Si Muddell: Klout - A waste of time or no time to waste?

Working in the marketing industry, I hear and read a lot of strong opinions regarding Klout, so I thought it would be interesting if I asked five marketing professionals ten questions about Klout. Their answers are not only interesting, but reveal and represent the diversity of thoughts, opinions, challenges and gripes regarding online influence scoring metrics such as Klout. This article is not really about defining what Klout is. If you want to know more about Klout have a read of their website.

Metrics, data, and more metrics

We live in an age that is dominated by the internet and digital data. A world where to be without the 'web' would be as alien as a cowboy without his gun. A place where at least some of a persons online identity is publicly available, with the 'some' not necessarily being the parts you would choose.

Where there is digital, there is normally data metrics and accountability. People pay attention to metrics, they compare, benchmark, compete, and base KPI's on them. Successful marketers are using data metrics to optimise their activities. Overtime, the type of metrics utlised evolve in accuracy and flourish in functionality and use, but data/metrics are very much here to stay. In fact they are becoming the norm, the standard. It comes of no surprise that there are companies such as Klout that are striving for a quantifiable metric/score that aggregates and collates data across multiple touchpoints, which, in Klouts case, represent (accurately or not) an individuals or brands online influence.

In the news and marketing landscape (particular US based), every now and again we hear about another Bluechip company that has implemented Klout scores as part of its recruitment process (think Salesforce), or about a social media/marketing course that has started attributing part of the final year grade to a students Klout score. Commercially, it seems more companies are jumping on-board with Klout Perks, where customers who have a certain Klout score are identified and rewarded.

What is Klout:

The wikipedia definition is - "Social media analytics to measure a user's influence across his or her social network. The analysis is done on data taken from sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google + and measures the size of a person's network, the content created, and purports to measure how other people interact with that content. "

Whether or not this metric (Klout Score) is achievable, accurate, realistic or useful is the source of some hard debate throughout the marketing community, and the subject of this blog article.

Panel Question time: What do you think about Klout?

Mentioning Klout amongst my marketing friends always plays itself nicely to a debate; which I love. When talking about Klout in a more positive light around some, you can almost hear the ridicule in their minds "what's he talking about!", whilst around others, the complete opposite is true.

I thought it would be interesting to get five of my marketing friends to answer ten questions regarding Klout. Even though all five are marketing professionals, pretty equal in intelligence, and all users of social media, their opinions and thoughts on Klout are interesting, diverse and thought provoking.

Marketers taking part:

Greg Beazley - Customer Success Manager @ Datarati (Connect)
Oli Mistry - Strategy Director @ Leo Burnett (Connect)
Ed Stephens - Digital Marketing & Social Media Assistant @ Setanta Sports (Connect)
Chris Stobbs - Client Services Manager @ 1000heads (Connect)
James Coyne - Online Community Manager @ Commonwealth Bank (Connect)

Below is the dialogue which makes for interesting reading.

1. What best describes your knowledge of Klout? V Good, Good, OK / Average, Fairly poor, V Poor

Greg - Good

Oli - OK / Average. I only recently discovered it and have read little about it to date.

Ed - Good

Chris - Good

James - Good but I’d say that I’ve lost interest in recent years.

2. In one or two sentences, summarise what you think Klout is. (no cheating, has to be true to what you really think)

Greg - Klout is an attempt to measure someone's social influence on a scale of 1 - 100.

Oli - Klout is an online tool that claims to measure an individual’s online social influence. It
connects with the top social networks a user is active on and has linked. It uses its algorithm
to calculate a Klout score which is publicly displayed, this score is claimed to be a reasonable
measure of social influence. Perks enable companies to reach people with attractive Klout
scores for influencer marketing promotions.

Ed - Klout is a social platform specifically designed to measure your influence on subjects that you regularly talk about across social media platforms.

Chris - Klout is an online "social" influence measuring 'service'. It's free you don't have to sign up you are always being tracked and measured.

James - Klout is a social media analytics tool that takes various indicators such as likes, follows, etc. to give the user a score out of 100 to represent their influence.

