Confession time: I love Twitter. I love how, as a nation/world, we can all be watching an event take place and act as mini-journalists. One thing I don’t like about the world of social media is something called the Klout score. If you’ve never heard of this, then good for you. That’s one less thing you have to keep up with.
I had no idea what this was until I clicked on my Twitter profile one day in HootSuite (my Twitter application) because I wanted to see how it looked to people. In a column beside the number of followers was something I’d never seen before: Klout. There was a number beneath it, too.
I was intrigued, so I did what any rational person does when they have a question nowadays: I googled it. I learned that Klout is a way of measuring someone’s influence, as in their clout. (See the play on words?) For example, if someone retweets you, then it goes up. If you get a ton of replies, then it goes up. One of the articles I read gave an example of how someone’s high Klout score had earned them some swag or something. (I think it was like a free t-shirt or something…funny what I’m impressed by these days.)
I became obsessed with checking it. I wanted my number to increase…my goal was 50 because that is supposed to be really good. Incidentally, the Biebs has the highest Klout of anyone with like a 99…I think it has something to do with how talented he is or something.
I became so focused on increasing a metric that my content suffered. I began to focus more on the influence than on writing good words. It was pathetic, and it was zapping my creativity.
Like anything, my interest in it decreased a little over time, and I started to make improvements, like only checking every other day.
Now, I’m working on not caring about that measurement at all. I don’t care as much if I get retweeted or replied to. Worrying about those things was just cramping my creativity, and I don’t have a lot to begin with.
Questions: Have you ever heard of Klout scores? What’s your take on them?
