Influence is Not a Number

Oh goodie!!

brilliant!

I agree that Klout’s metrics seem flawed. If you have to gauge influence by number, I use Peerindex.com which offers much more (and accurate, relevant) detail. Check my Klout @ptaylor98 as well as my friend @vincenthunt, who is far more inluential than I am, and you’ll see the difference.

@Tinu “Not because I think I’m so great (I am. That’s just not the reason *brushes off shoulder* lol!).” I particularly like that part! :p

Re: Amazon, etc… exactly. I think what troubles a lot of us is the marketing of Klout as “the standard…” etc. when it really isn’t right now. Like you said in your post, I too want desperately to love Klout. I just can’t right now.

Brava! And thanks for quoting me. Hadn’t realized that you did that- catching up on my reading today. With Klout, it seems like there’s a couple of simple ways to include some online metrics that can show offline impact. You said, for instance, that your friend has written a benchmark publication on PR measurement. Seems like Amazon would have at least a hint of how much that book is referenced. They could even look at things like the number and quality of terms that come up for a person in Google. Where they’ve spoken. Reviews if they have a physical location they operate from — of course, none of them, again should be taken as an isolated number that represents the bottom line context of influence, that would be just as crazy as the status quo. It bugs me, too, that people far more brilliant than I aren’t showing up on some of these radars. Not because I think I’m so great (I am. That’s just not the reason *brushes off shoulder* lol!). But because it’s frustrating to have all this data available, and no truly superior tools to manage it.

@CyberlandGal A lot of those stats on my profile are wrong too. That I can give them a little leeway on, maybe it takes time to update the data. But not too much leeway, because some of those numbers have been static forever, especially things like list memberships, which are clearly way outdated.

“Again, I’m not bothered by my Klout score. I just don’t take it seriously.” Amen!

@JGoldsborough This comment is yet another example of your thoughtfulness and measured [sic] way of dealing with things, and why I think you’re awesome. @meganberry Justin is absolutely right – it’s not about any of you personally. It’s about how Klout is perceived, especially by people not willing to do the additional legwork required.

The one thing I have a slightly different perspective on is the way Klout markets itself, and that, as you’ve seen from quite a few of the comments, is the concern of many others as well, such as @jenzings . Why not market it for what it actually is? If and when Klout gets to the stage of truly being “the standard for online influence,” my guess is that all of us will applaud it for being that. But right now it’s not, so marketing it as such just doesn’t feel right.

Another problem with Klout is its stats measures appear wrong, making you doubt the credibility of the overall assessment. My Klout usually is between 49 and 53. I’m O.K. with that. I have a reasonable, but not huge, amount of followers. According to Klout, however, I have 100 list memberships. As you can see in my profile at @CyberlandGal, I actually have 291. Klout also says I have 250 total retweets, 100 unique messages retweeted, and have had a message retweeted 10 times. Just one of the posts on my blog (see http://www.eventuresincyberland.com/2011/03/7-ways-to-be-a-good-twitter-citizen-during-a-crisis) was retweeted 269 times and almost all 79 posts (except the early ones) have been retweeted at least once, usually a lot more. When you consider that less than 10% of my tweets link to my blog, you can see that those numbers don’t make sense. Also, I generally don’t read (or make any effort to read) the tweets of the people who supposedly influence me, except @Mashable. There are a few people, such as @Shonali, whose tweets I do check and retweet regularly. Why are they not listed as influencing me? I can’t figure it out. Again, I’m not bothered by my Klout score. I just don’t take it seriously.

a) Amen and b) I had to laugh because I clicked through to see the “new” Klout 2 days ago too, and then spent the time between then and now tweeting WAY more than usual at a conference. When I read how your score went up after some heavier-than-usual tweeting, I checked mine and–shocker–mine went up a point as well. Seriously? Because I tweeted a bunch of stuff from an ASAE marketing conference?

@meganberry Hi Megan :)

Does Klout measure anything beyond Twitter and Facebook? I think saying it measures influence “across the social web” may be a bit of a problem. Facebook and Twitter are important, no question, but there are so many other areas that are also important if not more so (blogs?).

It is ambitious what Klout is trying to do but I think people really struggle with the notion that it is even close to the standard for influence. In general I like Klout and find it useful at times but like many others I think it is more of a measure of activity than influence. I am sure you will get better and I am glad people like Shonali are raising these questions.

It’s great to see you weighing in.

Best,

Joe

@KenMueller Oh boy. Unleash the two of us on the unsuspecting world? Are they ready for us?! And I wish we weren’t “pundits.” The connotations of that word in English are completely different from Hindi!

