Everyone in the digital space seems to be writing about Klout all of a sudden, and for good reason: As “the standard of influence,” Klout has become digital marketers’ shiny object of the moment. Brands appear to be falling all over themselves to identify and reach out to “influencers,” in order to win over their thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, and even hundreds of thousands of followers.
Klout Perks – one of Klout’s smart endeavors to help brands reach out to influencers – has been the topic of my last two posts. If you missed them, the gist was essentially this: Klout, like most young tools, has tremendous potential but can only deliver so much. As an advertiser, it is still up to you to a) do your research, b) properly target the individuals or communities you aim to reach, and c) reach out to them in away that doesn’t seem lazy and self-serving. In other words, Klout is great, but it isn’t a magic bullet: You still have to take the time to learn how to shoot, and that doesn’t happen overnight.
This week’s posts touch on the same themes of getting past false assumptions and the operational laziness that so often accompanies the discovery of a misunderstood (and misapplied) new tool. This 3-part post is an elaboration on a comment left on Thomas Moradpour’s blog post on Klout and Influence, which did a pretty good job of illustrating some of the limitations of digital influence measurement as it exists today. To continue the discussion, I offer 3 simple bits of clarification, each one its own blog post. Today, we talk about specificity.
Clarification Number 1: Remember that Klout measures a very narrow bandwidth.
For now, Klout’s line of sight is extremely narrow – something Klout CEO Joe Fernandez has explained many times, most notably with the now famous Bieber vs. Obama example. Its measurement currently mostly touches on Twitter, Facebook (the latter may be somewhat limited by a less open API) and some piece of LinkedIn, as I understand it. That’s a pretty thin slice of the pie when you consider the breath of channels through which “influence” can be exerted and felt. This means that if Klout does indeed measure influence, it does so on only a few channels. To illustrate this point, let’s see what this would look like, say, on the entire electro magnetic spectrum:
See? Klout’s area of measurement is still pretty narrow when you consider all of the digital channels of influence, and even more so when you consider all non-digital channels of influence. (Thanks to the UCLA SCI/Art Nanolab blog for letting me butcher an otherwise perfectly scientific illustration, by the way.)
The lesson here is this: Use Klout as a tool to measure someone’s reach and potential influence (a more appropriate way to look at it, in my opinion) in places where Klout actually collects data. Do not, however, expect Klout (or any other tools) to provide insight into any channels it does not monitor or measure. If you understand a tool’s limitations, you also understand its strengths. Specificity of focus is good. Use it. Don’t try to stretch the effectiveness of a tool beyond its intended elasticity.
Cheers. (See, I kept it nice and short today.)
In Part 2 of this 3-part series, we will look at the depth of insights Klout has to offer beyond the notorious “Klout Score.”
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And if you haven’t already, don’t forget to pre-order Social Media ROI: Managing and Measuring Social Media Efforts in Your Organization (Que Biz-Tech / Pearson). Available for pre-order now on Amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble, and on the shelves next month at fine book sellers everywhere.
Brand Building and Online Marketing Blog 
Because it measures so little on the “spectrum of influence,” I think that its labeling as the standard of influence is completely outrageous.
That’s a good point, Steve. Clever Marketing, but a little misleading if the claim isn’t clarified a little better.
I actually quite like Klout as a personal profiling tool. It provides a nice framework to think about how you relate to the people in your network (along with how they view you). But does it measure influence? Not effectively enough for my liking (but in the absence of other, freely available tools, it wins hands down!)
Agreed. It’s a very good start. I would just like to see marketers appreciate it for what it is and what it will hopefully grow into, instead of making it out to be something it isn’t.
Cheers. 🙂
Isn’t the premise of Klout measurement – or all measurement for that matter – actually knowing what you want to measure. Sound simple and in the digital reform happening at this time, it is easy for someone who doesn’t grasp the big picture to actually have no idea what they are looking for. Hence, the “shiny object” Syndrome affecting most marketing people
Organizations/businesses actually have to comprehend what is occurring online/offline converging paradigm; They have to start paying attention to what makes sense for their own business model;
Meanwhile, this is a pretty cool article Mr Blanchard. Merci!
