Is that your Klout Score or your Shoe Size?
It all comes down to influence. Klout’s site states, “Influence is the ability to drive action. Influence is when you share something on social media or in real life and people respond. The more influential you are, the higher your Klout score.” Your Klout score is a number between 1 and 100 that represents how influential you are on social media. You can check your Klout score on Klout.com.
The ever-rising popularity of social media is what makes Klout scores more and more important. To those not connected to the social media world, this can sound pretty silly. But this is now the way we share, communicate and network. Assigning a value to those actions is actually pretty genius. Influence has become increasingly important. Klout’s gauge of that influence can be very helpful to those in the HR world. What’s in a Klout score?
The ability to drive action
Connections aren’t the only mark of influence. Klout puts more weight in how people engage with the information that you share. Klout believes that it is better to have a smaller audience that is optimally engaged rather than a huge audience that doesn’t engage in your content.
Klout evolves with social media
Social media is here to stay and it changes and grows every day. Therefore, the measurement of engagement should adapt. Klout boasts an evolving process for measurement to keep up with the changes of social networks and the ways in which people engage.
Influence is built over time
Because Klout is so invested in the vetting process, it takes time to build your score. When you sign up to see your score, Klout uses your social media engagement over the last 90 days. This ensures that you can’t log on, like 10,000 people and boast a score of 90. Klout’s method ensures that those with high scores have actually done the work to be an influencer.
Active and influential are not the same
Again, Klout puts stake into their vetting process. That’s why their scores are being taken so seriously. According to Klout, there is a huge difference between active and influential, the latter of which will get you a higher score. “Posting a thousand times and getting zero responses is not as influential as posting once and getting a thousand responses. It isn’t about how much someone talks, but about how many people listen and respond.”
A high Klout score doesn’t automatically make you a “somebody”. In fact, very few people will actually care about your impressive score. But for HR purposes, this score can mean a lot. Your score, like your resume, or an interview, acts as a snap shot of information about you. Recruiters and hiring managers can quickly assess how influential you are in your online communities. A high score means that you can drive action, build a network, and influence that network. Depending on what career field you are in, all of those things can be very important in the selection process.