The Klout Kerfuffle
Kim here…
kerfuffle (n): British. informal.
1. a commotion or fuss, esp. one caused by conflicting news.
1. a commotion or fuss, esp. one caused by conflicting news.
This week I’ve seen perhaps the oddist display of a notorious bad habit in the social marketing sector…
About a week ago, one of the bigger internet marketers, made a (useful) Facebook post (which most likely was emailed to his list) about the power of Klout.
Now, by now, I’m sure you’re familiar with Klout but if you’re not, hang tight and I’ll share some thoughts once I explain this…
Over the course of the week, a “tagging and bragging” fest started occuring on Facebook, bragging not only on the power of Klout, but rather skillfully using the tags to build engagement which of course naturally shoots up your Klout number.
There’s a whole lot of IMers that have “just discovered” the “amazing power” of Klout… while most of us social marketers have known about Klout for ages.
What’s amusing though is that they’ve scratched each others backs (or is it butts??) and gotten each other momentarily excited about their own ability to cause this number to rise. (Aka gaming the system)
It’s easy to get caught up in their excitement – but it’s the same thing that prior groups of marketers (who were more tuned into social sites) have done with Klout before – and have previously grown bored with.
While the original marketer had a good grasp on the difference between what Klout CAN do for you and what is just hype, many of the copycats unfortunately had no such intellectual understanding.
These pockets of interest are a fad. But it’s also a sign of influence when these fads momentarily become “all the rage” in a pocket of friends.
What Is Klout And Why Do We Care?
What is Klout? Klout is the name of http://Klout.com a site which attempts to measure and score your social media influence based on the engagement you receive on things you post on the social networks that it measures.
What else does Klout do? It also provides some indexing of your friends/followers and helps you identify influences. You can also get freebies called “perks” (things like coupons, free coffee samples, etc) if you are an influencer in related topics. Recently, they added content curation to the things they include.
What’s the problem with Klout? It’s an imperfect algorithm that sometimes decides you’re influential in random items – AND – it’s a score that is rather easy to game (raise the number artificially).
Does Klout matter?
Sure it does – but probably not in the way you think.
Because they do two things:
1) Provide a UNIFIED view of your skillset across social media. When these tools agree on what it is that you do, there’s a good chance you do actually DO these things and that reduces the legwork someone has to do to prove you are awesome.
2) Provide a way for brands, business, HR departments, hiring managers and business owners to establish if you have capabilities.
via:http://just-ask-kim.com/what-is-klout/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=what-is-klout
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