It’s highly like you’ve heard of Klout, but if not, here’s a quick word on what they do from a post tilted “Thoughts on Klout and Psychology” by Peter Shankman.
“For those living under a half-mile of earth for the past 69 days, Klout is making quite a stir lately, as the company that’s assigning each user of social media (Twitter, Facebook, and the like) a “score” to determine their influence in the online world.
The more you engage, the more people find you interesting enough to respond, repost, or retweet your information, the higher your Klout score will go.
Essentially, Klout is using various algorithms to determine your relevant worth in the online world.”
Out of curiosity I recently did a little test to see how RT’s impacted a Klout score. Specifically, I ran a little contest that prompted people to RT something I tweeted. The goal was to:
- See if a contest with minimal reward would work (Amplify the reward and audience and it’s valuable for a brand)
- See how it impacted my Klout score.
The tweet seen below is what I sent to prompt the little contest.
Then, three days later I sent the following tweet to the winner.
The contest was only promoted with four tweets – not exactly mass promotion and the end result was 69 RT’s and according to the chart below, an increase in Klout.
At the end of the contest the RT’s did in fact have a positive impact to my Klout score.
Do I care?
Sure, it’s cool to see the dots go up and down (primarily up), but I don’t get overly wrapped up in yet again… another social media version of the popularity contest.
If I were prepping a brand campaign and looking for influencers, the answer to “Do I care?” would be much different.