@meganberry Hey, Megan, I really appreciate you stopping by and providing Klout’s point of view. Interesting clarification re: audience response… but it still seems weird. I can tell you that over the past 30 days, I certainly didn’t disappear from Twitter in any way (or Facebook, for that matter). There were some days when I tweeted less, and some when I tweeted more. But I was always around, and “talk” pretty regularly to people. Yesterday was an exceptionally heavy day on Twitter, and the coincidence just seems… more than a coincidence.

However, it really doesn’t seem that Klout is measuring influence across the social web, as you put it. Where is the evidence for that? I would really love to know, and I’m not being sarcastic. Seems to me (and I think @GautamGhosh made the same comment over at your blog) that rather than releasing a new dashboard right now – which is lovely – it would benefit us all if we could see actual evidence that there is more going into Klout scores than Twitter & Facebook.

That is where I think Traackr is way ahead of Klout, and again, I have no business relationship with them. In fact, I was very skeptical of their service initially, and only after being given a demo did I see what goes into it. We’d love that same clarity from Klout.

Of course a score is a useful metric, that’s why people use them. My concern, and that of many others who’ve commented/written about Klout in the past (and no doubt will do so in the future) is that because of how Klout positions itself – and you/your media relations folk are doing a really good job – they seem to be taken as the be-all and end-all.

Again, I really appreciate you stopping by and your courtesy. The few communications that I’ve had with you have always been very pleasant, and I do appreciate that.

@Shonali well, we have the exact same number, even though you seem to kick my little Stoltzfus up and down the block in most categories. We are apparently both “pundits”. Maybe you and I could get our own Sunday morning show on TV!

@KenMueller Let me know what you find, Smuckerdoodle.

@Shonali oooh. you’re good. I think you just made that up. Now I gotta go check your Klout number and see if you’re worthy of chillin’ in my noggin’

@KenMueller Ummm…. no. Because you invited me in in the first place. :p

@EricaAllison You’re the first person to catch the Trump reference. Gold star! And thank you. :)

@Betty_Zee Thanks! No, I don’t think Klout is terrible at all. But it’s not what it’s positioning itself as, either. That’s my major problem with it.

@MattLaCasse I don’t think Klout is trying to flatter folks per se. When you look at the different “categories” they put one in, they’ve done it in a smart way.

I do agree that they are trying to make sense of something everyone wants and could be very valuable. My concern with the way it seems to be structured right now is that 1) they bill themselves as the standard for online influence and as far as most of us can tell, that is not an accurate claim, 2) that people looking for a quick fix will take these numbers as is and do no further research, and 3) that such scores are starting to change the way people behave online, simply to get a higher score.

Never underestimate how influential YOU are, Matt!

Hi Shonali,

You are right about activity levels being weighted heavily by the (mostly) secret algorithm Klout uses. Maybe a month ago, for my own amusement, I spent an active day on Twitter questioning the Klout score. One of the tweets even went so far as to say, ‘my new influencer strategy…increase my Klout score by ripping the Klout score’. At one point someone from Klout jumped in the stream and accused me of trying to game the system. This made me laugh out loud. And guess what – my day of tweeting about the shortcomings of the Klout score increased my Klout score by a point. -Don B @Donbart

If you really want to show world dominance, next time run the graph w/ my Klout score………..if I even have one.

I want to hear about these secret FB groups; sounds intriguing.

I joke and wouldn’t know a Klout score from anything but I know the PR & marketing types use it as a mearuring tool to quantify their effectiveness. All I would add to that is, “did my revenues increase”? That’s my measurement tool. But with the ‘tools’ available this should help you be more efficient and effective with your efforts.

Finally, don’t look at your numbers to see who you reach out to; I might become totally invisible……….

Good info and just tried to add some levity; if your readers ask who that nut case is, tell ’em I’m your cousin from down south that just isn’t ‘quite right’.

Oh yeah, I volunteer for a Men Read’s program at the local elementary school. I have five 5th graders. One of the boys is Indian so I said “so, what did you think about the World Cup”. Boy did he get animated and was telling me his house was so full and jubilant he couldn’t even get upstairs because of all the celebrations. I’m telling, this cricket thing is making me look pretty smart…………:)

In some ways Klout can be a useful tool, but its really on using their numbers and putting them into a useful formula. For example if you are looking to see how many people a person’s Tweet will reach, multiply the true reach by their amplification (or thought on action or sharing as I was told by an employee) and you get how many people would act on said Tweet.

Problem is that it is creating yet another measure that you are relying on a veiled number that as you note has no open rhyme or reason as to why it increases. For it to be taken seriously, they need to define how the numbers are tabulated and how businesses can utilize them beyond a perk that is unrelated to the person’s interests.

But the new interface is very user friendly and sleek :)

Great post. Very enlightening. I like the fact that you are encouraging well-rounded research. It’s not that Klout is terrible, it’s that you need other measures to get the overall picture of influence.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Perhaps Klout is trying to flatter everyone right now simply because it feels it needs to so it can get a foothold in the SM marketplace. Still, I find it hard to believe I am more influential, or equally influential, as jgoldsborough @mikeschaffer @kdpaine and many others. I’d love to believe that, but there’s no way on earth it’s true.

