Tag: Klout.com

Another Case of Wondering

A couple of weeks ago my blog post (Sometimes I Have to Wonder ) was about some strange recommendations I got from Pinterest. As a follow-up to that, today’s post is about a similar experience I had on Amazon.com

Occasionally, I do a search for my vintage postcard book, The Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina on Amazon to see where it comes up in the search, to see how many copies remain and if Amazon is placing another order, and the fluctuating price.

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My book!

When I did that a few days ago, I was dumbfounded by the books that come up as “Sponsored products related to this item.” In case you haven’t been following my blog for several years, you might not know that in 2014 Arcadia Publishing published a vintage postcard book that I wrote. The title, The Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, pretty much says what a potential buyer can expect to find:  narrative built around vintage postcards from the mountains in western North Carolina.

The following is a list of the “Sponsored products related to this item” as listed by Amazon.com on December 4, 2017:

How to Mount Aconcagua: A Mostly Serious Guide to Climbing the Tallest Mountain Outside the Himalayas, by Jim Hodgson;

The Journey in Between: A Thru-Hiking Adventure on El Camino de Santiago, by Keith Foskett;

Coloring Books For Adults Volume 6: 40 Stress Relieving and Relaxing Patterns, Adult Coloring Book Series, by Coloring Craze.com;

Farthest North:  Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship “Fram” 1893-96 and of a Fifteen Months’ Sleigh Journey, by Dr. Nansen and Lieut. Johansen (1897);

Vagabonds in France, by Michael A. Barry; and

Adult Coloring Book: 30 Day of the Dead Coloring Pages, Dia De Los Muertos (Anti Stress Coloring Books for Grown-ups, by Coloring Craze.

That was just the first of three pages of “Sponsored products related to” The Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, by Janet Morrison.

Klout.com

Klout.com is a website that measures one’s activity on social media. I mentioned Klout.com in my April 13, 2017 blog post, K is for Klout.com.I understand that 50 is considered a good score on Klout.com. My all-time high score so far was attained on April 18, 2017:  45.31. Hmmm. Odd that I hit my all-time high score just five days after I blogged about Klout.com!

My score has now dropped to 42, so my goal of reaching 50 by the end of the end is highly unlikely. It will be interesting to see if my score increases this week after mentioning the website in today’s blog. There might be something fishy going on here.

My point in mentioning Klout.com today is because when I checked my score on December 8, the site reported that I was an expert on languages. I had to laugh.

I am a native speaker of English, and I neither speak nor write it correctly all the time. I studied Spanish 40+ years ago. I can count to three in French, although I doubt my pronunciation is correct and I’d be hard-pressed to spell those numbers correctly.

You get my drift. I am in no way an expert on languages. Several months ago, Klout.com reported that I was also an Excel expert. Thank you, Klout.com, for your vote of confidence, but I am in no way an expert on anything related to computers.

I think such things are determined by the use of algorithms. That’s all I need to know. I never did understand or like math.

Until my next blog post

If I can get my act together, next Monday I’ll blog about an interesting piece of local history.

I hope you have a good book to read. I’m reading at (yes, reading at) A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles. I keep checking it out of the public library when I have other books to read. I’m beginning to wonder if it’s just not the right time for me to read the book. It’s interesting, but obviously not holding my attention enough to make me drop everything else and read it. I think it’s me and not the book.

Shameless plug:  If you don’t have a good book to read, may I suggest you order The Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, by Janet Morrison. You might be able to arrange delivery before Christmas, if you hurry. You can order the electronic version and get it instantaneously, of course.

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Silas and Janet were equally excited the day “their” book arrived in July, 2014.

If you’re a writer, I hope you have quality writing time and I hope the algorithms used by Amazon.com are kinder to you than they are to me.

Hmmm. I wonder if I did a search for Adult Coloring Book:  30 Day Of The Dead Coloring Pages, would my postcard book would come up as a related item?

Janet

K is for Klout.com

No, that’s not misspelled.

Settling on a K-word

My mind works in mysterious ways. For about three weeks I’ve tried to think of a word that starts with a “K” that had something to do with writing for this the 11th day of the 2017 A to Z Blog Challenge. I was still pretty much at a loss until a few minutes ago. I wasn’t even thinking about the blog challenge or the letter “K” earlier tonight when I visited a website that I look at two or three times a month. The site begins with the letter “K,” but even as I bounced around on it I didn’t have that “aha moment.”

I left the site and went on my merry way to answer a few e-mails and Tweet my thanks to several people who started following me today on Twitter. In the midst of that, my subconscious mind kicked in and said, “Wake up, Janet! You can write about Klout.com!”

I learned about Klout last September, when I got serious about having a brand and a social media presence as a writer. The website has a way to measure one’s influence on social media. I understand they use an algorithm to do this. (Algorithms are above my pay grade, so I’ll just leave it at that.)

A little explanation of Klout.com

Klout looks at how many social networks a person is active in and then gives a score of 1 to 100. You can imagine how daunting it was on September 19, 2016 when I checked my score on Klout for the first time and discovered I had a 10.

Klout immediately became a great tool for me. It gave me added incentive to be more active on social media in order to improve my score. I read that an average Klout score is 40. A score of 50 or above is considered very good. A score above 63 is fantastic. Only five percent of users score 63 or above.

Starting off at 10 points, I had my work cut out for me. Those of you who have been following my blog since last September know that I have complained and struggled and complained some more about social media. It’s not my favorite endeavor and I feel like it consumes too much of my time. I’m trying to hang in there, though, and it is getting a little easier with time and practice.

My results

It has been gratifying to see my efforts pay off. My Klout score rose to 16 by the end of September and 32 by the end of October. It was surprising how much my Klout score encouraged me to keep working at it.

By early December I reached and then surpassed the average score of 40 by three points. My score has held steady between 42 and 45 since then. Klout has proclaimed me to be an expert in writing and in reading. That’s laughable, but I’ll take it.

In conclusion

It costs nothing to sign up for Klout.com. It has mixed reviews online. There are certainly other analytics services that get more into the nitty-gritty of measuring the impact or influence one is having on social media. For a service that is free, though, I can vouch for the fact that it has provided positive feedback to me since last September – feedback that pushed me to make a conscious effort every day to keep working on my social media skills.

Until my next blog post

I hope you have a good book to read. If you’re a writer, I hope you have quality writing time.

Janet

Disclaimer:  I am getting nothing from Klout.com for writing about the website.