I think social media is weird. Then again, maybe its not social media that’s weird, but the community that has formed around it. Imagine telling someone 20 years ago that there would be technologies that allow people from all over the world to connect instantaneously without ever having to meet. Their most likely response would be pointing you in the direction of the nearest insane asylum and walking away as fast as they could without running.
Now, not only do those technologies exist, there are also other technologies that out there that can enhance them further, such as Klout. With Klout, you can directly measure both your influence and the influence of the people you interact with.
When I started this class I had 162 followers, which was already up from the 144 that I had in May. Nonetheless, I still managed to increase my followers through this class to 169, which is nothing to shake your head at. I actually peaked at 174 at one point in late October when I was tweeting heavily about the end of baseball season and the beginning of the NBA season. I think I lost a couple of those followers throughout the month of November when I started to tweet less about basketball and more about the Jets but the end result was me still retaining seven new followers.
[infogram id=”kyles_klout_score_growth”]
My Klout score also went up since the beginning of the class and maybe that is more telling than anything else. I started the class around 21.74 but as I tweeted for COM 427, my Klout score rose to where it is now, 40.21. Now, to be fair, I have both my Facebook and my Twitter connected to my Klout score but I never post or really do anything on Facebook so I can only assume that it was my Twitter presence that caused my score to rise. My highest Klout score was on November 13th (43.16), which was right around the time that I was putting out my social media marketing plan for the viral content challenge. I think the fact that my viral content challenge was the time I had the most influence says a lot but I think the fact that the peak wasn’t an extreme (I was hovering around 40 both before and after November 13th) says even more.
In the end, I think tweeting about a broader range of subjects caused both my Klout score and my follower number to go up and it is definitely something I will continue in the future. Social media may be weird for some, especially the baby boom generation, but my generation embraces it, weird and all.