This week I contributed a post to the Independent Fashion Blogger's website regarding the changes Klout has enacted on it's scoring algorithm. I thought this was such a relevant issue that I've decided to post it here today.
Last week, Klout stunned users by announcing big changes to its scoring algorithm. According to Klout, these changes represent the biggest step forward in accuracy, transparency and our technology in Klout’s history. The changes, earlier described by Klout CEO Joe Fernandez as a "the biggest improvement to the Klout Score in our history" are likely to aggravate many who use the service.
A Klout score is based on how many people you influence, how much you influence them, and how influential they are. For those of you unfamiliar with Klout, it’s a sort of online ranking system that aims to determine how influential people are by measuring their social reach. It uses information from your Twitter feed, Facebook, LinkedIn and 35 other signals to give you an overall score and graphs that plot just how influential you are online. It is impossible to know how Klout generates its scores, because the company keeps their algorithms a secret, which Klout does for competitive reasons.
The biggest change to the Klout scoring algorithm is that is that scores will now be easier to understand. But unofficially, many have seen their scores fall – in some cases significantly. Although Klout denied that this would be the case on their blog, stating that "a majority of users will see their scores stay the same or go up but some users will see a drop”, many have seen their score decrease by as much as twenty points. The backlash was so bad that a #OccupyKlout movement got off the ground on Twitter.
Here’s the good news: A number that was formulated by an algorithm doesn't directly change how you're able to engage with others or the way people respond to you over social media. My score fell 9 full points from 67 to 58, which was enough to take me out of the "Pundit" category and classify me as a "Broadcaster" instead. Truthfully, both of those categories are meaningless to me, because they don’t take into account whether I’m smart, or creative, or create content that affects my blog readers. My score is strictly a measurement of how strongly I am heard on certain social media sites. It doesn’t measure the relationships I have with my blog commenters. It doesn’t care about the informative YouTube tutorials I tweeted, because YouTube isn’t a category Klout chooses to measure my influence with. It ignores the real connections I have with people – the emails, phone calls, direct messages and face-to-face meetups. Klout scores are only important if you decide that a large arbitrary figure has anything to do with how relevant or successful you really are.
While Klout might still be valuable to small business owners eager to promote their services, and those who make quick judgments of people who produce online content, it isn’t the only measurement of connection. Focus more on responding to blog comments, community meetups, and email communication, rather than an arbitrary number. And don’t let a number define your social media presence.
Are you aware of your Klout score? Do you use the Klout service to gauge your social media presence?
However, once this post was published, I immediately had regrets. You see, I make conscious efforts to avoid mentioning personal details about my children and husband on this blog. First of all, keeping the focus on fashion, beauty, and body image leaves little room for charming anecdotes and tedious whining about my life as a mom and wife. Secondly, I enjoy the idea that this blog focuses on topics that I truly enjoy writing, that challenge me and encourage intelligent debate.
But even more crucially, I don't want to categorize myself as a "mommy blogger." (Edited to add: Not that there's anything wrong with being one, of course!) Before I even started blogging, I thought about what my target audience would be, and decided that leaving my family life out would be the most consistent method to both defining my focus and drawing in the kind of readers I wanted to reach. This unfortunately meant that some prospective readers might be excluded. This is not the place to find recipes, or advice on parenting, or crafty DIY's, and potential readers looking for posts on those topics might be disappointed not to find them here.
It's more important that ever for bloggers to become aware of their social media footprint and view their online presence as an archive. At the end of this year, there will be over one billion people on social networking sites. Forty eight hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. Two hundred million Tweets are sent out every minute. And the average Facebook user posts 90 pieces of content each month. In years past, our parents took photos and left then to collect dust in a storage box or wilt in albums. Today, when we maintain an active social media presence, we are creating a veritable digital archive that is going to exist in the internet "cloud" indefinitely. Our virtual personality, comprised of status updates, check-in on Foursquare, tweets and connections, is one that has infinite reach.I was watching a Ted talk from Adam Ostrow on this very topic, and it got me thinking about my own virtual personality. How do I want people to think of me? What archive do I want to create? While Adam goes one step further and discusses how people will judge us after we die, based on the social media presence we created while alive, I'm curious as to the effects my virtual personality has on the immediate future.
Tomorrow I am headed to NYC, to attend the Independent Fashion Bloggers Evolving Influence Conference. Frankly, I'm scared to death. While I might appear confident and strong in these posts, large social gatherings really aren't in my comfort zone. I'll be meeting people I've only "met" online - people I consider both friends and role models. There's also added pressure to look my best (a lot of pressure.) But I take some relief in the knowledge that I have a consistent social media personality that is a true snapshot of who I really am, and what's important to me as a blogger.
