@joanmuschampfagnani

My .02? Klout is a joke.

It’s the fantasy football of social media, and that’s not meant as a compliment. Sure, it might be good for bragging purposes, or distracting you from your real purpose, but as a business tool it’s terrible.

Just the other day, a guy I know who is awful as far as social media goes was bragging that he had a 69 in Klout. This is a guy who’s been kicked off Twitter multiple times for spamming people and adds nothing to the conversation.

That just cemented what I already knew in my heart: Klout is just too easy to game.

(However, I do appreciate the two unsolicited Subway coupons they’ve sent me! Love that Sweet Onion Chicken on flat bread.)

Even if Klout were an accurate measure of your online clout, it would be like pursuing happiness: you can’t be happy when you pursue happiness, you can only be happy when you pursue your dreams and passions.

Forget about Klout and focus on bringing value to your audience and everything else will fall into place.

Rich

I have never been able to figure out exactly how they determined your Klout score.  I thought it was interesting that people could then rate you in Klout and boost your score.  It seems like you could just contact all your friends and ask them to boost your ratings.

I don’t worry about Klout.  I focus more on RTs, @ conversations and the like.  I think we all know how we are doing based on our interactions.

@valeriejoydeveza @lisaschulteis @joanmuschampfagnani

RTs, @s, and google analytics are all helpful.

Of course, as a small business owner, the most important numbers appear in either red or black.

I love social media, and I’d use it even if it didn’t help my business, but when I’m wearing my small business hat I’m focused on increasing my online visibility, driving more qualified traffic to my site, and then converting that traffic into leads and sales.

Klout doesn’t figure into that equation. Hope that helps!

@joanmuschampfagnani,

In my opinion, no one should worry about their Klout score – person or business.  Jure Klepic (@jkcallas) & Pam Moore (@PamMktgNut) have both written excellent articles on this.

When my Klout score goes down when I’m more social, there is not much more to say.

I’ve been impressed with what Kred has to offer – They are new and just letting the world see what they are all about.  I sat in on a Tweetchat where someone from Kred was the guest, and they intend to bring offline activities into their valuation (I wonder how they’ll accomplish that).

Mainly, if you are seeing engagement and no one is sending you negative remarks, all is well.  Google analytics and other platform insights, as others above mentioned, help to gauge too.

Hope that helps.

~Keri

I am just so pleased to see this thread as I have very similar thoughts to all that has been shared here re Klout. As a remote Thai village business we rely on business social media for our on-going success and Klout scores has always a real mystery to me!

@connectyou @rich-brooks I find your comments very meaningful. When I started using klout within 15 days my score was @40! I was like woww! Then when I seriously started to be more social my score kept goin down!  I don’t understand how they manage to calculate the score? Klout’s the mystery to me as well!

I have always been confused about Klout.  It never made sense to me. My score was up close to 80 right before harvest.  During harvest I was not able to be as active on twitter, facebook or linkedin and my score fell to around 49.  Go figure.  But am I still a good influencer? You bet.  This is a blog I posted about Klout…

http://passaggiowines.wordpress.com/

I like klout, but I don’t trust it for business. But I don’t like any of this tools to measure my “social media score”. They simply don’t work. And the proof was on NY Times:

“Largely unknown in the English-speaking world, the Brazilian comedian Rafinha Bastos recently was named as the most influential person on Twitter. ”

He said in an interview some months ago how he became the most influential person on Twitter: He just deleted his Twitter updates without (or with too few) RTs. So, he fooled the tool used to measure his influence.
If this is true or not, I don’t know. I don’t know how the tool used for NY Times works. But it shows we don’t have a good tool to measure that. Yet.

Listen to the interview (in portuguese): http://jovemnerd.ig.com.br/nerdcast/nerdcast-264-nerdcast-em-pe-com-rafinha-bastos/

The only “klout” I’m concentrating on is the klout from existing customers and new and potential customers. The “klout” might be significant for a big business but as a small business owner we have too many other fundamental things to worry about.

@mandyedwards  LOL!  that’s  funny!

@hemantpatil,

Sorry to keep you waiting for my reply.

I too have experienced the same where my klout score goes down the more I am social.  In short, I really don’t pay too much attention to it anymore.

When people give me +Ks, I do thank them, and I do appreciate it.  l do take the time to give +Ks to those that display good practices in the various categories.  But I view it as a way to exchange appreciation and acknowledgement.

So great to talk about this with you!

~Keri

@joanmuschampfagnani

What a small business should be worried about is sales and profits.  Your customers couldn’t care less about your Klout score. 

Think about it.  Do you choose your vendors through their Klout score?

Doesn’t seem the Klout has much klout, but then again I could be wrong. 

I use it. it seems unstable. I don’t stress about it.

I use it. I do not swear by it, and I am not terribly upset when my score goes down. People like to measure things by numbers in this world.