Klout. Why It’s not a Metric for Influence.

Dezember 20th, 2011 • CRM, Tools

My colleague Heather – Strategy Director at StrawberryFrog here in Amsterdam – has posted quite an interesting article on her personal Quest for Klout.

This is the story:

A little over a week ago, a comment was made by a client responsible for social media that they would expect someone offering advice on social media to have a higher Klout score than themselves. I wasn’t in the meeting, but one of our art directors made the comment “Wait until you meet our head of planning. She’ll give you a run for your money.”

When my colleagues return and tell me about the meeting we go online and compare Klout scores. Mine is 40. The client’s is 51. I’ve never paid any attention to Klout before this but they insisted I try to do so and get mine up. So I connect my Facebook account. Then Foursquare, Instagram, Google+ that I never use, and LinkedIn (that ought to take care of this competition). And then I simply put attention into all of these networks. After 24 hours my score had gone up 6 points. By the end of the week I was at 53 and it seems to have leveled off there. But that’s still 2 points higher than the client’s.

We had a bit of a conversation about Heather’s challenge with her client. Of course it was just a game but an interesting one as the client really defined Klout as a crucial metric that really describes Influence.

The problem? If you are all up for lifting your Klout score all you have to do is to basically connect every social profile you have and get retweeted constantly. In the end you get something like this (which basically says nothing but…wait…MY KLOUT SCORE IS HIGHER HEATHER!!!! ):

Klout does not get tired to pretend it is the standard when it comes to influence metrics in the social web. It’s true: if it comes to asking how to measure influence somebody will mention Klout pretty quickly. Or in other words, I think Klout did a great job in making people believe they can measure influence. I think they can’t. My reason? Klout does not measure influence. It measures blah blah.

Angela Merkel’s Klout Score is only one point higher than my own. British Prime Minister David Cameron is even less influential than I am. And do you think this comparison makes sense? No, I don’t think so either. Because we all know Klout does not work that way.

My problem with Klout is simple: Klout defines itself as the ‘Standard for Influence‘. Sometimes – in more humble moments – as the “standard for Online and Internet Influence”. As a Strategist interacting with marketing clients (such as Heather does) this is just fine print when it comes to explaining if we are able to measure success.

“It’s simple, isn’t it?”, Klout is the metric for influence. And even though we all know that real influence cannot be split into an online influence and a real world influence…and even though we all know that unless I become German Chancelor or British Prime Minister I will never be as influential as two Politicians mentioned above…and even though I know that if I go on vacations tomorrow without tweeting for two weeks my Klout score will half: we still seem to accept it as a metric for influence.

Klout is not a metric for influence. It is something like a counter that tells the world how many e-mails I sent or how many telephone calls I answered yesterday. Oh…of course it turns that into a nice info visual and awards me a ridiculous set of badges (I am a “Klout OG”).

Klout has understood that this is the perfect moment to sell an easily digestible figure to companies and agencies. To people who need quick answers for complex problems.

I agree with Marshall Kirkpatrick: “Klout is great for quick judgements and fast sorting of a bulk of people online in lightweight circomstances.” But as Klout tries to sell its single metric to people who use it as an Influencer metric – not as the tweet counter that it is – we simply follow a very flawed philosophy.

I like Klout. But it’s not a metric for influence. 

At least that is my perspective. Please feel free to come up with a very different opinion and please don’t forget to retweet this article to make my Klout score rise and rise and rise and rise. I also want to be influential enough for a Blogger outreach program to test a Maledives resort. 

Tags: Analytics, Influence, Klout, Metrics, Social Infliuence Marketing, Social Networks, Tech, Tools, Truth

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