If you speak about Klout these days, you can expect to find yourself in a controversy faster than Justin Bieber made his way to the top of the music game. Klout is based on a simple idea, but its implications are astounding. Some argue that Klout is meaningless, just a made-up number that represents nothing about your social media value. Let’s be realistic. Klout does matter. If it didn’t, you wouldn’t be sitting here reading these words sometime after I wrote them! Whether you love it or hate it, Klout is now an integral part of the social media marketing landscape. Unless something drastic happens, the “K” is here to stay.

How Influential Is Your Klout Score?

Let’s just say highly-placed people in nearly all circles have taken notice of the growing influence of Klout. Even entertainment heavyweights Will Ferrell and Stephen King recently reached out to Klout for marketing help. Social media insiders have been debating just how much of a role services like Klout play into hiring. For social media jobs, there is little question your score matters. If someone is planning on hiring you to work for them doing social media marketing, it’s not surprising that they would be very interested in exactly how much Klout you have. Yes, what I’m getting at is, your “K” might determine your pay.

Why Do Some People Hate Klout?

People are people and gaining a consensus from everyone on any subject is impossible. Klout is no different. If you ask 10 people their feelings on the subject your reactions will probably range from befuddled all the way through resentment. But you’ll also find many who absolutely love the service.

Those who hate Klout stay focused on issues like transparency and accuracy. These are legitimate concerns and plague all systems that make judgments. Certainly Klout will have to work hard to convince its critics that its doing its best to make the scores as accurate as possible and is trying to take steps to ensure that the service attempts to be “fair.” This is a challenge for all major web destinations these days, and is not exclusive to Klout. Others say they hate Klout because they can’t ‘opt Out.’ This is similar to Alexa and PageRank, two other valuation tools that pass judgment and don’t let you leave. It’s true, with the “K,” you have to stay.

Why Do Some People Love Klout?

There are Klout-lovers in this world, and I am one of them. For those of us who consume the Kloutjuice happily, there’s nothing better than receiving notification that you’ve been “K-ed” up. It’s a sign that you’re doing something right and that your time and expertise is valued. Not only that, Klout.com is a fun destination site to visit that sports powerful engagement tools. Klout is much more than just a score and using Klout.com is a fantastic way to engage with influential engagers. People who love Klout tend to have a lot of it. Whether that’s the result of a secret recipe or because Klout-lovers tend to already be heavily engaged is anyone’s guess. Sharing Klout is something you can do five times each day. Every time you give a gift of “K” it’s your way of saying “I appreciate you” to someone you value. Those who crave the “K” always have something nice to say.

If you’ve been sitting around with a gas-face hating on K all day, I hope you’ll reconsider. Klout is going to be a part of your social media experience whether you opt-in or not. Why not jump on the K-Train before it leaves the station? If you have an opinion on Klout, I’d love to hear it. If you found this post interesting or useful, then please follow me on Twitter and please Retweet. Also a +1 or a Facebook like would be appreciate! Thanks for stopping by.