Words of wisdom that should be spoken in every conference room in North America. 🙂
Exactly. The problem isn’t Klout. The problem is people’s expectations for what it is and can do.
I don’t have an issue with the relatively narrow spectrum of influence that they can measure, for two reasons. First, much of the rest of the spectrum is difficult to calculate because there are few visible markers that can be used to reliably compare offline influence – especially in an instant. Anecdotally, sure. Ministers, Mary Kay salespeople, board members et al likely have more influence in their physical worlds than do others. But that can’t be reliably modeled and mined with a few keystrokes.
What can be mined is individual behavior, and the propensity for that behavior to reoccur, or occur within a cluster of similar behaviors. This is the root of old school, unsexy, but incredibly sophisticated direct marketing, as well as polling and public affairs. Birds of a feather and all that.
That’s the quandary for Klout. It’s not as if people go to Axciom or some sort of data company and say “hey you’re supposed to be so hot, why can’t you tell me which of my neighbors will have a great blog?” But yet in the same breath they expect Klout to bolt together incredibly immature data streams FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER and instantly have infallible moon and stars? Please.
I like Joe and the company, but this expectation issue is partially created by their “The Standard for Influence” tagline, which to me unnecessarily overstates their case by about 400%.
Yeah. I’m a bit torn because the tag-line is solid from a messaging standpoint, I like Klout on the whole, and Joe seems like a great guy. That said, the tag-line might be… too good. Not misleading if you understand the caveat (the narrow bandwidth), but kind of misleading if you aren’t aware of Klout’s channel specificity. Not to mention that the definition of “influence” assumed by the tag-line isn’t anywhere near rock solid. (See part 3 of this series.) To be fair, I’m not sure how else they could phrase their value proposition though. There comes a point where being too specific with a tag-line becomes ineffective and overly technical.
That said, I agree with your other point as well: The problem isn’t Klout. 1. The problem is with people’s expectations of what it can and cannot deliver. 2. The problem is also with marketing professionals who sell Klout to their clients as something more than what it really is. (It’s a lot easier to sell simple predictive “influence analytics” to brands with little savvy in the social space than it is to sell “insights into potential influence on a couple of social platforms.”) Not all of the shenanigans associated with the inflation of Klout’s real value to the business world is accidental or Klout’s fault. There’s a middle-layer of BS to blame here as well.
I’m pretty excited to watch how Klout will grow over the next couple of years, and how their dashboard will evolve. As for everyone who uses it, I hope that with time, they will come to understand its value a little better.
Cheers, man. Bought your book today. It’s on my list right after I finish Guy’s “Enchantment.”
Glad you picked up the book. I hope you dig it. By way of disclosure, we talk about Klout in the metrics section of The NOW Revolution. But not as a holy grail, but rather a better metric than something truly silly like follower counts.
You know its like any selection tool (cos’ thats how companies recruiting digital marketing agencies will use it) its just one metric to use! Like you say its not the be all and end all. And, frankly its all we have at the moment.
Give it time to use more channels and become more sophisticated. A new product doesn’t have to solve the problem immediately anymore. Launch and learn!!!
Thanks very much for this post.
Lout is like, the beginning of social media measurement, and I think it can be really useful.
On the other hand, it’s just a giant, internet weiner contest…. and I check it but I don’t let it affect me and my work. 🙂
I agree with comments here that Klout is one tool. You need multiple Influence scores from different measuring tools to measure your own success online just like the credit monitoring industry, where you have multiple credit scores to get a more accurate rating. On that note, here is another measuring tool called SocialIQ, you can find out your SocialIQ score at http://SocialIQ.co/, which has a totally different approach compared to Klout.
this is the nicest blog I every read, very interesting and useful we can get something to it, and applied in real life.