Klout and Social Scoring - What is all the fuss about?
November 20, 2011 by Martech Social
Klout, the leading social scoring tool has had a bumpy autumn. As the leading company offering social metrics, a Klout Score has rapidly become a badge of pride for consumers and a useful benchmark of consumer value to brands. However, attempts to improve over the autumn have left the value of a Klout score in some doubt.
The first hiccup was the introduction of topic scoring. The aim was to monitor a consumer's social activity to identify what key topics they talked about, allowing other Klout members to endorse this by offering +K's against certain topics. So, if we were actively talking about F1, and you felt we were knowledgeable you could give us a +K. However, the initial indexes of topics was a little off target incorrectly identifying topics including 'Unicorns'! Now the topic measurements are on target we now saw a new problem, the scores dropped.
Pre summer, our score was in the thirties but has since dropped to 15! Many consumers saw their scores drop in the summer, a typically quieter period, but expressed concern that the overall scoring was down. Like a currency, the Klout score had a value when it had found a level in the market that people accepted. A Klout score of 30 was OK, 60 was great. But when that 60 suddenly became a 30, questions were, rightly, asked. more..
These changes have rocked confidence in Klout and led some to renounce their Klout activity and for others to question their privacy record. more..
The social scoring landscape is around two years old and not yet 'mature'. The changes made by Klout will have been to help them grow to our mutual benefit. The daily chase for headlines, tweets, shares and clicks can sometimes amplify an issue out of all proportion. As part of growing up, we expect to see more bumps along the way.
Klout scores, along with scores from Peerindex and the soon to launch Kred have an important role to play in helping brands identify potential new customers or get a better understanding of their own social followers. As a standalone measure, Klout has little value, not now and not in the past, but as one of a set of metrics from which to plan, Klout still has an important role to play.