3. What is your Klout score?

Greg - 60

Oli - 61

Ed - 52

Chris - 59

James - 57

4. How do you feel about your Klout score in terms of its accuracy of your online influence, and how it stacks up relative to work colleagues/friends?

Greg - Very hard to say in terms of it's accuracy, however my score is very similar to my friends who are also active on Twitter mostly. Therefore, I suppose I would gauge a fairly solid score compared to those friends who are not highly active on social networks.

Oli - Pretty agnostic. There are so many measures and intricacies around real influence that an
Algorithm may not pick these up completely accurately. I think it needs to be taken with a pinch of reality.

I haven’t stalked anyone to compare scores beyond the handful of people it says influence me but I might now you’ve reminded me.

Ed - I am satisfied with my current Klout score and feel it does reflect the amount of effort I put into my social presence, however the measurement of influence over certain topics I feel is inaccurate due to it labelling my influence over subjects such as 'beer' & 'ESPN' some of my highest. In relation to colleagues I would say my score is average, and above average compared with my friends.

Chris - I would say it's both exaggerated and underrated. I look at some of my online peers such as @whatleydude who I know personally and is very influential both on and offline and I question why he is only 8 points above me, he should be way higher. I then question what my influence is. I know I have a large online influence in the mobile world but most definitely not in the coffee world as klout thinks I do.

James - I’ve read about Klout’s gamification model. I bet if I kept signing in on a regular basis, it’d probably go up.

5. Klout and other online influence/credibility measurement tools are relatively speaking, in their infancy. Do you think it is a) possible to 100% accurately track 'online influence? b) a realistic expectation for the marketplace right now to insist Klouts usefulness and overall credibility is weak unless a near 100% accuracy of peoples online influence is achieved?
State your rationale to the answers above.

Greg - My thoughts are that it is not possible to be 100% accurate. There will always be a level of subjectivity with a measure and so many variables to define the broad phrase such as "social influence". It's a challenge to prove, but there's people out there willing to prove it. For now at least, Klout is really striving to create the expectation for this unique marketplace.

Oli - It’s a fallacy to think any tool like this can ever be 100% accurate therefore dismissing its validity on that basis is flawed. Any algorithm is going to have flaws a Google search for example may not always deliver you the exact thing you are looking for but it’s still a useful tool. You don’t have to be 100% accurate to be valid in some way, credible or useful.

Ed - a) I don't think it will be possible to 100% track online influence no matter how much it is developed, there is always room for inaccuracy as people go through natural & / or sporadic peaks and troughs in their interest and therefore their knowledge / influence. As Klout only takes a snapshot of a person social activity over 30 days there are always going to be inaccuracy's. (e.g. you can work in a bank and be influential over one subject and then be on holiday and be influential over destination, however it is just a question of showing a temporary interest which makes them seem influential but in the greater scheme of things they are not).

b) It is unrealistic to claim it is useless or not credible as this is a product in it's infancy. People may have claimed that websites like Facebook were useless or a waste of time as it was being developed and these days it is a core part of nearly all brands marketing strategy.

Chris - a) No I don't think it's possible to do it 100% at this point in time, because there are two many variables.

b) I think weak is harsh, but in reality it's probably true. The problem is that it's inconsistent and doesn't take enough into account so I don't believe it can be relied on.

James - People are influential to different people about different things. Chris Poole, 4chan founder stated at web2.0 summit, “In fact it [your online personality] is more like a diamond; you show different facerts of your personality to different people.” He was referring to Facebook and Google, but I believe that it’s a good statement on exactly how complex people are.
I therefore believe that it is not possible to 100% accurately track online influence and it won’t be until we’re able to analyse every bit of data on and offline.

6. Amongst other things, Klout has been criticised as being a) addictive and b) not indexing all of a users connected social networks. Is addictive bad? Aren't most social media addictive, and would it not be a pretty flawed business plan if it really did only index a selection of a users networks? What are you thoughts on both of these points.

Greg - Humans are naturally competitive and seek recognition in whatever form that might be. Just look at how we saw the badge-collecting fad of Foursquare, or even the belief that it's all about how many likes or followers you have, Klout is adding its element of achievement through a score out of 100. Perhaps it's unjust. Perhaps it just isn't the right way to do it. But, whatever it is, it's engaging and it is the most talked about part of Klout. That score is Klout's secret sauce. It's what's causing many to react in blog posts like this to share their opinion. Surely that's a large part of what's making Klout a success.

