(Image Source: http://forfreeblog.blogspot.com)

The surge of Social Media has led to an oft-joked-about side-effect. In addition to aggravating Nomophobia (the fear of being without one’s cellphone) and a general fear of being disconnected, Social Media has led to a rise in an unhealthy obsession with seeking validation. Sure, in theory, it’s great to have constructive feedback and it’s great to know your opinions matter, and that you do influence people around you. But aren’t we taking ourselves a little too seriously when we decide to keep measuring how much “influence” we have, just so our need for attention and self-importance is fulfilled? This is my primary pet peeve about Klout, and the narcissistic ‘Klout score’ metric.

I do get the relevance of such a metric and the need to measure social media influence for Brands and people whose livelihood depends on promoting themselves on social media. And I have to admit, as a marketer, Klout did pique my curiosity and I set about exploring its in’s and out’s with a lot of gusto. But I was quite disappointed when I realized there wasn’t too much science (or logic!) behind the metric, and that Klout can’t really be classified as a legit Validation metric. It’s really only a Vanity metric and an inaccurate one at that.

Klout has always relied on hazy parameters to measure influence, and their definition of Influence is, well, debatable, to say the least. They have a profound-ish explanation of what they mean by Influence on the site, and this little graphic below they’ve featured there is supposed to cover what Influence entails.

Klout “Influence” components
(Image source: http://klout.com/#/corp/what_is_klout)

As is obvious, this implied scope is completely partial to Twitter as Followers, Retweets etc are relevant to only Twitter. Question is, what happens then, to the content we share on other social media platforms? Shouldn’t there ideally be a way to take into account influence and interactions across all social platforms (including Pinterest) accurately? Also, going back to the image alongside, how do ‘Lists’ play a role in one’s Social Media Influence?? ‘Lists’ are just a convenient way for Twitter users to sort their feed. If I have 1,000 Lists on Twitter, how does it indicate my social influence? If anything, it indicates a degree of OCD in me, but I fail to see how having more Lists makes me more influential. Am I missing something here? If anyone knows of an actual relevance of ‘Lists’ to one’s Klout score, please feel free to leave a comment! (UPDATE: Vielen Dank to my fellow-blogger ladyfromhamburg for sharing some great information on this: The ‘Lists’ component of Klout’s definition of Influence shows the number of Lists one is a part of on Twitter. That sure makes more sense, and puts my Lists-related confusion to rest! Now if only Klout would take some inspiration and start decoding all these parameters and more on their site. :))

(Image source: http://www.colleendilen.com)

What further blurs the already fuzzy scheme of things, is the relative weightages assigned to the parameters used to define ‘Influence’. Shouldn’t Klout be a little more transparent about this, especially since it claims to be the “Standard of Influence” that is supposedly meant to empower people who share content online? Does the Klout score include sharing and amplification of content only? Then what is the relative importance of those respectively? For instance, basis what I noticed on my own Klout dashboard – Retweets and Replies seem to have a higher weightage than Mentions. Let me attempt decoding what that effectively means: Only if what you’re saying is being passed on, do you have influence. Okay, this could be partly true – but what about the other part of it where you also need to be listened to, to consider yourself as having some influence? What about all the new followers/subscribers/visits you add with every new piece of content you share? And what about the followers/subscribers you have retained over a period of time? Those people have chosen to stay connected with you as they see some value in it, and find your content interesting. Shouldn’t that account for something?

(Image source: http://www.theanimatedwoman.com)

And what about all the metrics that tell you how many people actually click on the links you share to read your content? Shouldn’t those influence your Klout score as well? As an apparent disclaimer, Klout says in its FAQs: “The Klout score is a reflection of Influence, not activity.” Err, this doesn’t help their case, does it?

Nevertheless, all the anti-Klout sentiment aside – there are a couple of things about Klout that I do find pretty interesting. First, their Brand Squad feature. This basically helps brands identify their influencers and evangelists. This has SO much potential; and if they are able to throw in Sentiment Analysis and Blog-searching capabilities in here, this could potentially be a great one-stop shop social media measurement tool for Brands – one that Klout can actually hope to make some revenues off of.

The second feature that shows promise is – the Perks tool. Of course, in its current form and with its current targeting algorithm (or maybe the lack thereof), it’s fairly useless. But think about the tremendous potential Klout’s ‘Perks’ has: It could serve as Klouts’s very own advertising model to serve targeted offers based on content, influencers and influential topics; as well as retargeted promotions/offers from Brands.

Even so, all the potential genius behind these tools notwithstanding, the fact that remains is – Klout still has a long way to go. Sure, a handful of Social Media mavens may already be judging us on the basis of our Klout score, but it’s going to take Klout a lot many enhancements before it can be taken seriously as an accurate social media metric and a reliable measure of actual social CLOUT, or it won’t be soon before long that Klout has to bow out! (Just couldn’t resist that cheesy rhyme!)