I was asked today if I have checked my Klout score. I have seen a lot about Klout…it’s essentially a way to measure your influence (there’s that word again). Klout defines its metrics this way:
We believe that influence is the ability to drive people to action — “action” might be defined as a reply, a retweet or clicking on a link.
So, if you have a lot of people clicking on links and retweeting you, your Klout score goes up. Naturally, attaining a high Klout score will be easier, statistically, for someone with 50,000 followers than a person with 100 followers. 1% of 50,000 will always be bigger than 1% of 100, I don’t care what kind of fuzzy math you’re doing.
That’s not why I have no interest in my Klout score, however.
Put simply, I haven’t checked my Klout ranking for 2 reasons.
1. I don’t need to
2. I don’t care
Let’s explore both of these in a bit of detail.
I don’t need to know what my Klout score is
So, first of all, I have my own ways of measuring clicks. I know how many people are coming to my blog. I know how many people (roughly) are clicking on my bit.ly links. I know how many people are retweeting me. Even if I cared deeply about my Klout score, the plain and simple numbers that I look at to measure what I’m doing tell me that in terms of clicks and Retweets, I am not “influential.” Boo hoo. Don’t cry too hard for me. I’ll survive somehow.
Here’s the thing. For me, clout (spelled correctly and without a .com after it) in Social Media translates to people you’ve helped somehow. Do you know how you measure that? People kindly tell you that you helped them. Yep. Communication on Social Media sites. Wacky, right? Klout doesn’t really measure “influence” in this way, but I think all measures of influence should be based on “thank you” and any and all translations. A lot of the people who have high Klout scores would also probably rank pretty highly on the “thank you” scale. Others would fall off pretty darned quickly, though. For example, the people who spend a lot of time saying, “Please RT” or “OMG CLICK!”. They might have a great Klout score, but not a lot of the kind of clout that I admire.
I don’t care about my Klout score
Numbers in Social Media, for me, have just become moments of pause. I marked when I finally got my 100th follower. I noted progress when I grew my community to 500 followers. I paused again when I reached 1,000 followers. But I have not changed a gull darn thing about how I am blogging or how I am Tweeting. At this point, my game in Social Media is about continuing to learn all I can and then when I’m not doing that, bringing other folks up to speed who might be struggling in the same way I was six months ago. That’s it. I don’t get retweeted a whole lot because generally, I don’t talk in sound bytes. I talk in words that I string together into 140-character mini sentences. Normally, those are written in response to something someone has said to me. I just talk to people. There isn’t anything innately retweetable about “Hey, are you feeling better?” I don’t care. I just don’t. I like talking to the people I talk to. I learn from them, and hopefully they learn from me while also having a little fun (sometimes at my expense).
Point a finger and you have three pointing back at you
I’m not saying that you are a TERRIBLE person if you use Klout. I’m just saying that I wouldn’t get too bogged down in it. Ultimately, if you care about that kind of thing, you could just make your game a Klout tally score. You could trick people into clicking links. You could get a bunch of your friends to retweet everything you say. Your Klout score would probably skyrocket in just a couple of days. But how does that really help you in the end? Ultimately, people will realize that that game is all you’re about. Hungry Hungry Hippo is really fun for about the first hour, and then people want to move on to Trivial Pursuit or Scrabble, right? Well, it’s the same kind of thing. I think people who use Twitter to communicate person-to-person find it much more rewarding, in all of the ways that Klout.com doesn’t measure. Just my opinion, but I’m sticking to it.
1st Image by sebile akcan. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/sebileakc
2nd image Credit: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/rubenshito
A. I love the picture of the cats (I’m a sucker for kitties), ha ha.
B. I found this particular post rather amusing. I just got done watching the kick off episode of the 2nd season of Glee (if you aren’t watching it Marjorie, you’re missing out), and for some reason the post reminded me of something one of those kids from Glee would say after having a revelation of sorts. It’s understanding that one’s value and worth shouldn’t be determined by someone else’s judgment.
However, I think a strong Klout score is kinda cool—though I agree—it shouldn’t be incredibly important. I think it’s a nice little badge someone can wear and be proud of, but that’s about it.
Though I gotta admit…I like shiny badges. 😉
I am a sucker for kitties as well. Sadly, I am deathly allergic to them 🙁
Oh, that stinks Marjorie. 🙁
I’m allergic to Tapioca…sigh. I love Tapioca.