Oli - a) Being branded addictive is a compliment, it means its providing utility, interest and is clearly serving some purpose or fulfilling some need for its users

b) It indexes the biggest and most influential networks im sure it will evolve to include others

Ed - Yes most social networks are addictive however Klout has a unique addiction whereby you can compete with others with a simple number and as there is no full understanding on how there 'influence' numbers are measured. Whereby twitter is measured by followers / following / tweets and there could be alternative reasons why some users numbers are lower or higher than others. I think it would be a flawed business plan to only index only a selection of a users networks, however it depends on how these networks were selected.

Chris - a) It's only addictive if you looking at it from a game, or comparing yourself to others and or care about the result. I don't care cause I don't trust it's value so it's not addictive to me. If I thought it had value and mean't something I would probably work hard to get it higher and therefore be addicted to it. Is addictive bad? I wouldn't sad but but could be unhealthy.

b) It is definitely a flaw that it doesn't monitor all social networks. After all it's measuring online social influence. MAJOR issue I think. Specifically when it comes to blogging platforms because bloggers now days are seen as teh "influences" in the market.

James - Klout is well known for its gamification, finding it addictive is a product of that. In fact I’d say the majority of online platforms now use gamification. Gamification. Now there’s a buzz word I’ve used too much already.

7. For some, Klout could be applauded for trying to finally bring a real measurement metric into the marketplace, where 'experts' can be substantiated by an actual score. For others, the popular 'against' Klout camp would argue that the score itself is fundamentally flawed (doesn't allow users to add popular blogging and social media tools such as WordPress and Pinterest), isn't accurate, and therefore useless.
Do you admire Klouts vision/philosophy of trying to measure online influence and therefore want to see it mature, or do you despise it. Why so?

Greg - Of course, I admire their vision. I don't think there's a proven point to say otherwise. Everything's moving online. Online is therefore becoming more vital in our everyday lives. Therefore, we'll be dealing with more people, more often, from around the world, so our online reputation will also become a crucial part of whether people should trust us or not. Klout is in it's early days, but I see services like Klout, eBay reputations, LinkedIn associations, and many other services combining into a personal dashboard (think Google+ in the future). It all ties back to Rachel Botsman's theory of Collaborative Consumption.

Oli - It’s an interesting concept and business im sure it has creases that need to be ironed out. It has enough right about it to be interesting and usable to a reasonable volume of users so I applaud it for that.

Ed - I think Klout is providing a useful service to the marketplace. By being able to instantly see who is an influencer. It strips away many people who claim to be influential based on the amount of information they put up on certain topics rather than the quality of the content. I would like to see it mature, however think that to really mature more needs to be made available around how 'influence' is measured.

Chris - Yeah I think it's great that trying and there is no harm in trying to perfect something, but they shouldn't claim to have done so. This creates false realities in the influence measurement world and affects real life situations such as interviews etc when they really shouldn't

James - Sure, I admire it… but I also admire the fundamental idea of making everyone equal through communism – whether it works in real life is another story

8. What are you thoughts on having a public online influence score, and what are the professional and personal implications? If you choose not to make it public...why is that?

Greg - You have a choice to be on Klout. You also have a choice to have a LinkedIn profile. Employers use LinkedIn every day to search for who they want, so if that's becoming the norm, what's stopping employers from referencing a candidate's Klout score? Surely, it has to have relevance with the job you're applying for. I mean, interviewing to be a social media manager would have greater relevance for a candidate to have (or at least know about) a Klout score VS a receptionist. The only personal implications I could think of might be that your choice to remain anonymous online amongst certain forums is completely fair enough. The choice part of this is key. The "discrimination" of getting a job over someone else because you have a higher Klout, well, that's just how the cookie will crumble.

Oli - It's nothing new, friends, followers, connections, recommendations are all public influence metrics in themselves. The social web is a public place.

