Companies are Keeping Score – on You

I’ve haven’t entirely given up on having some privacy left in my life, but it is getting more difficult. Once you’ve grown up and gotten a few credit cards, then the three major credit rating agencies follow you around forever with a score on your financial reliability. Miss a monthly payment. Bingo! It goes on your record.

Now we’re being rated on our sociability by new scorekeepers. Not how friendly we are, but our influence on social media networks. Scores are weighted heavily based on your Facebook and Twitter activity. My primary social networks are LinkedIn and Twitter. My blog is my home base where I spend most of my time. I’m much less active on Facebook, so this will no doubt affect my scores – and maybe yours if you decide to try these out.

Thank you, Website Grader

Image via CrunchBase

I have to admit I haven’t bothered with these scorekeepers before, with one exception. HubSpot, which sells an inbound marketing software platform, also ranks websites on their traffic and social media popularity with its Website Grader. I consistently score from 96-98 out of 100 so, of course, its badge of honor is on my website.

Here are other  services that companies are using to rate your “influence” online. Social media popularity will enable marketers to target influencers for promotions and maybe even whether you get that next job you want.

Image via CrunchBase

Klout. I just learned I have a score of 44 out of 100. A Klout Score is the measurement of your overall online influence. They say I’m influential about writing, blogging and entrepreneurship. Wow, that makes me happy because that’s where I’m toiling. Should I be embarrassed by my score, though? According to an article on this topic in the New York Times, 44 is actually pretty high, with a strong but “niche” following. LinkedIn is my primary social network and Klout is just starting to rank LinkedIn, so maybe my score will rise. But I’ll never be a Justin Bieber.

PeerIndex. PeerIndex is a reputation and authority rating platform. My score is a chintzy 15. But, wait. PeerIndex claims, “If you have a blog, linking it to PeerIndex will enable us to improve the accuracy of our authority calculations for you.” Only problem is the link didn’t work so I couldn’t add my blog and, as I told you before, blogging is my principal social media activity. So, I’m scratching that score.

Image via CrunchBase

Alexa. Owned by Amazon.com, Alexa measures the popularity of a website. It is somewhat controversial because you can only get ranked if you download the Alexa toolbar to your website. I haven’t done that because I’m still deciding on its efficacy. But it’s a good source for what’s being searched right now, the top ranked Alexa sites by traffic, and hot products.

Social Media Index.  I am absolutely nowheresville on this Index, developed by Technobabble 2.0, a blog by Johnny Benwood, a social media analyst with Edelman PR. It’s an index of the top social media blogs and mavens, and an interesting read.

My Opinion

These indexes have flaws, so it worries me that they are becoming so popular. As I said, the most influential one, Klout, is just now starting to factor in LinkedIn usage, and blogging is not considered as influential as the social media sites. Now that Google+ has arrived with a bang — 10 million users in its first two weeks — how will they score participation in that new network?

Companies are making marketing decisions based on these rankings, so we can’t afford to ignore them. How much heavy lifting would be required to raise my scores a few points? I don’t know – all these secret algorithms are impenetrable to mere mortals.

I’ll just keep on trying to do my best in providing you, my valued readers, with information that I hope you find useful and entertaining.

What do you think about these ranking agencies? Are you using them? I’d love to know. Just leave a comment below. Thanks.

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