Week 3: The Klout Experiment (The Not-So-Shocking Truth)

This week, I learned some (not-so) shocking truths that (somewhat) shattered my perceptions…

: Courtesy of blogger Meredith Soleau, of Life’s a Crazy Joke

Every week, I document my Klout Experiment: a vain and foolish attempt to match Sarah Palin’s Klout score of 72 by January 1, 2013.

Generally, you’ll find me nerding out about all things Social Media, but as a freelancer looking for full-time work in Social Media, reading recent articles on the importance of Klout and other social scoring tools in recruiting got me thinking about the ways in which we determine our influence and reach online.

Each week, I record the results of my Klout Experiment in a weekly social media engagement digest.

This digest includes:

My current Klout score
A rundown of my most “Influential Moments” from Klout
My Score Summary from Klout
My rate of activity – Posts/week

As we learned last week, my efforts to increase frequency across platforms proved ineffective, reducing my score to 60 from a glorious, glorious 61. You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone, folks.

And now, it appears that I’ve actually managed to damage my score further, as I’m left this week with a measly score of 59!!!

I spent much of this week like a day-trader who made the mistake of investing in RIM – looking at the numbers more than I needed to in some strange, superstitious hope that obsessive monitoring could somehow change my inevitable fate. And then, after short-circuiting my Macbook with bitter, bitter tears, I decided to re-consider the unfounded weight I’ve been placing on the importance of my score.

I may read my Klout Score like a personal stock, but unlike a day trader, I haven’t invested anything other than time. My score only reflects how many people decided to react to what I’ve always done and will continue to do: post original and curated content. Of course, research, monitoring, and excellent content might increase the odds that I get more reactions on a regular basis, but sometimes even experts miss the mark. And so what if my personal stock goes down a point? A reduction in my Klout Score won’t result in me losing a mortgage or taking a second job…

Still, after logging out of Klout and drying my tears this morning, I declared to myself in a totally rational manner:

“For the sake of the scientific process, I MUST KNOW WHAT WENT WRONG!”

“I’M A SCIENTIST (with a paintbrush), DAMNIT!”
Note: Sexiness of Mad Scientists May Vary

After about 4 minutes on Google, my scientific query was resolved. Meredith Soleau’s fantastically funny blog, Life’s a Crazy Joke, confirmed my suspicion that linking all of your accounts to Klout does nothing but decrease your overall score. If, like me, you’re active on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and not much else. Don’t bother adding Foursquare, Instagram, Tumblr, or anything else.

Last week, I made a concerted effort to tweet more from my professional account, which improved it’s representation in my Klout Summary (comprising 1% of my weekly activity) but decreased my overall score.

Discovering that linking multiple accounts only decreased my score was a big letdown because one of my mini-goals was to increase activity on my Twitter account; unfortunately, this seems to directly conflict with my overall goal of increasing my score.

So now I must ask myself a few questions:

Do I abandon my professional Twitter and link my personal one?
Do I focus only on Facebook from here on out, for the sake of my score?

I’ve decided that for the next week, I will stop splitting time between my personal and professional Twitter accounts. I will also disconnect all accounts with low-to-medium activity (Foursquare and WordPress). Hopefully this will help boost, or at least maintain my score.

Below is this week’s Klout Digest.

TODAY’S DIGEST:

Current Klout score: 59
“Influential Moments” this week (Nov 6 – Nov 13):

- Nov 7: Mentioned 5 new followers on Twitter: 1 engaged

- Nov 7: Mentioned a blog on Twitter, recieved @reply: 1 engaged

- Nov 7: Posted on Facebook friend’s all: 2 engaged

- Nov 7: Posted photo on Facebook: 3 engaged

- Nov 7: Posted link on Facebook: 4 engaged

- Nov 7: Posted status update on Facebook: 7 engaged

- Nov 9: Received an #FF mention on Twitter, replied and got RT’d by other mentioned accounts: 5 engaged

- Nov 9: Posted Why Klout and Kred Fail | Geoff Livingstons Blog on Facebook: 1 engaged

- Nov 9: Posted status update on Facebook: 6 Engaged

Score Summary: 95.9% Facebook (down from 98.5%), 4.1% Twitter (up from 1.5%)
Rate of Activity this week (Nov 6 – Nov 13):

- Facebook: 14 posts (up from 4 last week, down from 24 in week 1)

- Twitter: 21 tweets (pretty consistent with last week’s 24)

- Foursquare: 3 new check-ins (I’ll be disconnecting Foursquare from Klout. I don’t have enough activity to make a difference in my score)

- WordPress: 1 new blog post, shared on Twitter and Facebook. But no Klout love! Seeing as I only update WordPress twice a week, I’ll be disconnecting it as well.