The Digital Conversationalist

Does Klout Have Clout?

I love Klout. I love the idea of it and know that – over time – it’s going to be a cracking part of our digital and professional lives. However, right now, it’s not great for me. The clash is I’m seeing Klout referenced more and more to measure a person’s influence in business (which includes whether someone is employable), but I am wondering if it is really an accurate reflection of a person’s clout today?

KloutA challenge I had recently was my Klout score actually went down by an average of seven points after taking on a full-time role. If anything, I thought it would have gone up – particularly as I’m working for a global company, engaging more broadly on social media, and sharing a lot of information which is gaining significantly more shares/retweets/etc… than when I worked for myself. Suffice to say, I definitely feel I have more ‘Klout’ these days.

But my challenge continues. At the moment, Klout measures my impact based on my personal Facebook page, one Twitter handle @AndreaTEdwards, my Google+ page and my LinkedIn page. With that said, it doesn’t appear to capture all of this activity and I don’t know how to change that… probably un-tech-savvy-me’s fault!

However, I also have:

  • Two additional Twitter handles
  • Three additional Facebook pages (along with my personal page)
  • Two WordPress blogs
  • One Blogger blog
  • A YouTube account
  • A slightly inactive SlideShare account
  • and I’m active on Pinterest

There are many more social channels people are active on (and I have more accounts I’m not active on) but of my 17 social media “assets” only four are being measured (to a certain extent) to ascertain my Klout. Therefore, it’s just not an accurate reflection of what I’m doing right now, which is a shame, because I’d love to know my real Klout score.

Of course, it takes a whole lot of effort for the developers working on the backend of Klout to integrate all of these channels – I get that – but I am definitely looking forward to the day it happens.

So right now I have to ask the question – is it a valuable measurement tool to ascertain a professionals’ clout? Maybe I’m just missing something? Would love to know your thoughts.

Cheers

Andrea

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