First a few disclosures: Yes, I am 32 years old. Yes, I subscribe to Justin Bieber’s feed on Facebook.
32 minutes ago Justin posted a link on Facebook. Look at the stats amassed in just a few minutes: 8,877 likes, 1,235 comments and 184 shares.
Say what you will but this kid is a stud. End. Of. Story.
Regards,
Garth Knutson
Hello, readers! As you know, or at least I hope you know, this blog is an unofficial Klout resource. That said, we may steal a few ideas from them now and again – In this case we’re using the Klout Perk idea to give away an autographed copy of Hipcricket CMO, Jeff Hasen’s new book Mobilized Marketing.
We’re just two guys with a blog so we don’t have a fancy algorithm or app to help with the giveaway so we’re going to have to do this the old fashioned way. Here’s how this will work:
1) Required to enter – Simply post a comment to this post and include your twitter handle (@gknutson for example)
2) Not required (tweet that you did, and call out the awesome www.whattheklout.com blogJ)
3) All comments with a twitter handle received by Friday, May 25th will be eligible to win. Blake and I will then give up our weekends checking Klout scores for all the entrants. Whoever has the highest score that weekend is the winner. We’ll use twitter to contact said winner and can work out how best to ship you the book
All set? Now comment away, and don’t forget to include your Twitter handle!
Regards,
Garth Knutson
I apologize for the sensational title of this video becuase the video itself doesn’t really pay it off. Background – Yesterday at a Mother’s day brunch my Mother, Mother-in-law, Father-in-law, Step-father and Brother all said “I read your blog but still dont get what it means”. After this shameful moment I realized that Blake and I need to spend more time creating “Klout 101″ content to mix in with our wildly cerebral, PHD level content (ya, right). Anyhow, here’s the first bite of Klout 101, set with music. Enjoy.
As mentioned in previous posts I am currently test driving a Chevy Volt electric (and gas when the battery runs out) 
car. One of the most fun aspects of this car for me is the being able see via a little green ball (see image to the right) how efficiently I’m driving. As long as the ball stays green it will remain in the center of the track which validates the efficiency of my driving. If I accelerate or brake too quickly, the ball slowly turns yellow and movies either up (too much acceleration) or down (too much braking). At the end of each driving session, or during if I so chose, I can see how efficient I’ve been on a scale from 0-100%. Pretty sweet. So far I’m at about 80% efficiency. I wonder what the average is?
The funny thing is, this goes against the way I was raised to drive a car. My driving development began way before drivers education class with teachers like Poll Position, Mario Kart, Cruisin’ USA, Excite Bike…the list goes on. None of those driving simulators gave a rats ass how much gas I used up. Speed (and shooting turtle shells at my buddies) was the name of the game there.
Now that I’m older, wiser and aware of global politics I realize how important conservation is, and this little green ball from Chevy is an amazing yet simple tool to help me do my part, at least for the next three days.
This isn’t the only example of gamification for good. Two of my favorites are here to help us stay fit and live longer. The most well-known application is probably the Nike + Fuel Band. If you know @ThatReeder then you can’t escape his Facebook and Twitter updates about how many steps he took that day. What I love about this particular product is that it is a simple and fun way to make a person want to exercise more. A similar but lesser known offering out there is Swiss startup Quentiq, who have created as an app that is similar to Nike’s Fuel Band with but more features. Quentiq, who’s US division is led by Sybase co-founder Mark Hoffman “offers the world’s leading wireless platform for tracking, documenting, presenting and benchmarking your personal health data in real-time on your smartphone and/or via the web.” If you’re serious about health and fitness give their 30-day trial a run, pun intended.
This is a great trend – gaming for good. Hopefully we see a lot more of it in the future.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to joyriding in my Chevy Volt. Shhhh… don’t tell my boss.
Regards,
Garth Knutson
My latest Klout Perk showed up today (Right on time, too) – A brand new Chevy Volt Electric/Gas car. It’s pretty bad ass. Here are my first impressions:
- The guy who dropped it off and did the tutorial (Adam from Page One Automotive) was super friendly and helpful
- It’s fully insured (thank god)
- They gave me a free charging pass (again, thank god), with a printout of all the local stations, one of which happens to be where I’m spending most of the day today:)
- The car is amazingly quiet
- I can’t wait to drive it
More to come, including video of my experience as well as some other Perk participants @abelmind and I have or are going to interview.
