Social Media Influence – What's Your Klout Score?

We all know the importance of a good social media strategy to get businesses immersed in conversations with their clients, consumers, and customers. Social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter are huge with millions of people spending billions of minutes each month sharing their ideas, knowledge, recipes, pictures, etc.
Social media is part of our daily lives – personally and professionally. It is no longer cutting edge but mainstream. We look forward to seeing who is talking and what they are talking about. Social media is a good thing for us as a society – right? We need to be social and what better way to do that than on social media networks. We influence other’s people decisions with what we say – but what if there was the ability to measure how much we influence others?
A company called Klout has done just that. It has created a system to measure our influence in the social media arena. How this is done specifically is still somewhat of a mystery but what Klout has publicly stated on their website is this:

“The scores range from 1 to 100 with higher scores representing a wider and stronger sphere of influence. Klout uses over 35 variables on Facebook and Twitter to measure True Reach, Amplification Probability, and Network Score.”

So our social media influence is now defined by one single overall number. Is this a good or bad thing? To me, it seems to be both, with a stronger pull to the negative.
I love the fact that your social media influence is measurable. It is very useful data especially for our clients so we can show them a real hard number on successful (or unsuccessful) social media influence.
I find myself concentrating on all the negative possibilities as I see them.
You begin, following, retweeting, conversing, and all the other variables that decide your Klout score to people that really don’t fit into your business model or social media strategy. In other words, you stop being yourself and spending time with clients and customers and focus your attention on growing your Klout score. People will lose sight of the fact that a targeted community for your business is more advantageous than a Klout score.
The larger negative that has already started is big businesses are tapping in to Klout and are rewarding those with high Klout scores. Basically Klout has given businesses to the ability to discriminate based on your social media influence. There will be serious implications from this use.
Here are some business sectors using Klout to their advantage:

• Starbucks offers free coffee to select persons who have a large following and also mention coffee in most of their tweets.
• Klout Klubs or social reward programs.
• Virgin America gave away free flights to select tweeters last spring in order to generate online conversations about their newly opened Toronto route.Read more.
• Hotels are asking for your Twitter name to determine whether or not you can upgrade.
• Travel companies are now using Klout most influential tweeters on travel.
• Recruiters are looking at your Klout score in addition to your social media accounts.

Special treatment of select customers isn’t anything new (i.e.sponsors) but a Klout score affects every single person in the world who has a Twitter and Facebook account – from mom and dad to large corporations.
I wouldn’t be surprised if automakers and banks will look at your Klout score as a factor in applying for a loan. I wouldn’t be surprised either if colleges and universities start using Klout scores as a factor in applications. Forget the essay – what is your Klout score?
The List can go on and on.
We are in for an interesting ride…