Ed - I would be an advocate for a public online influence score for industry professionals only. People should have the option to subscribe by choice to a measurement tool. Professional implications, could cause individuals to base their expertiese on a score that is not fully understand, how influential you are is not the same as being an expert in a field and this could allow persons with less expertiese to vioce opinions and have greater reach areas of debate where two persons are being challenged over their ideas around a particular topic.

Chris - The first thing is you shouldn't be able to hide your score if you have a public profile, that would be contradictory. I'm open about who I am online and don't mind being measured, personally it' has done me great justice, and has rewarded me beyond my dreams. This has also lead to me being in my current job. I do hope that companies don't rely on unreliable tools to taking this into account.

James - Whether I choose to have one or not, people will judge me on aesthetic looks. I think what’s important is to only care about what matters.

9. You read many different 'experts' thoughts on 'how to increase Klout score'. But, as with Google, Klout do not reveal the inner workings of their scoring algorithm. The weighting metric must be pretty challenging as how do you compare like for like (excuse the pun), when it's not necessarily apples for apples. I.E an action on one social network versus a different action on another.
As an online marketing professional, what are your thoughts on the factors important for a persons 'Klout', and also how should Klout weight interactions on multiple networks. (2nd point is pretty tough so can ignore if don't have an answer)

Greg - This is where I think people are trying to define something that shouldn't necessarily be defined right now. I believe Klout is so young in the game. It has a long way to go, but if they were to admit it is flawed in so many ways then journalists and marketing professionals like us would simply agree and move on to the next revolution of innovation. I think it's smart that Klout have kept their cards close to their chest. There must be many factors that Klout are working on that defines an engagement score, but I'd suggest this: Take a step back. Look at what Klout is trying to achieve overall.
Social influence = you + social engagement (Likes, Comments, Shares, @tweets, Retweets, Followers, Connections etc.). So, if you simply think about in order to generate a higher score, you need to increase social engagement in whatever way available to you.
Weighting on certain social networks is an interesting theory and a tough one to comment on. You could assume that by being connected to other influential people would imply that you are well connected and have a higher influence, but at this point it is just speculation. Maybe that will be revealed by Klout one day.

Oli - Depends how you define ‘Klout’ its open for interpretation. There are some who think it's about professional influence and I don’t think it is at all. The fact that for most people, most of their metric will be made up of social (in its traditional sense) interactions e.g. Facebook posts means its just general social influence, a bit like a measure of the earned media of your social interactions.

It would be a mistake to take it seriously as a measure of professional influence e.g. the stories you hear of employers looking at K scores that’s kind of like assessing a brands fundamental metrics based on the number of fans they have. I know plenty of very influential people who are not outwardly active in the social space and would likely have low K scores.

Ed - I think one of the key factors in Klouts measurement is frequency of conversation by an individual on one topic, it is not good enough just to spam information it is about regular conversation and engagement.

Chris - How much time do you have? This is a very broad questions and the simple answer is it varies from topic/theme to person. Some people don't blog but tweet with high authority etc. I do think that people engagement can be measured based on time it takes to do that engagement, for example someone doing a video review takes time, whilst writing down a review may take less time. Then again if I'm on the photography topic and all I do is write; is that better than sharing images?

James - In my opinion, the closest metric that you can choose is traffic but this doesn’t even provide a hint of how the person on the other side of the screen has perceived the message, blog, article, image, video, or whatever. Also just because Barack Obama will have a silly score on Klout (99 by the way), doesn’t mean I can trust him on the complexities of a Japanese tea ceremony.

10. Klout has received equal praise and criticism by marketing experts within Marketing, meaning there is very much a 'for' and 'against' debate amongst marketings elite. While some brands are jumping on board with Klout and targeting high scoring individuals with service upgrades and special offers, others are turning their noses up at it.

a) If you had to pick a camp, what would it be and why?

b) Can Klout or it's counterparts be ignored? If not Klout, would it not be someone else (think Kred etc)?

Greg - I'm with Klout for it's vision, but I'm reserved as to whether it will rule King of measuring social influence. Competition such as Kred has a lot of traction already, plus I think the idea of measuring social influence is a much bigger idea than a score from 1 - 100. The future of Klout-like services is the abolishment of Credit-check companies. I see Google attempting to take a chunk of this pie eventually with Google focusing more on relevance with context and community authority within their search results. LinkedIn will certainly join in from a professional level (I'm thinking Klout integration on LinkedIn profiles). And Facebook will do its own thing with the introduction of Facebook Money and the integration with banking data.

