Why your content matters: an examination of the Klout/Wahooly process.

As we continue to wait for the Wahooly creative team to put together their final touches on a project that we are all excited about. I thought I would take some time and examine an issue that seems to be problematic with the group as a whole.

“OH MY GOODNESS, MY KLOUT SCORE JUST TOOK IT IN THE TANK! WHAT DO I DO?”

While panic is the normal process for such a drop in Klout, it may not mean much at all.

Let’s look at what the Klout score really is. It’s a measure of your 90 DAY ACTIVITY! It’s not how special you are this moment, not how horrible you were 91 days ago, just a snapshot of your overall web presence.

Klout looks at  your Twitter retweets and mentions, your Facebook comments, wall-posts and likes, your LinkedIn comments and likes, your Foursquare tips, To_Do’s and Done’s and your Google + Comments, Reshares and +1′s. (1)

At this moment it DOES NOT measure Facebook Pages, Youtube, Instagram, Tumblr, Blogger, WordPress, Last.fm and Flickr at all. You could have the greatest followers in each and every one of those services and right now it won’t move your Klout score one one-thousandth of a point. At this time the algorithm does not measure them.

But Sean, I’m great in (one of the things that Klout doesn’t measure right now). That’s great. you will be one step ahead of the rest of us when Klout DOES put those in the algorithm. Keep doing what you are doing and success will follow you.

But Sean, I suck in (one of the things that Klout measures). No worries, you can help yourself out. I will say it till I am blue in the face but if you take one thing away from this document I want you to be repeating the words:

“My content will improve my Klout score.”

Yup, that’s the whole thing. Let’s say I have 1000 followers on Twitter, I don’t and I would love to have 1000 people following me, but I digress. If of the 1000 followers on twitter, I don’t put forth content that excites them , moves them or even makes them smile one of two things will happen. The old UNFOLLOW button gets checked, or they just scroll past my content when I do post.

From the Klout Understanding Klout page (1):

“Retweets, Likes, comments and other interactions on the social web are all signals of influence. However, just looking at the count of these actions does not tell the whole story of a person’s influence. It’s important to look at how much content a person creates compared to the amount of engagement they generate.”

So Klout examines not only how people interact with them but how much content a person creates.

So if I post once every thirty days, but that post is retweeted by each of my 1000 viewers, (my theory based on how I interpret their algorithm of which I have not seen) it is similar to a person you posts 1000 times and only gets 1 repost of each. I know you and I both don’t have the time to produce 1000 pieces of quality content in a ninety day period, but if we create 1 QUALITY piece every week and it has merit and value to the community it will be reposted by one friend who may have one of his friends repost it again.

So based on the way the Klout has their algorithm at this time, and it will change, content is king.

Let’s talk about the exchanging of +K’s.

Some people think that we are gaming the system. I disagree. “Klout users give each other over 50 thousand +Ks every day.”(2) If you truly believe a group of 400 of us, which may have 50 or so active members giving 10 +K’s a piece really changes the system. Put that in perspective. 50 people giving ALL 10 +K’s that we have is only 500+K’s. Which is 1% of the Klout given each day.

So are we truly gaming the system? If the percentage of the exchanging Klout would approach 20, 30% I would have to agree. But a maximum of the 1% of the entire Klout goes through our community. We are not like the Hunt Brothers attempting to corner the Silver market. (3) We are a group that has influence across the world in different categories.

But do we actually have influence? I say no.

“Top influencers are people that we have found to be the most influential based on their content. Top +K recipients shows the people who have received the most +Ks in a certain topic in the past 90 days.” (2)

Because of our efforts to make ourselves top influencers we’ve spent time exchanging +K’s in topics that are important to us. But we missed the key sentence.

Top influencers are people that we have found to be the most influential based on their content.

How do we get there? Again, be experts in our fields, talk about things that we know and have people retweet, comment, like etc. It doesn’t matter if we post likes and happy faces on the Wahooligan’s Private Group page.

KLOUT DOESN’T READ PRIVATE GROUP MESSAGES/ COMMENTS. We should be using the Wahooligan’s group to get people to examine our content where it IS being measured, on our Facebook, our Twitter, our Google + and allow them to see our interaction with our fellow Wahooligans.

As we as Wahooligans get stronger, our voices will be heard and we will get the yellow sashes that we deserve.

In that we will succeed. That strength will help Wahooly become the place for startups to go. People will say :

“Have you seen who back Wahooly, look at their Klout, look at all those yellow sashes,” well maybe they will, maybe they won’t. It’s about one thing only folks. Content. I’m going to be cross-posting on my personal blog and on my facebook page. If you found it worth reading then like it, retweet it. That’s the Thank You I request.

I remain available to talk to anyone and everyone of my fellow Wahooly and Wahooligans. We are a family and as intense as we are we can only gain strength if we work together.

Sean

(1) http://klout.com/#/understand/score

(2) http://klout.com/#/understand/topics

(3) Gwynne, S. C. (September 2001). “Bunker HUNT”. Texas Monthly (Austin, Texas, United States: Emmis Communications Corporation) 29 (9): p78.