So like any social media addict, I’ve realized that friends, brands, and customer service reps can check and make decisions about me based on my social influence. The most popular of any social influence measuring sitesis Klout, but some other personality review services can be found here, thanks to one forty.
Klout is a popular social influence measuring service which takes into consideration your accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and most recently, LinkedIn. It judges you based on your network influence, amplification probability and true reach and gives you an overall Klout score between 1 and 100. Basically this means Klout analyzes who you’re influencing, how you’re influencing them and how much influence they have. Within the ranges of scores, they also give you a Klout Style, a kind of title or personality of sorts which is given to you based on your connectivity and influence across social sites.
According to Mashable, Klout’s CEO and co-founder Joe Fernandez said he had gotten many requests from users to add LinkedIn to a user’s influence because they valued their professional networks as well. My score has jumped recently after adding my LinkedIn account, but that could be attributed to my new string of followers. The Mashable article does state that adding your LinkedIn account is extremely likely to increase your score, unlike when the Klout algorithm was “improved” and many scores dropped. So, no hurt in attaching your LinkedIn, but no extreme added benefit either.
Since the beginning of my social media ventures, I’ve been pegged as an Explorer. An Explorer is described: “You actively engage in the social web, constantly trying out new ways to interact and network. You’re exploring the ecosystem and making it work for you. Your level of activity and engagement shows that you “get it”, we predict you’ll be moving up.
It seems as if an Explorer is really anyone who tweets a fair amount, but Klout hasn’t actually decided (or maybe you haven’t decided!) what you want to tweet about. The lowest style on the scale is an Observer, which basically means you listen a lot (AKA you have an account but haven’t done much of anything).
This past day or so I was moved up to a Specialist, with a Klout score of 50. A specialist is described as: “You may not be a celebrity, but within your area of expertise your opinion is second to none. Your content is likely focused around a specific topic or industry with a focused, highly-engaged audience.” Klout has me as an influence on a few topics, like job search, business, and speakers. Although this is partly attributed to my day-long influence on a LOT of people thanks to Chris Brogan, I hope that Klout continues to see me in a good light, and I don’t return to being an Explorer. I also hope that all of my new followers continue to engage!
When I was labeled as an Explorer, like many people are, I felt that Klout didn’t understand my interest and use of social media in a real way. I also found out, after participating in the first #LikeableChat on Sunday night, that Klout scores make sense for companies. While I always felt like a Klout score didn’t understand me, it at least gives Customer Service Accounts some method to the madness when responding to messages. Although Customer Service Accounts should do their best to contact everyone, they should respond first to those with high Klout scores. It’s kind of like if you had phone calls come in from two different people: one who was an influential customer you’re trying to keep happy and one who didn’t use your service often. You’d take both calls soon enough, but you’d likely put the less influential customer on hold.
Are you happy with your Klout score? Do you think they’re useful?