Your Klout Score. Is it totally worthless? Kind of worthless? Or completely invaluable?

Your Klout Score.

Is it totally worthless? Kind of worthless? Or completely invaluable?...

Written Tuesday July 23rd by David Haack

Image from Wired.com

For those of you who haven’t quite jumped on this seat on the Social Media Bandwagon yet, let’s chat a bit about Klout and what it is.

Klout is a website and mobile app that uses social media analytics to measure what they deem to be the user’s “influence” online. In layman’s terms, they track a lot of different numbers from any Social Networking site you’d like to link to your Klout account to tell you if the site finds you to be “Influential”. 

Scores range from 1 to 100, with a 100 score being not totally impossible to receive, but basically totally impossible to receive. Klout took some flak awhile back for Barack Obama having a lower Klout score than Justin Beiber. They have since fixed this little snafu along with working out some other bugs from the site’s inception... 

Let me start with the good. Then I’ll get to the bad, and then finally the ugly.

The Good. 

If you’re not overly familiar with other analytics embedded within each Social Networking site, or just don’t have the desire or time to dive into all that, Klout provides a nice little landing spot for you to link all your accounts to, and then see where you’re getting your most engagement. It will break everything down in a nice little pie chart telling you that your Twitter followers love you but you’re not really getting much from your Google + account (or whatever other combo you could think of.) You can link everything from your Facebook to your YouTube channel to your Blogger account, and the list goes on and on. You only need one site to get started with your Klout score.

To me, this is a big plus side for Klout. The score can easily become an obsession, or drive you to become frantic thinking your social media campaign is “not working”, but still here in the GOOD section (wait for that explanation in the Bad and Ugly), I say having this option makes life easy and on some level see what’s working and what isn’t. 

Another plus for Klout is the perks, although from my personal experience, I haven’t found the perks to be all that enticing or organized very well. My best perk was a walkman style headset thing from Sony. Only problem was, I’m a Mac user and this thing only worked on a PC. Bummer. I didn’t tweet much about it because I didn’t want to trash or promote a product I couldn’t use, so I just kind of let that one slide, and since then have been offered nothing of note that makes me excited. The only thing I wanted was a free movie ticket but it was sold out when I tried to claim my perk. Lame!

Image from Wired.com

The Bad.

I don’t really feel that the Klout Score can fully tell me how influential a person is, because really, what does that even mean?! Some Twitter accounts have hundreds of thousands of followers but for many, this makes them want to scream, “WHO CARES!?”

I will give Klout that they seem to be making continual changes to the way they rank people, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse, but in general it is very hard to get a very high Klout score without having something going for you. Whether it’s a blogger who is constantly supplying good quality content or a public figure of some sort who just by nature has a large following of people who often interact with their Social Media accounts, those with very high scores (I’m talking 78 + here) are “worthy” of their rank. 

I don’t know the exact way that Klout weighs the various stats from the various sites, and I’d be interested in hearing that information. Because from my experience, some sites seem to weigh more heavily, and I know they weigh actions on the user’s sites with other high scoring Klout folks for more score gain than those who aren’t on the sites or don’t have much of a following. I suppose this makes sense, but it’s not black and white and therefore it is ripe for inviting some criticism. 

The Ugly.

This site can cause people to behave strangely. I will even admit that it has caused me to act strangely myself in the pursuit of a high Klout score. I read articles about a high Klout score leading to better job opportunities, so of course that makes one want to pursue a high score, right? Well... here’s the “UGLY” slippery slope. At the end of the day, you’re either influential or you’re not. Klout isn’t really going to put you on the map as a Social Media influencer unless you already ARE an influencer. It’s just a nice neat little house where all of your site’s stats are stored and spewed out into a nice two digit number that either makes you feel like you’re on top of the world, or leaves you bitter and angry and cursing the algorithms that are obviously screwing you over to keep your score down.

The bottom line is this. Content will and always will be the King of Influence on Social Media Networks and Sites. Period. If you’re not supplying something that benefits others in some way, you will not be very influential. That doesn’t mean you can’t build a following, or even game the system a wee bit, but content is what truly creates the influence. It doesn’t have to be earth-shattering or groundbreaking, it just has to resonate with someone somewhere who might have a friend or two that it also resonates with. Sometimes it can be as simple as sharing articles that peak your interest and that you think a few of your friends and followers might enjoy as well. Other times it can be sharing a personal detail of your day. The list goes on and on, and ultimately YOU decide what you want to put out there in the Social Media world. Your Klout score may get you a free McDonald’s smoothie or some free appetizers at Chili’s, but it most certainly will not be the key ingredient to your success in Social Media and Networking. Make it a piece of your day and a fraction of where you spend your time and you’ll come out of the experience with your sanity in tact and a little extra knowledge about where your audience is interacting with you most. If you can do that, then you and your Klout score can be friends with benefits, but keep things from getting too serious with a long term committed relationship... 

David Haack is founder and CEO of PHD Social Media, a Social Media Management company. Follow on Twitter: @DavidHaack