My Klout score is a steady 68. It’s a decent score that gets me swag once in a while. As a social media professional, I totally get what Klout’s about. I mean, when I do blogger or influencer outreach for clients, I do check out their Klout scores. Of course, it is not the sole measure of their influence or the only basis for a decision to invite them into a campaign or work with them.
There’s the fact that Klout scores can be gamed. It’s based on an algorithm, after all. So Klout can’t tell if you are in fact influencing your neighbors to buy product X over product Y or even if you are a nice person in real life.
For now, it’s what exists to measure social influence, however, arbitrary. Klout is a website and mobile app that analyzes your activity and engagement on social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram etc. There’s also Kred and PeerIndex.
So what if you are an influencer? Well, it used to be you got cool perks like free stuff and being the first to try something out or watch a movie that hadn’t been shown. Since then, the Klout perks have sort of become random swag that marketers want to test out in a focus group. You could be anybody really. It may look like you have influence online, but what about your influence in real life?
I blame the Kardashians. Kim, Khloe, Kourtney and the rest of ’em, who apparently have enough clout and cred to make loads of money, despite their lack of spelling skills.
