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 11^th 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.