A high Klout score does not mean you are more social-savvy or have more influence than someone with a low Klout score … (for more detail on the inner workings of Klout, check out Joanna’s post from last year).

Shocking right? This is probably the first time in the history of social measurement applications that a company has claimed that its solution does more than it actually does … (really hope that anyone in marketing is getting a chuckle out of that).

Klout comes up relatively often in conversations with clients and prospects – and the questions are usually the same:

What should we do about Klout?

How can we increase our Klout score?

My response: Why is your Klout score important to you? And what is your social media strategy?

Don’t get me wrong, I think Klout is a cool tool, but it doesn’t measure your social influence. It measures your Klout score … I have a Klout score of 38 and I got a notification that my score went up 10 points in the last 2 weeks.  You want to know why? Because I wrote a blog post, developed a queue of five tweets and passed them out to colleagues asking them to tweet and mention me, or retweet my tweets. Do I really influence these people? In Klout’s eyes, yes …  But in my eyes, no …

Social sentiment and influence is something that marketers and software developers have been trying to automate and measure for years now – and it feels like nobody has it down to an exact science (at least not that I’ve seen – but Radian6 is doing some really cool things). You can search Klout to try to find potential influencers, but don’t rely on the score alone. You’ll need to do your own digging.

It’s easy to doctor Klout’s system to boost your score – making a high score meaningless. And truthfully it takes away from everything we (as marketers) are trying to accomplish with social media – and that’s engagement.

Still interested in learning more about social influence?  Check out this really interesting deck by Altimeter Group.

That’s all great advice, but it will only get you so far in your quest for that perfect job in PR. I’d like to add in my own two cents as someone who’s braved – and survived – the PR job search many times over.

1. Network! Tell anyone and everyone you know that you are on the market for a job. You never know where you might find someone willing to make an introduction for you.
2. Be confident. Play to your strengths and be honest about what you want to improve on. No one expects you to know everything right out of school. A willingness to learn can go a long way.
3. Don’t take the first job that you get offered. I’m not saying to turn down your dream job just because it is the first offer you get, but I am saying to carefully evaluate your options. It may take a little longer to find the job that best suits you, but you’ll be happier for it.

Good luck, and maybe we’ll see your name on this blog soon as our next new AC.

What about spelling things correctly? Or using good grammar?

I think they’ll disappear.

I still spell-check my emails, but only after I’ve written them like texts. Then I add back in all the words that make for full sentences. It’s a huge waste of time, and I do it mostly because I fear offending someone with too-cryptic speech, or, more likely, not being understood.

In the next few years, I think the ‘norms’ of spelling and grammar will shape-shift. The Strunk-and-White brigade will be gone, and texting will become the new norm. Like almost all ‘norms’ – it may start out feeling wrong, but with enough exposure, it just slips into the background, until something else weird and wrong replaces it.

So how do we guide text-bred Millennials about how to blend emails with a natural style?

1. We do tell the people who work here, to assume that every email we write will be read by people we don’t know. That may make email less ‘personal’ – but it also cuts down on how much can be misinterpreted.
2. Assume that only the first paragraph will be read.
3. Pick up the phone. When there are three emails on the same topic – it means email isn’t working. Pick up the phone.

A simple lesson I’ve learned a few times – stop trying so hard. Last week, I learned it about writing for B2B. Inc. Magazine also published an article along the same lines – What a 9-Year-Old Can Teach You About Selling.

Here are a few example of how I’ve trying to improve my writing process.

• Stop writing like a marketer, and start thinking like a business person. Connect concepts to what B2B cares about – driving leads and growth and outpacing the competition.
• Five words are better than ten. A year ago, I was under the gun to meet page-length minimums. But, business isn’t college. Keep it short.
• Relax, and go with stream of consciousness (at least for the first draft). Writing and editing are two different processes. Keep them separate.

What’s your writing process like?

For now, I stare at a Post-It that reads, “Take a breath.” (That’s a picture of my cube at Corporate Ink.) Much like “stop trying so hard,” it has a few connotations for me.

Social media is far from ‘all grown up’ – but it’s ready to pay the rent. If you expect it to drive leads and revenue, you have to start hitting the right targets.

Most companies don’t. And they don’t know who’s saying what, either, or where their targets are logging social time. How do we know? It’s what we discover, with practically every social audit (and we’ve been doing them for more than 4 years.) The best audits are surprisingly easy to execute – and almost always yield at least a few unexpected insights.

Check out our new market brief: Social Audits: Five Steps for Improving Your Social ROI. You’ll get:

• A quick-and-easy audit roadmap
• The best free tools
• Practical steps for implementation
• Shifting your strategy – based on the gaps we often find

More than ever, the right metrics count. Most companies – gasp – are not measuring enough of the right things, including progress. Doing an audit – whether you take it on, or we help you – is one fast way to identify your challenges, and, more importantly, fix them.