What’s Your Klout Score? (And Why Do You Care?)

Klout … Isn’t that a Misspelling? Are you familiar with your Klout score? By the time you read this, Klout may be the next big thing, the next or . Or it may have faded into obscurity. But thinking about Klout brings attention to what motivates people, particularly the rewards that can drive behavior.

Klout has been around since 2008. It was started by Joe Fernandez as he was recovering from oral surgery that did not allow him to speak. He resorted to communicating via Facebook and other social networking services and, in doing so, began to think about how much people he was interacting with were influencing others. He started building logging data about people in his network into spreadsheets and developing algorithms that would convert their level of influence into a number, a “klout” score.

The Klout score is based on three major areas of influence:

✓ True reach -- the number of people that a person influences ✓ Amplification -- the degree to which a person’s opinions influence the opinions of others ✓ Network impact -- the degree of influence a person’s overall network has

According to Klout’s web site (klout.com), over 100 million people have been scored by Klout and the company analyzes 2.7 billion pieces of content and connections every day. Klout scores range from 0 to 100.

Does Klout have Clout? Why should you, or anyone else, care about the Klout score? Well, it depends on who you talk to. Many businesses are beginning to look their customers’ Klout scores and are

By Martin Ramsay, © 2012 Leaders Ought To Know™!page 1 using that information to decide how to treat them. For example, a hotel may decide to spontaneously upgrade a room for a high-scoring guest. Some customer service companies are including an analysis of Klout scores in their determination of how to respond to customer complaints. Presumably a complaint from a high-scoring customer might get swifter resolution than a complaint from a customers whose reach, amplification or impact is relatively small. There are well documented stories of people with high Klout scores receiving unsolicited perks and freebies in the mail.

Why would businesses care about Klout scores? Clearly because they believe that these influential people can help them build their brand via virtual word-of-mouth marketing in a way that cannot be achieved through traditional channels.

Klout has its detractors, of course. Not everyone wants to have their interactions reduced to a number. And some decry it as meaningless or manipulative. But the fact remains that a person’s score can influence everything from shopping discounts to job offers.

For today’s Learning Activity, however, let’s look at the motivation of the person who might desire a higher Klout score. What motivates a person to care about their score, or even motivates them to try to do things that would improve their score? Things that can improve a Klout score include having a large network of friends in social networking channels, Tweeting and blogging regularly about topics that are interesting (as evidenced, for example, by those thoughts being picked up and passed on by others), and developing relationships with other people who have high Klout scores. Clearly there are people who put a fair amount of effort into improving their Klout score -- but why? What’s their motivation?

Does Klout Reward and Punish? In this month’s video, Phil talked about B. F. Skinner’s work and his ideas about motivation having to do with rewards and punishment. Are there rewards attached to Klout scores that would shape an individual’s behavior, as Skinner suggests? Are there punishments? What are they?

Some possible positive motivators include: ✓ Better customer service or treatment ✓ Free products ✓ A sense of influence over others’ opinions ✓ Bragging rights

Some possible “punishments” for failure to keep a Klout score high might include: ✓ Poorer customer service ✓ Loss of influence ✓ Loss of esteem by others ✓ Scorn of peers

Can you think of others?

By Martin Ramsay, © 2012 Leaders Ought To Know™!page 2 While these positive and negative motivators are quite different from the food pellet a rat could earn from reaching the end of a maze or an electric shock that could result from a wrong term, do they have a similar effect? Is human behavior shaped in any significant way by the sometimes less-tangible rewards and punishments of the Klout score? What about some other behaviors, such as the quest to increasingly expand one’s LinkedIn network, Twitter followers, or Facebook friends?

The point is that intangible rewards and punishments, such as evidenced by a simple number available from the klout.com web site, can still powerfully shape individual’s behavior.

What’s my Klout at Work? Let’s turn our attention to your workplace. Do you see subtle rewards and punishments at work with your team? Just as the Klout score may seem capricious or silly, people are clearly motivated by the rewards they perceive may accrue from achieving a high ranking. What rewards do your people perceive may come their way if they engage in certain behavior? Don’t take things at face value; look beneath the surface for the kinds of subtle motivations that would drive a person to connect to hundred, even thousands, of LinkedIn colleagues or to tweet dozens of times each day.

Here are five things to do:

1. What do people perceive as rewards? Look for the less obvious things. We all expect pay and promotions to motivate people. But what other things do people value? You may find the answers in some surprising places. 2. What do people perceive as punishment? Again, look beneath the surface. The opportunity to be highlighted in front of the whole department may motivate some, but it may be viewed as punishment by others. 3. How are people motivated differently? Look at the members of your team. Can you spot something that might be a motivator to one, but a demotivator to someone else? Get to know your people individually! 4. How do people behave because of this? What things do they do to get more of their perceived rewards? What do they do to avoid getting anything they perceive as punishments? 5. What can you do to use this information? How can you change project assignments, job responsibilities, policies, or culture to link each person’s perceived rewards with what the organization needs your team to accomplish?

If you can do these five things, you’ll be well on your way to using B. F. Skinner’s theories in useful ways. And you won’t have to worry about your Klout score because you’ll already be so successful it won’t really matter!

By Martin Ramsay, © 2012 Leaders Ought To Know™!page 3