This week, Klout announced in a post on its company blog that it changed the way its scoring algorithm calculates online influence ratings. The blog post included a warning that some people would see their Klout scores go down, but most would see their Klout scores go up or stay the same. If the online buzz is to be believed, that warning was a bit nonchalant, and in fact, a lot of people saw their Klout scores go down after the change. As you might expect, they’re not happy about it.
Despite the initial negative reaction from people who had been working to build their Klout scores, the news of the algorithm change is actually a good thing because the new ranking should be more accurate. Of course, Authoritative Content publishers already know that by publishing quality content, they’ll weather the short-term ups and downs of the online environment and content industry. As a result, these types of ranking variations have little effect in the long-term for Authoritative Content publishers.
Depending on popularity scores is a mistake if your using content to build long-term, sustainable and organic growth. Unfortunately, that’s a mistake that too many businesses make every year — focusing on short-term tactics and ROI to bring in the business today with no strategic plan to sustain the business in the long-term.
Of course, scoring systems like Klout aren’t completely irrelevant. They provide a good starting point for finding people with large online audiences who trust those people. However, no marketing plan or business plan should rely on third-party scoring systems alone.
In the meantime, Klout is starting to see competitors enter the marketplace with sites like ProSkore targeting niche audiences (for ProSkore, the target audience is professionals) and using unique algorithms and tools to calculate influence. It’s safe to assume that we can expect to see even more competition in the “business of influence” in the near future, and as these tools come and go, one thing will stay the same — quality content and conversations is always the most important ingredient for long-term success.
I think that Klout is fine if you are a person who is influential in the media world but for 99% of the population (forgive the Occupy Wall St ref) this doesn’t matter as I truly only care about what people think within my own social networks. I have a site called Cliqsearch.com and we care about influential people in media in order to get coverage but the greatest benefit to our consumers and businesses, products and places that are on our site is to identify those ‘normal’ people who are the biggest influencers. My friend who has been to a restaurant or used a local service such as a contractor is infinitely more valuable to me than Robert Scoble suggesting the same thing.
I haven’t crunched the numbers but for the <1% of major influencers out there, how many people do they truly influence vs the influence that comes from their close ties in their social networks? My guess is that ultimately the opinion of the <1% doesn't influence much (lest say people such as Steve Jobs).
Interested in your thoughts.
Jason,
I completely agree with you. I’ve been in the marketing business for 20 years and one thing remains constant no matter what medium, shiny new tool, or audience you’re communicating with: consumers only care about how businesses can help them. The same rule applies to content and publishing. If you’re not publishing interesting, meaningful, and useful content for your target audience, no one will care about you. It’s about quality, not quantity, and that applies to both the content you publish and the connections you make across the Web.
Of course, people with big followings (i.e., the “influencers”) are useful in terms of getting your message in front of a large audience, but their usefulness comes in the form of reach and awareness. Bottom-line, a link from an influencer to a piece of your content is only as good as the piece of content.
In other words, for long-term, sustainable, and organic growth, I advise businesses and publishers to focus on quality content and relationships. It’s the people that you build quality relationships with who are going to advocate your brand and guard it against naysayers. Their loyalty and advocacy is more useful over time than a short-term bump in traffic that comes when an influencer retweets your blog post. With that said, building relationships with influencers can help you get the broadcast/mass media brand awareness and recognition that enables you to move through the steps of marketing success and brand building. (Read about those here).
My best advice — focus on quality content and relationships and supplement those core efforts with influencer relationship-building activities. Just as marketers diversify the media and messages they use to build awareness, recognition, trial, repurchase, loyalty, and word-of-mouth marketing, a diversified and integrated social media and content marketing strategy will yield the best long-term results.