to measure us darn humans. :)
I loved your post. There were some great suggestions on how Klout can improve it's metrics.
Thanks for the comment!
Yes, we’ve gotten used to measuring online marketing efforts in terms of hard numbers (and certainly for us marketers all our efforts come down to that); but that’s what makes social media unique. It’s social, more human. It focuses more on two-way interactions than one-way, faceless clicks and visits. It has to be measured both quantitatively and qualitatively.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Dave! I see Klout has now integrated Foursquare (wish they would be more transparent about what they were taking into account, though).
I agree completely with the take on Klout being more of a benchmark or guidepost. In some cases, it is accurate when measuring influence. For example, I know I am nowhere as influential as Seth Godin but I'm catching up with Chris Brogan and I'm about on-par with Dino Dogan.. I can live with that. ;o)
ReplyDeleteThat said, Ms. Laurinda Shaver is absolutely right: take it with a grain of salt.
I've mainly signed up with these social influence sights to protect my personal brand and give myself an extra push to stay engaged and productive.. But I won't lose sleep over a dip in my score.
It'll be a while before I'll be posting these scores across all my sites to provide more credentials. When I do, I'll be sure to display multiple scores, not just the Klout score. That provides more insight at-a-glance, which is what B2B and non-B2B leads alike will be looking at, considering how busy and distracted everyone is these days.