Oli - I always like to keep an open mind and as I said I think its an interesting concept. Your question relates to brands using it. In that respect as a marketer im always open to testing interesting new ways of reaching the people you want to reach. If I had a business need to reach social influencers and the metrics and money versus potential risks weighed up I’d test it. if it worked id keep using it, if it didn’t, id stop and re evaluate, simple.

As a user – again im keeping an open mind, more as an observer of a tool I could potentially utilize as a marketer. I would be really cautious about taking it too seriously in terms of a professional metric.

Ed - a) I would be 'for' this movement, as an industry professional I think it is important to understand that social / online marketing has only developed by developing ideas which can greater enhance message delivery, content and eventually improve CPA and ROI. Klout is still in it's infancy so the use for it can not be fully understood until it is explored further.

b) I think it can be ignored (in the sense that if someone really doesn't want to pay attention to something they won't), however feel strongly that it should not. Klout does have a use for the marketplace and for this reason if they were not investigating social influence measurement someone else would be.

Chris - a) I hate to sit on the fence but depends. Ultimately I guess I'm in the against camp because it's just not accurate enough.

b) As someone who works in Social Media and blogger engagement, we use a combination of many things, but ultimately we manual review and measure people based on context, content and timing. There is no full proof way to measure people at the moment. What I see as influential is very different to what some of clients see, which means we have to adapt and do it quickly

James - As you’ve probably guessed, against. I think there’s bigger developments to concentrate on during the current climate. If they develop a revolutionary system, I’m sure the public will take notice.

Conclusion:

Some very interesting and differing opinions came out form this exercise. If the majority is anything to go by from the above then more people are 'for' it (60:40), but as per the discussion, there is much more to it than that!

Using Klout is entirely up to you, what your (or your brands) objectives are, how much you rely on it, and your own self awareness about its flaws.

Here is my personal conclusion.
In my mind, the point is this. Love it or hate it, Klout is being used in the real world in education, recruitment, and business, and whether Klout goes or stays, in this digital era everything is becoming 'metricfied'. This includes the drive for a quantifiable online reputation metric.

It's not about you, and actually it's not actually about Klout, it never has been, not really. It's about online reputation. Not just your online reputation based upon where you want people to find you, or where people should find you (i.e your chosen networks), but both your collective and isolated reputation everywhere online. It's about a relatively young eco-system that has spawned from digital, pioneered by forward thinking people whose biggest asset is the data these cutting edge companies have accumulated. Get these online services to share and connect with one another, and you have a spider-web of data insights, plug into this data and we are a little closer to measuring online influence, where the likes of Klout and Kred dwell.

There is no doubt at all in my mind that Klout isn't without faults, to not measure key networks (such as WordPress) is a seriously big flaw; but a fixable flaw. Likewise, I don't think its algorithm is anyway near being fool proof, but I can't help admire Klouts mission. In my experience, whilst there are some excellent people in the marketing industry (this fine lot who have answered the questions in this post), like in any industry there are people both client and agency side that 'talk the talk' but really do not have the practical knowhow or real experience they would have you believe. In an industry where acronyms and buzzwords dominate the common tongue, I for one, welcome the measurement of social influence to help at least try and filter these people.

Can I / would I depend on Klout at the moment? Absolutely not. Would I use it as a guideline if employing someone? Yes. This is dependent on the specific role, but at a top level someone who works in online marketing should be active online. There is only so much knowledge that can be obtained from a textbook. People who really practice what they preach should naturally have a decent Klout. Is their Klout score 100% accurate representation of their actual online influence? No, almost definitely not as Klout does have flaws, but it is an indicator.

Klout or no Klout, online reputation/influence scoring is here to stay and despite what we want, people are always looking. You can't always control where they are looking, or the assumptions they are coming to. Will Klout be the king of the social influence metrics? I really don't know, but whether they are or not, they are one of the few companies that continue to pioneer it, and I find that fascinating for myself, and extremely opportunistic for brands.