Marjorie
I go a bit nuts over people caring so much about the numbers. It is maddening to me. I do not want to be measured by a number. Thinking about this, we have been measured by numbers for so long – height, weight, age, salary, grades – the list goes on an on. If someone wants to look at my twitter, LI and FB and say that I have X friends/followers/connections and either I do or do not matter then I have to say thank you very much but I do not see where that matters. If I have a lot does that mean that I am so incredibly smart that you have to have a piece of this brain? If I have a little or what is beneath your standards does that mean that you shun me as I am not someone. Hmh. It is interesting that people do think this way – why yes many are the ones that are trying to ride your coat tails and gain popularity off of you. I get fired up about this as I do not understand so much that mentality. If you perceive me as popular because I have a lot of followers and you have to jump on that bandwagon to get a piece of me please tell me what are you offering to ME? Um your follow? Nice.
I am me. I am not a number. I am not a coat tail rider nor do I want any on mine (I already have one very gorgeous lil boy who pretty much occupies all that space anyway). I do not live in the fantasy world where everyone online that I converse with will be my BFF or even someone I can trust or will even be around talking to me tomorrow as I did not give them instant popularity. That is how they work, not me.
If you want to judge me by my Klout score, by all means go ahead. I am not going to stop you. Heck, I probably will not even know that you did it. If you think that my SM efforts are based upon a number and not who I am then you missed a blog post on a very popular blog on Aug 18th. It is people and not the numbers we need to pay attention to. I let my doc and my accountant look at me for the numbers. Everyone else, look at me for me or do not look at all.
Wow – now there’s some passion for you.
You should copy, paste, *maybe* edit a bit, and post this to your own blog.
You bring up some good points Suzanne. I do agree that throughout our lives we are judged by the numbers. It starts at childhood and it goes into adulthood. It’s a never ending situation.
However, the general public/mainstream consumer needs *something* to go by when it comes to judging the value of things, and numbers are a part of that. Firms and brands, for example, value numbers *a lot*. Let’s say that someone is pitching social media to a brand, and they are giving stats left and right about how influential and powerful social media is. Then when the directors at the brand ask for the person’s Twitter profile, they visit it, and see they have a measly number of followers. *That* speaks volumes. How can they trust someone with a low number of Twitter followers, and expect that person to be someone they can rely on for a successful social media campaign? Taking it one step further, let’s say the brand knows what a Klout score is. They check the person’s Klout score and it’s pretty low. Again, it doesn’t look good. Numbers = value to a brand (as it does for most), and it’s important to take that into consideration.
If one has a good understand of the way Twitter works, they should be more influenced by a user’s content vs their actual number of followers—but heck—even Marjorie pointed out that one of the things she looks out for when it comes to a Twitter user is checking to see if they have more people following them vs. the number of people the user is following. Marjorie points out that isn’t the only thing she looks for, and it isn’t necessarily a deal breaker if the user happens to be following more people vs. those who are following them, but it is something she takes into consideration. That is an evaluation of numbers, a lot of us do it (in fact, most of us do it from my experience).
Yes, numbers can be incredibly deceptive about the value of someone on Twitter. Agreed. God knows how many profiles I’ve seen with thousands of followers where their content is basically nothing of value. But when you can combine great content + strong numbers, it equals gold on Twitter, and it does make you stand out just that much more on the platform. That can only be a good thing in the end.
Remind me to check my Klout score sometime this week, ha ha. 😉
A recent article on Mashable to consider for the discussion of this post…
http://mashable.com/2010/09/25/twitter-celebrities/
Goes to show: numbers don’t mean everything, but it doesn’t take away the fact that people still look at them.
Food for thought.
Great post. I didn’t know about Klout.com until I read about it here. I agree that you don’t need it. You are fine just the way you are.
Thanks, Diane 🙂
Most people are!
I love your concept of a “thank you” scale. In my mind it’s important to acknowledge those that give us shout outs, fun conversation, and re-tweets. While I don’t expect it back, I don’t want to be ignored either. This means I offer a few thank yous now and then even if it means I risk losing followers who feel alienated because now their twitter stream has been cluttered with “thank yous.’ And then I’m more thankful for those who stick with me.
Thank yous are tough on Twitter because if you miss someone it can be hurtful. I sometimes use emails or direct messages to get the job done 🙂
#FF shout-outs seem to help, with a little personal message attached for those tweets where you want to single a few people out. That seems to be an acceptable version of “thank you’s” to most Twitter users. You would expect your Twitter thread to have a bunch of #FF mentions on Fridays. Most people don’t seem the slightest bit annoyed by it from my experience.