Klout is described (by Wikipedia) as “ a San Francisco-based company that provides social media analytics to measure a user’s influence across his or her social network. The analysis is done on data taken from sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google+, and measures the size of a person’s network, the content created, and purports to measure how other people interact with that content.”. There is a split between those people that believe that the Klout score is a significant factor in your influence generally, and those that believe the Klout score is irrelevant.
Now, it must be mentioned, before proceeding, that this score (and how it is calculated) is purely down to Klout’s own calculations and so the score they assign to you is just their own opinion.
HOW DOES KLOUT WORK?
Your Klout score is calculated using different factors associated with your account across 7 social networks, which are:
The
score itself is between 1 and 100, the higher the number, the better your score is. Various criteria are taken into consideration, such as the number of ‘retweets’ you receive, how many people ‘like’ your posts, interactions with others, the number of +1′s etc etc, in all there are over 400 indicators used by Klout to calculate the final score.
SHOUlD I KNOW AND CARE ABOUT MY SCORE?
Well, this is a matter of some debate. It has been reported that certain businesses are stating a minimum score on job vacancies, immediately ruling out applicants. While this score could have a bearing on applicants for certain roles, i.e.
Social Media or SEO positions, for jobs that are not largely conducted within the social arena, this score is irrelevant. It is also likely that while the applicant may well be highly qualified for the role, they may well have been operating under the company’s profile in the past and it is this online entity that has the high Klout score. If this is the case then will the potential employer allow an applicant to explain and prove this, or simply dismiss them before the interview stage?
Another factor to consider is that to obtain a really high Klout score would require a significant investment in time and effort, how much of this would be done during office hours (if the applicant knows and cares about their score)?
Klout does not appear to have the same influence in the UK that it has in the US, but is this just a matter of time and marketing? It was reported in 2012 that Microsoft has invested in Klout and will display a person’s score alongside search results in Bing (Microsoft’s search engine). With such an interest from one of the largest technology companies on the planet, it is likely that we will be hearing a lot more of Klout in the future.
Luckily (in my opinion) it is currently very uncommon for a business to request a minimum Klout score on a
vacancy. In most cases your online persona is not a key indicator of your ability to carry out and excel within a specific role.
In the vast majority of cases, the employer does not care about your Klout score, and probably has not even heard of Klout. Even if the concept was explained to your average employer, they would, in most cases, dismiss it as ‘just another social site amongst thousands’.
Until there is a universally agreed method for measuring an individual’s online influence I don’t believe that a ‘score’ given by one website can be taken too seriously, or as an accurate indication of someone’s ability to carry out a role.