How can you develop an accurate social media snapshot of who you are, and an archive that best represents you? Here are some suggestions:- Be consistent: There are few things more confusing to followers that seeing you behave one way on your blog, and another on Facebook and Twitter. Being snide, gossipy and confrontational on Twitter, but kind and generous on your blog, can damage your virtual reputation and cause you to alienate the followers you do have.
- Know your target audience: Defining who your target audience not only helps you stay focused on the topics you most want to blog about, but also assists in the creation of the virtual personality you want to present. When people do a search for both you and your blog, what do you want them to see? Who do you want to reach?
- View your social media presence as a virtual resume: Keep profanity, highly personal matters, confrontations, and political or religious rants (unless you are running a political or religious blog) off your social networks. Twitter is not the place to vent about your abusive parents, or that your roommate enjoys clipping her toenails in bed. In addition, complaining or being rude online makes you look petty.
Now I ask you: How much attention do you pay to your social media presence? What do you believe your social archive says about you? What target audience are you looking to reach? What do you consider social media no-no's? Are there things you purposely keep off your blog?In case you missed it: - Like this post? PLEASE take a minute and vote for me in the CBS DFW Most Valuable Blogger Awards - I'm a finalist! You can vote for me once a day, every day, until September 9th!
Then I started a blog, and was drawn into a vast world of social media. I discovered Twitter, and quickly learned how to increase my blog traffic through tweets with post links. Then I created a separate professional Facebook account. From there, it was a hop, skip and a jump into Klout...which led me to Pinterest...followed by Instagram, Hootsuite, Google+, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Tribber, and Faveous. (You can look for me on all of them.) And now I am officially a social media addict. My iPad accompanies me wherever I go. I get visibly twitchy when the battery level on my phone dips below 40%. In addition to blogging, my hobbies including sending out friend requests, checking in, and having anxiety attacks that I'm not doing enough to maintain my social media presence.
As I'm drawn more into the world of blogging, I feel a relentless pressure to join the newest networks. According to Nielsen, social networking is now the most popular online activity, ahead of sending e-mails, searching the Internet and playing games. One in every four-and-a-half minutes spent on the Web is spent on a social networking site or blog. And last year the average visitor spent 66 percent more time on such sites than in 2009, when early adopters were already feeling digitally burnt out.
The New York Times recently examined this trend, which they dubbed "digital fatigue." But as far back as 2008, Scientific American Mind magazine examined the increasing digital fatigue we are facing as a result of always being plugged into technology. According to a study conducted by the article's authors, our neural circuitry actually becomes rewired as we become more reliant on social media.
After only five consecutive days of internet use (one hour/day), subjects newly introduced to the internet rewired their brains to match those of the computer-savvy subjects in the study. While the adaption of our brains to optimize internet use might sound enticing, the study warned that this rewiring forces us into a state of "continuous partial attention", in which we're keeping tabs on everything, while never truly focusing on anything.
The result? A condition called "techno-brain burnout", where people place their brain in a heightened state of stress through the continuous partial attention to anything and everything. Because our brains were not built to sustain this level of stress, "techno-brain burnout" (or digital fatigue) threatens to become epidemic. Some side effects of digital fatigue include reduced attention span, anxiety, digestive problems, and insomnia. Clearly, this is a very real problem.
So how can a social media savvy blogger avoid digital burnout while still maintaining an active online presence? Here are some tips:- Set a strict amount of allotted hours for internet usage: There is no doubt that forcing yourself to spend time away from the computer will help reduce digital fatigue. The simple act of unplugging your computer and relocating it into a different room is effective at reducing internet usage.
- Link accounts (which is possible with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google +): This strategy makes it possible to communicate one message across multiple platforms simultaneously.
- Use Internet management software: Software such as Freedom restricts internet usage for a certain amount of time, and can help set limits on the amount of minutes spent on your computer.
- Wean down your follower list: This technique has proven to be hugely successful at managing social media stress. I am in the process of cutting down my followers on Twitter and Facebook, and already feel less anxious when scrolling through my feed.
- Use syndication tools: Applications such as Ping and Hootsuite help reduce the amount of time spent on social media.
As a blogger, how reliant are you on social media tools? Which ones do you use? Do you ever feel "left out" in regards on maintaining an active online presence? How many hours a day do you spend on the internet? Do you feel a sense of anxiety when you're away from your computer? Do you have any advice for those looking to avoid social media burnout?
