Klout Scores and The Red Queen's Race
I don't know what caused me to check into it, but sometime back I fired up an account at Klout to see what my social media reach looks like.
I mean who would ignore a round of calls to potential allies and colleagues about business when there's a new way to examine graphs about frequency and impact of our thoughts shared online?
Okay, well here's the point. Klout allows you to aggregate statistics on activity related to your Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, Tumblr, and a variety of other social media platforms. It determines a composite score based upon the size of your network, the number of people who respond and interact with your supplied content, and other factors that illustrate the reach.
The gold standard for a Klout score is 50 or better. If you can manage to arrange your network so that it reaches that peak, you have achieved the equivalent of a .290 batting average in baseball. (For those of you who don't follow the game, .290 is performance in the highly acceptable range.)
I did manage to crest past 50 about a month ago and although I suspected a tweak to the Klout scoring algorithm, I still discovered that I was very pleased with myself, especially when I checked to see where others in my peer group were rated.
But then the Red Queen's Race began. After a couple of days of rising score, I saw mine begin to fall incrementally each day. If I made it a point to post often, and to do the things that would incent people to share my posts, retweet my updates, and to mention me in their own posts, the decrease would be mild. If I went to the beach and left the system powered down, my decrease was more significant.
Ultimately, I don't know the value of this measure -- but since everyone is measured the same way, it certainly provides a relative guide. On the other hand, I have to ask myself if I'm willing to persist at spending time each day hunting for content I can publish to keep the buzz high.
It is free on the other hand, and only takes about 5 minutes to get started, so perhaps you'd like to visit Klout and discover your own score. You may find it entertaining or insightful.
And then there's always the beach.
I mean who would ignore a round of calls to potential allies and colleagues about business when there's a new way to examine graphs about frequency and impact of our thoughts shared online?
Okay, well here's the point. Klout allows you to aggregate statistics on activity related to your Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, Tumblr, and a variety of other social media platforms. It determines a composite score based upon the size of your network, the number of people who respond and interact with your supplied content, and other factors that illustrate the reach.
The gold standard for a Klout score is 50 or better. If you can manage to arrange your network so that it reaches that peak, you have achieved the equivalent of a .290 batting average in baseball. (For those of you who don't follow the game, .290 is performance in the highly acceptable range.)
I did manage to crest past 50 about a month ago and although I suspected a tweak to the Klout scoring algorithm, I still discovered that I was very pleased with myself, especially when I checked to see where others in my peer group were rated.
But then the Red Queen's Race began. After a couple of days of rising score, I saw mine begin to fall incrementally each day. If I made it a point to post often, and to do the things that would incent people to share my posts, retweet my updates, and to mention me in their own posts, the decrease would be mild. If I went to the beach and left the system powered down, my decrease was more significant.
Ultimately, I don't know the value of this measure -- but since everyone is measured the same way, it certainly provides a relative guide. On the other hand, I have to ask myself if I'm willing to persist at spending time each day hunting for content I can publish to keep the buzz high.
It is free on the other hand, and only takes about 5 minutes to get started, so perhaps you'd like to visit Klout and discover your own score. You may find it entertaining or insightful.
And then there's always the beach.
That was depressing! I scored a 31. It says the Twitter score is inaccurate since I "protect" my Tweets.
ReplyDelete...yes, I think that it scores highly for Twitter updates that are reposted, and updates that mention you. So if it can't see them through the API, Klout cannot evaluate that part of your network influence.
ReplyDeleteSince I wrote this, my Klout score did climb back over 50 and stay there for a while, but over the past few days, I've seen it decline very slowly. At this rate I should be back under 50 by sometime early next week.