Best,
Garth Knutson
I came across this video today on The Denver Egotist and had to share it as its one of the best uses of creative problem solving I’ve seen in a while. The campaign comes from Dutch water supplier Waternet who found a genius way educate drunk locals about keeping the water supply clean — gamifying urination. Yes, gamifying urination. Winners of this pee game got their water taxes paid for a year!
The only thing missing is a sharing call to action. I know I’d want to tweet my rusults…after my zipper was up of course… Check out the case study:
Klout has many benefits as this blog will attest, but I recommend refraining from adding it to your resume for now. Here are 5 reasons why:
1) You might come off as a know-it-all bragger. Many recent graduates put their GPA on 
resumes, but the 4.0 scale is a common method of quantifying success. Klout is still an unknown.
2) Speaking of unknown, Klout is also misunderstood. Many hate it, and you wouldn’t want to find your resume in the hands of one of its biggest detractors.
3) Don’t you have more important things to say about yourself? A good resume should be limited to one page, does that leave enough room for your Klout score?
4) If your score sucks…
5) The recipient of your resume probably doesn’t know what Klout means, leaving it up to you to explain Klout during an interview. Remember this guy?
The intent from putting a Klout score on a resume is a sound – attempting to show qualification in given topics, using Klout’s topics, or as a social media user in general via the all up Klout score. My advice for anyone attempting to show the latter and feels the need to do so in the resume phase of job hunting is to simply list a twitter and/or LinkedIn account. You probably don’t even need to do that, as it’s so common these days for hiring manager’s to Google applicants which would lead them to find these sites regardless of seeing them listed on a resume.
The takeaway? Keep on top of your online profiles because your next boss will surely be taking a peek. The good news is Klout can help with diagnosing your online reputation, but that is a post for another day…
Thanks,
PS — I feel like a jack ass for writing another “xx reasons” blog post. Also, this blog is not listed on my resume.
It used to be that an athlete’s go to post victory speech call out was something like “First I’d like to thank God”, or if not God then fans, family, coaches, etc. Yesterday while watching the 2012 Penn Relays (one of the larger track meets in the world) I saw something different — When asked how his race felt, miler Leo Manzano (Klout score 47) answered with “follow me on twitter @leomanzano”. He then went on to list off his relay teammates social accounts as well. Leo also got a “you can find us on Facebook too” in there as well. What did he have to say about the race? “It was hard”. Then the interview was over. I got a kick out of it. Unfortunately I can’t find the interview online but if anyone else can please let me know and I’ll post it.
Expect to see more of this at and leading up to the Olympics this summer. The London event promises to be the most “social” ever, and since not every athlete will land lucrative Michael Phelps-like deals those with the largest followings (and Klout scores?) online may be in the best shape to make a little dough out of their once every 4 years spotlights.
In the meantime, check out the awesome race from the Penn Relays featuring the London gold medal hopeful US Men’s 4×100 team made up of Mike Rodgers @Mr_Rodgers_DAT Klout score 43, Justin Gatlin @justingatlin Klout score 48, Doc Patton @doc_patton Klout score 57, Walter Dix @waltdix02 Klout score 41:
GO USA!
Regards,
I came across this demo yesterday on YouTube for a pretty sweet Klout Facebook app. It was built in partnership with Klout by a company called 
Involver, “the web’s most trusted social marketing platform.” – A pretty grand statement, but whatever…I like the app!
The app allows a company to make offers to customers based on their Klout score, and can even segment those offers based on what they call the “Klout threshold” – one offer above or equal to the threshold (Klout score) and one I assume lesser value offer for scores below the threshold.
How it works:
1) User goes to FB page
2) Clicks on offer (assuming it’s a tasty one)
3) A FB permission request pops up
4) Assuming the customer accepts the permission request…
5) They are shown their Klout score and presented with their offer and are able to share on FB or tweet to let their network know about the offer
I’m excited to see what comes next for Klout apps. Maybe there are more out there already… time to hit up Google and get looking.
Regards,