Marketers have a keen interest in social media because of the notion of influence. The assumption is that you have certain friends on Facebook, or specific authors whom you follow on Twitter, who affect the kinds of products that you buy. A recent start-up called Klout attempts to quantify this online influence by assigning people a Klout score, which ranges from 0 to 100 and which, according to the company, reflects a person’s influence across the social network. Marketers can then try to use people with high Klout scores as influencers of consumption behaviors. Critiques of Klout suggest that the algorithm that it uses to calculate the Klout score is too reliant on Facebook and Twitter, does not account for the quality of the online interactions, and neglects other important social media. But its rise as an Internet darling (and the growth of other similar services like Kred and PeerIndex) suggests that it has some influence over social media marketing.

Identify and map your social habits on social networking sites for the past week. Did you create content through blogs? Did you rate or recommend products or companies? Did you post photos of yourself at particular events or places on Facebook? Rate each of your online social activities according to how much influence you think they have had upon your friends or followers. Use 0 if you believe a particular activity had zero influence, 1 for slight influence, 2 for moderate influence, and 3 for significant influence. After you are finished ranking how much of an impact each of your online activities has had upon your friends and followers, determine whether you are an influencer of consumption behaviors. Do you think your friends would agree with you?