The pitfalls of chasing Klout in higher education

Some colleges have moved away from Klout-based social media strategies.

As tempting as it might be to have one super metric that allows you to go to your bosses and show how successful your brilliant social media strategy has been, please do us all a favor and resist the impulse—especially if the metric you’re going to choose is Klout.

It seems like a fine enough idea in theory: one score that ranks how successful you are at engaging with your audience across multiple platforms, but in practice it promises one thing and delivers something much less useful, more opaque and occasionally even annoying.

First, you aren’t the user of Klout. You’re the product being sold by Klout to marketers. Advertisers and brands covet so-called influencers, people who will tweet, tumbl, or post to Facebook about the fantastic Klout Perks they’ve been given and therefore spread the word about a product much more cheaply and effectively than display advertising.…Read More

For colleges, social media ‘Klout’ isn’t everything

Some colleges are turning away from Klout.

A blitz of retweets and Facebook likes can be a nice boost for a college’s social media presence, but measuring success with the popular Klout score could give schools a false read of their Twitter and Facebook influence.

Research published this week by Inigral, creator of private social networks for colleges and universities, urges campus social media decision makers to look beyond the school’s Klout score, an analytical measurement of a person, company, or campus’s influence across the most popular social sites: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare, and Google+.

The Klout scale ranges from 1 to 100, with media superstars like Lady Gaga and Justin Beiber reaching the upper echelons of the Klout rankings.…Read More

10 colleges with Klout

Lately, I’ve been distracted by something that pops up on my Hootsuite account called “Klout” says Daniel de Vise, Washington Post columnist. Klout purports to be the “Standard for Influence” on Twitter, that vast database of 140-character aphorisms. It is a 1-to-100 score that rates “your ability to drive action” with your tweets. My Klout score hovers around 46. Justin Bieber has a Klout score of 98. Nuff said. No, this particular usage of “Klout” does not pass the Royko test, and it is perhaps a good thing he is not here to see it propagate…

Click here for the full story

…Read More

List names Top 10 most influential campuses on Twitter

About half of faculty members say they don't know how to use Twitter.

Stanford University was named the most influential Twitter feed in higher education, according to a ranking of campuses’ Twitter activity that shows which schools best use the microblogging website considered a key component to college outreach.

Klout, a website that tracks the popularity of tweets, released the top-10 rankings Jan. 17, unveiling scores for each college or university based on how often a Twitter message is re-tweeted, number of followers, and how a school’s tweets are used by influential people in higher education.

Stanford finished with a top score of 70, followed by three schools that scored 64 in Klout’s ranking: Harvard University, Syracuse University, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.…Read More

Oops! We could not locate your form.