Getting The Grade

There is a lot of grading going on these days. It’s all around us. Everything has some type of grade, score or review attached to it. I remember in grade school, the highest grade you could receive was an “E” for “Excellent!” (at least I think). But now all sorts of scores mean all types of things. The same is true with social media. There are a number of places you can get your social media “grade”. I’ve identified 4 that I’ve found (and used) that have proven to be at least somewhat beneficial. But, like almost anything does, there are some ups and downs. Take a look at what they have to offer and then give a couple a try, some of them only take a couple of seconds to shoot back your score.

Klout 

Accounts – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, 4 Square

Klout gives you one overall score on how much clout you have online. Currently, mine is at a 45. It also shows you the amount of clout that people in your social networks have. One feature that I ALMOST like about Klout is that it shows you what areas you are influential in. What makes me ALMOST like it is that it shows me being influential in lemonade and sap ag. I don’t believe I’ve every talked about sap ag and I only vaguely remember referring to lemonade once or twice (for a fundraiser). So while the concept is neat, the execution is unfortunately awful. Your Klout score is influenced in several ways. Network influence, amplification probability and true reach. A combination of frequency, retweets/mentions, likes and comments (over the past 90 days) will go into determining your score (you can see how scores are calculated at all of these sites). 4 Square was recently added, but I am not sure how that will affect scores. Klout tries to make thier site a bit more social by allowing you to give people +K if you think they are influential. This in no way affects your Klout score, but the idea behind it is to connect and give credit to people you meet and interact with. Unfortunately, I don’t think this feature has either quite taken off yet, or it doesn’t hold a lot of Klout for me personally. However, I consider Klout to be the best tool at gauging my online influence.

PeerIndex

Accounts – Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn, Quora, Twitter

PeerIndex is similar to Klout in that you receive one overall grade, which is influenced by several categories. PeerIndex uses authority, audience and activity to determine your score. Again, you can compare yourself to other friends in your network and see what their scores are. PeerIndex also indicates in what areas you might be influential, and their system does a much better job. They have me listed in the recruitment industry, product management, management, public relations and social networking services and application, which is pretty spot on. But the downside with PeerIndex for me is that it does not seem to be including all of my tweets which has had an affect on my authority score. My overall PeerIndex score sits at a 14. Currently, it says that they have analyzed 8 of my tweets. Needless to say, I’ve tweeted more than 8 times. If they could fix this issue, for my account, then I believe PeerIndex might be able to give the best representation of my online presence, but until that happens, I’m going with Klout.

Empire Avenue

Accounts – Blog, Facebook, Facebook Page, Flikr, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube

Empire Avenue puts a bit of a twist on giving your social grade and turns it into a social network. Simply put, Empire Avenue is the social stock market. The manner in which you use your different social media outlets (including Empire Avenue) has an impact on your stock price (as well as a few other factors). As of right now, my stock price is $38.45. You have the opportunity to invest in other people with their online money called eaves, (I chose to invest in people either in my area or in a related field of study), which is how you connect and interact with others. The more interactions and investments you make, the more you connect, the higher your score climbs. As your interaction and stock price increase, you work your way up the corporate ladder. You start out as a shareholder and can work your way up to CEO in your field (currently I am a Sr. Manager in the Marketing Index). The actual grades your receive on your scores seem to be a fairly good representation, but the stock score is not. Why do I say this? On Empire Avenue you have the options of actually spending real money to buy the eaves. This gives you more of an opportunity invest and connect with those in your network, and could have an impact on your stock price. Some people seem a little over involved in the game and send an outrageous amount of personal messages to your shareholder inbox, or try to promote themselves through mass messaging. Others seem to be online just to boost followers on Twitter. But none the less, I find the game interactive, fun and it gives me a little insight to my presence online. Log-on, let me know, and I would be happy to invest to get you started!

HubSpot Graders

Instead of combining all of your social media scores, HubSpot Graders give you the individual score for each of your social media platforms. Personally, I like being able to look at the different scores, so I frequent the HubSpot Graders. But you not only get a grade from HubSpot, you also get recommendations for how to improve you grade. Let’s take a look at the different accounts you can get graded on.

Blog - My current blog score is a 91 (hmm…). When I received my grade for my blog it gives me a checklist, so to speak, of the things that I have done well and the things that would make my blog better. For instance, you can find my twitter on my blog, that is a +. However, I do not host my blog on my own domain, so that is a -. You can also get your traffic rank, your SEO rank and where you fit in with the number of blogs that have been graded. Right now I’m at 60,735/800,942. While I do enjoy my blog, I’m not quite convinced I deserve the 91, so there may be a few kinks in the system.

Facebook – Again, my score is a 91 (I am seeing a pattern…). Again you can see your rank in the big picture her as well. This is probably the most basic grader they offer. You get your grade, your rank and what you can do to improve your page. For me, I need to include an “about me” section. Personally, I am going to ignore their recommendation, because if I have you on Facebook, I think you should already know “about me”. If not, well then you don’t need to. For the employers out there, they can get to know me on my LinkedIn page.

LinkedIn – Well… This is bummer. It doesn’t look like the LinkedIn page is working. Which is unfortunate, because I would be interested to see how they grade LinkedIn profiles.

Twitter – Although it is pretty basic, I like checking in on my grade here. Currently, you guessed it, I am at a 91 (which also raises concerns unless it is a big coincidence). Of course you can see your rank here as well. This service will also let you know if there are any areas of concern on your Twitter account. A particular feature that I really enjoy is the ability to check and see if someone who just started following you, is worth following. It can help reduce spam and give you some insight on who is keeping their eye on you.

While I do enjoy checking out my individual scores, the fact that I have a 91 three times is a bit fishy. Maybe I got lucky, or maybe a few tweaks need to be made. Either way, it is still a good place for you to at least experiment with.

So if you follow me on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, you’ve probably noticed an increase in usage. Does an increase in usage increase your score? Well, it looks like it does. Now, there could be users out there trying to pump up their score by just tweeting or posting a bunch (and I think that some of these formulas have way to identify people who are, to a certain degree), but that isn’t my intention. My increase in tweets/posts was in part an experiment to see if the scores would be affected, but as I looked for information to tweet/post I also found myself learning a lot of information that I wanted to share with my social network. I’ve found a lot of new services and websites that are going to serve me well as I continue in my education, and also as I transition to my career. The information I have shared has led to new connections as well. Connections with people who are influential in my field. So, if these grading tools give you a little motivation to increase your usage for a little better score, that is alright. As long as you work to share information that is relevant to you or your social network, not only will you get a better “grade” but you will also get better results from your social media activity.

Like the post? Hated it? Feel free to leave a comment and let me know what “grade” I got here!

- Reed Pankratz