I stopped checking my Klout score/profile about a year ago because I simply can’t understand how the score is calculated. Plus, my score seems to always stay in a range of 74-78 when I do check it, so I stopped looking. I got an email from Klout about a week ago telling me that my score had just gone up, so of course I clicked to check it. It seems my score had been 74, but had suddenly jumped up to 78. No explanation why, and a quick scan of my scoring history shows this had happened often. A couple of days later I get a second email from Klout telling me my score had again gone up. Whoa, it might be 80 now, I think! I click over and it shows that my score has gone ‘up’ to 78. It seems that right after Klout sent me the first email saying my score had gone up to 78. that the next day it fell back down to 74, then a day or so later it bounced back up to 78.
With no explanation for why any of that happened.
Klout was social media’s ‘it’ company a couple of years ago. The promise was that Klout would accurately measure your level of influence online. The promise for brands was that it would allow them to connect with true influencers. The promise for users was that it would let brands that created products that you are influential and passionate about connect with you and give you free stuff.
It’s now almost 2014 and we are still waiting for Klout to fulfill on its promises on either the brand or user end. Despite promise and claims to the contrary, Klout has never effectively measured online influence for the average user. Instead it attempts to measure online activity, and correlate influence to that level of activity. A shaky conclusion to draw at best.
As a Klout user, Klout says my score is 78. IOW, Klout thinks I am pretty influential. So as such, Klout needs to understand that I won’t promote its service to other people (that Klout says I have influence over) until the service is relevant to me.
Klout can become relevant to me by seeing that I get Perks that are relevant to me. The last Perk I received was, I kid you not, a Kobe Bryant poster. I have left 80K tweets on Twitter since 2007, and I would be shocked if a combined 0.000001% of my tweets were about Kobe, the Lakers, and the NBA.
That’s the last Perk I got. The last Perk I wanted was to see my last 3-day Enterprise car rental be bumped up to a full week based on my high Klout score. Or to see my coach ticket get upgraded to first class, for the same reason.
That would have been relevant to me. That would have led to me positively promoting Klout as well as the brands that leveraged the service to connect with me. Unlike Kobe and the NBA, I am constantly tweeting about travel. I am constantly tweeting about driving or flying to an event or for client work. How Klout can’t see my ‘influence’ on those topics and connect me with travel brands but can see that I am influential about Kobe Bryant is a complete mystery to me.
If Klout wants to become relevant to me it needs to do two things:
1 – Accurately identify products/people/ideas I am not only influential about but passionate about as well
2 – Tie perks to those products.
That’s it. Until then, my Klout score is just another social media number that bounces up and down that I have no seeming control over or understanding of.
Just +K’d you on everything possible. You’re welcome. 😉
LOL! Thank you Kerry, I just want travel perks. Or free Dr Pepper. Or Burn Notice DVDs. Work with me here, Klout 🙂
I’m glad someone is actually calling it like it is. Appreciate the post.
I was skeptical of what Klout promised from the beginning. I consider it about as accurate as my horoscope, maybe less so. Unfortunately, companies are believing the hype. Several months ago I had a PR/marketing agency ask for my Klout score on a job application. Of all companies, those types should know better.
Now, if I could get free Diet Coke for life or travel perks, I’d be happy.
You won’t believe this. Right after I posted my comment I received an email from Klout about a perk for Red Bull’s newsletter. They got the caffeine part right but not the drink.
Oh come on Jennifer, they found out about your love of snowboarding and freestyle skateboarding, obviously 🙂
Someone must have spilled the beans about my secret extreme adventure lifestyle. I wonder what else they told Klout. 🙂
Klout has doubled its revenue each year since it began. It has attracted some of the most sophisticated investors on earth and after a six-month study Microsoft made a long-term strategic investment. Klout scores now influence results on Bing. They just announced a partnership with ESPN.
By any measure, this is a successful start-up. It may not meet your expectations, and they have done a lot to hurt themselves with some bad PR but they are obviously on to something, despite the “ick” factor that comes with a public ranking.
Klout is is not difficult to understand. They measure your ability to move content. That’s it. That may or not may be a measure of influence by most definitions but what is your source of power Mack? How do people get to know a blogger in rural Alabama? Why did you get a chance to write a book? Why I am here now? There is only one reason. You can move content. And that is reflected in your Klout score, which is appropriately high. It’s that simple. It’s not perfect, it’s a blunt instrument, but it means something.
“Klout is is not difficult to understand. They measure your ability to move content. That’s it.”
I’m not confused about what Klout claims to do, I am confused about how they actually do it. And again, I don’t think they are measuring online influence but rather online activity.
I don’t think that increased online activity leads to increased online activity. At least not in every instance.
I see the potential in Klout, i just don’t as clearly see that potential being realized.
PS: I saw where you tweeted about the press release that the CEO issued about his Klout score. That press release is getting mocked by a lot of people. I don’t think it’s getting mocked cause the CEO mentioned his Klout score, but rather because the CEO mentioned his Klout score as if it was a relevant indicator of influence and expertise.
If most people agreed that Klout’s scores have…..clout….then how many people would have mocked that press release?
Thanks for the clarity Mack. Something Klout has not provided yet. The perception to many about Klout has been their system of measurement is flawed and can be manipulated. I have not seen any relevant counterargument other than they’re the horse the tech industry has decided to back despite questions of accuracy.
THANK YOU!!!!!!! Build a better one, please. I wish I had the know-how. I’ve been saying this forever, but was always shot down by social media experts, so I just stopped saying it. I felt like the only one who could actually SEE the emperor and maybe I just didn’t belong in the world that is social media. To be honest, I’ve been finding twitter less and less beneficial for me, as well, but maybe I’m doing it wrong now. At one point, Klout said I was influential about the Detroit Lions. Ha! I like the Lions, love football…but if I was so influential about (read that with) the Lions, I’d be on the coaching staff and trying to help figure out how they can waste so much talent in coaches and players. 😉
Cindy I talk about this in the book, you have to understand a brand before you can trust it and you have to trust it before you can advocate for it.
Case in point, Mark’s comment above. Mark’s written a great book on Klout and feels he understands who they are and what they do, so he can feel comfortable advocating on its behalf.
Maybe you should apply for a job on the coaching staff of the Lions. Include your Klout score and that Klout says you are influential about the Lions 🙂
Very interesting read and extremely timely.
I have personally avoided Klout for years, but it became something my company looked to as a measurement against our competitors over the last few months. I knew it wasn’t a good idea, but I am only now finding out that it was actually a really bad idea.
I’ve spent the last week and change going through the platform and I have found little-to-no value for my company because “the business experience” is only available if I connect a Facebook page (and Twitter). But FB isn’t a good platform for us, so we barely even use it.
Your point about activity vs. influence hits home because Klout is pretty much telling us we have to use FB to get anything from them, even though it really won’t be doing us any good.
That leads to my bigger questions: Why does a platform proclaiming to give me visage over our total social interaction want to force me into connecting platforms that aren’t really relevant to my company? And why is the algorithm so heavily weighted on Twitter and FB?
I know it’s “shocking” to say in 2013, but FB isn’t for everyone. What happens to the businesses that don’t even have (and don’t want) a FB page? How are people supposed to evaluate them?