- SAP Managed Tags:
Introduction
There is a lot of hype around social media influence scores and multiple firms have jumped on the wagon to be the “preferable” party to check one’s social media influence score. One of the most known one’s is Klout so I will take a look at Klout in this blog and I invite you all to read the blog and find out what Klout is about and if it’s important as a SAP Professional to be on Klout.
Klout score
Picture 1.1
As you can see in picture 1.1 I’m registered on Klout. At the moment of the screenshot I have been blogging and having conversations on twitter.
When I’m on vacation I try to limit playing around with my mobile devices as much as possible. I don’t need to constantly be online and I don’t even think it’s healthy to always be occupied with it either. I want to free my mind and enjoy the here and now with my family and friends. By doing so my Klout score tends to drop significantly during those periods. Being inactive during the weekend can even drop the score. It does dip for me as in the weekend I don’t spend much time on twitter or other social media either.
Klout tag
Picture 1.2
You get tagged depending on what type of influencer Klout believes you to be. In my case I’m tagged a Specialist which means according to Klout I share information focused around specific topics and I have highly-engaged audience. See picture 1.2 for the full text of a what Klout calls a Specialist. There are other tags like Networker, Broadcaster and Explorer which each have their own “explanation”.
Social Media and Klout
Picture 1.3
Does this mean the more activity on twitter the higher my Klout score gets? Yes, even to a significant extent. The Klout score is based on how often you are mentioned, how often your tweets get retweeted and so on. For me this also means that the Klout score can be off because generating a lot of noise on Social Media can also make Klout belief someone is influential.
Besides Twitter the Klout score also takes into account other Social Media. You can see in picture 1.2 the Social Media platforms which you can connect to Klout. From left to right: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, FoureSquare, YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr, Blogger, Last.fm and Flickr. The problem here is that connecting to YouTube and Blogger does not seem to work for a lot of people. I still didn’t manage to connect to those Social Media. Klout is supposed to be working on it but it has been like that for weeks already.
*update Google+ has also been added and it’s now possible to connect to Google+ as well
I’m most active on Twitter at the moment because for me it works best to follow what is going on in SAP land. Of course SCN is a also major factor in my quest for information about SAP. I only tend to use Facebook for family and friends and not really for business related content. I do comment now and then on LinkedIn or post a status update but I’m not that active on LinkedIn either.
I’m not really active on FoureSquare for the simple reason that I don’t travel a lot. I work a lot for the same customers at the same locations so I don’t really feel like signing in the same location each day. Seriously who is interested in reading that I’m at the same location each day? I don’t find it to have tremendous added value either but that is a different discussion.
Influence
Picture 1.4
What can you do about those wrong “influential about” topics?
When you hover over the topic you are supposed to be influential on you will notice a “x” button appearing. If you are sure you are not influential about a certain topic you can remove the topic from your influential about list. This will help the Klout algorithm system “learn” and it will actually enhance your topic list after some time.
I tweeted something on Kinect because of a SAP presentation on HANA that was using Kinect but I’m not influential about Kinect so I removed that topic from the list.
I have noticed however topics can reappear after some time so their algorithms are still not that great but I assume it’s still work in progress.
Influencer of
Picture 1.5
One of the more interesting features of Klout is the Influencer of section as you can see which persons you influence the most on Social Media. I have a great connection with Natascha Thomson and with the SAP Community so this list looks fine. It shows Natascha is into Social Media, nice score! Note that this is only a small portion of the list.
Should you sign up on Klout?
It’s certainly fun to have a Social Media influence score around but for me it’s not what matters. What matters most is the real connections I make. The number of persons I connect to through Social Media with who I write, talk, create, innovate, collaborate, share and so on. Those connections where you really get added value on both sides are the connections that matter.
SCN is an amazing community, it must be the most amazing community I have come across. The SCN team is doing a great job pulling people in, giving them a place to voice and the possibilities to connect and collaborate. I have a lot of respect for them. If it wasn’t for Marilyn Pratt’s encouraging words after one of my first blogs I might not have persisted to become an active community members. So once again a big thanks for all the wonderful persons and personalities who reside on SCN.
What is true is that some news sites are looking at Social Media influence. The Belgian ICT news site datanews.be published a list some time ago on the forty most influential people on Social Media related to ICT in Belgium. SAP Mentor Martin Gillet who is the only SAP Mentor in Belgium (that’s already amazing) was featured in the list. So your Klout score can help get your name out there.
SAP and Social Media influence
I was wondering if SAP takes into account Social Media influence so I did some research on Social Media and asked some questions to different persons to get a view on how important this is for a SAP professional.
Turns out it is not yet that important but it is possible SAP takes a look at your Social Media presence when you are looking to find a job at SAP. As we all know a lot of SAP’s employees are active on Social Media and so is the HR department who tweet new job opportunities and scan possible candidates.
If you aspire to go work for SAP you should look into using Social Media such as twitter to give you a minor advantage compared to other candidates. Some other companies also pay attention to your Social Media presence. I do believe it’s rather presence and not score so it’s not yet that relevant.
I was also wondering to what extent it would be important for SAP Mentor elections. For those who don’t know the SAP Mentor program. I’m a curious person, which I think is a good thing as you never know if you don’t ask. It turns out that Social Media influence is not that important to get chosen for SAP Mentor.
Importance of Social Media influence in the future
Your Social Media influence might become more important in the future but I don’t belief we are there yet. Social Media is still young and fresh and it still has to grow and mature. It’s also still a question mark if any of these companies can succeed in creating proper algorithms which can interpret the social media activity of users to a proper extent to have a meaningful scoring system. Would I sign up for Klout knowing what I know now? Sure why not. It is interesting to see which persons are engaging your social media presence .
To Klout or not to Klout?
Do I do an effort to up my Klout score? No I don’t believe in tweeting or posting to generate noise to up the score. I rather stick to what I have to say when I want to say it.
At this moment I don’t believe in the importance of a Social Media influence score but it might become a measurement in the future so knowing what it is and how is works might just be a good thing. As I like Social Media and I’m a curious person I enjoyed checking out Klout.
23 Comments