I do think Klout is doing something important, and if they continue to refine their algorithms and can make its numbers more relevant and accurate it will become a MUCH more valuable tool.

@EvolveTom LOL. Hijack away! @GautamGhosh @kdpaine

@GautamGhosh Yup, @johnlovett mentioned that too. But they do the score thing as well, and I find their topic footprint is not always relevant.

@GautamGhosh Have you found anything valuable about EA? I’m genuinely curious. @Nakeva told me she uses it to manage her SM activity, so I have to talk more with her about that.

@Shonali @hackmanj Totally true. That’s really why we abandoned calling the EA share price a measure of influence. Who’s influential to you today may not be influential to you tomorrow… and even if they’re a super close friend, they may only be influential about, say, great places to get a sandwich; if I want a music recommendation, I’m influenced by someone entirely different. We’d need some ridiculously powerful computers (no, not even Watson is good enough) to make that sort of analysis. The best estimate would be having the ability to say, “who should I talk to if I wanted expert advice on cars and who’s available to answer my questions right now?” and get ranked results. But… eh. Not likely. :)

@Shonali If someone hasn’t connected their accounts to Empire Avenue, the only “value” we can get will be related to publicly-available data… for what it’s worth, this is pretty much the case for every measurement service out there. If you don’t authorize the app to connect to your network, it’s just going off follower numbers, activity, etc. So yeah, to really get any sort of accurate score, you have to actually connect the accounts to Empire Avenue; it takes our systems about a week to start generating scores for Facebook, for example, because we have to analyze how you actually use the platform. At that point, we can get some fairly good insight into the quality of your audience and how much others engage with you. It’s not a number to dwell on, though — with some work in the form of a little on-site networking, you can drive your share price up. It really just shows that you’re willing and able to connect with people. I wouldn’t cry if my share price dropped :)

Anyway… the “buying and selling” thing… tough one :). It’s just one of the messages we’ve used, and for now seems to… err… not not be working :). If we said, instead, that you can “invest in people you trust and respect,” would it seem less grimy? We’d used text like that in the past, but I think the word “invest” scared people away. As does “social stock market” — people see those terms and think it involves real money or they have to know about investing. We’ll keep playing around with copy until we’re really happy with it, but buying and selling does seem to rub some the wrong way.

@jenzings Exactly! That’s one of the things that drives me nuts!

Klout is a measure of online activity and interaction. That does not equal influence. Influence was, is, and will always be contextual.

If they would just call it an online activity measure, I’d simmer down a bit. But they don’t. Why not?

@hackmanj I guess I’ll have to be clearer in my writing, Joe. :p

There is such a desire for a quick fix. And IMHO, there just isn’t one.

@kdpaine Like I said, you’ve forgotten more than I will ever know, so they’re not simply kind words, they’re justified!

I have checked out Empire Avenue, and I’ve played it a couple of times. I see @EvolveTom has already clarified what they’re trying to do (thank you, Tom!). Frankly, I couldn’t see the point of it at first, and then when I tried it, I found it very addictive. So I’ve stopped for the moment, LOL. I need to play with it some more to see if I’ll find value in it.

@kdpaine Hmm. I’m not a fan of Empire Avenue. Just another game to distract people from real work and real interactions I think. What do you like about it?

@kdpaine Shonali, great post… Katie — we’re actually not even trying to measure “influence” because, as Shonali points out, influence is not a number. If I go to the hardware store looking for advice on which screws to use, the guy at Home Depot is a “100” in terms of influence… for about five minutes. Then he’s a 0 to me.

On Empire Avenue we’re hoping to measure “Network value.” Really, all that means is how engaged you are across the web, and how other people engage with you. It’s a good starting point for a PR rep to see who’d be a good potential target, but as with all of these tools, it’s just one part of the equation. Nothing beats the knowledge we accrue over years of hard work and relationship building. I know who I’m supposed to reach out to when I want to pitch a story. Or, if I don’t, I can use tools like Klout, Empire Avenue and others to find some potential targets… but then I still have to go check out their blog, read some tweets, etc. so I understand if they’re actually a good fit.

I do wish people would stop calling this stuff influence. It’s activity and engagement, nothing more.

Great post, as always. And thank you for all the kind words. Having seen your analysis and others, I don’ t think Klout is useful for anything at all. Have you checked out Empire Avenue? http://empireavenue.com/?t=sq05uc3k Shel Israwel seems to like it http://globalneighbourhoods.net/ and I have to say it is an intriguing way to measure influence, but maybe that’s because people haven’t yet figured out how to game it.