Klout…[pausing for the typical spewing of explatives by haters that might be reading this]…is quite the story. So many people hate it for a number of reasons. Some of those motives are completely valid. Others are a little silly.

So, it’s little surprise that these same people are now secretly grinning when they hear that the popularity and use of Klout by most social media users is reportedly dropping. However, in my book, this is the best thing that could happen to Klout.

Here’s why.

Mission Accomplished
I have no idea whether Klout agrees with me, but if I were Joe Fernandez, this is what I’d say in the next meeting:

“For the last year and change, we’ve been in the public eye. Millions of people have heard of us, we’ve developed brand awareness and through both praises and criticism have gained priceless feedback about our service. Much of what we did was to build momentum, to get people to use it and talk about it as much as possible so we could refine the algorithms. To that I say: mission accomplished.

“As the buzz around our service dies, this sets us up perfectly for the next stage of Klout. The truth is that the more people monitor and check their scores, the less accurate those scores will be. The less people monitor those scores, the more accurate and honest their actions will be that our algorithm relies on.

“Now, we have an even better sales pitch for prospective clients. We can tell them that our algorithm is built not only on our own ideas, but the feedback of millions of users and with less ‘score watching’, there is little risk of people gaming the system and skewing numbers. Ironic as it may sound, the less people use Klout, the better Klout becomes.”

Clearly there is a reason I ain’t no CEO, as you can tell from that stirring speech, but I think you see where I’m going. Klout got everything they needed to build a solid, profiable business out of the last year of buzz. Now, they can slip into the shadows and do some serious selling with a more accurate, less “gamed” product.

Resorts, Take Note
I believe that knowing who has a high Klout score in your guest database will be a big, future step of resort marketing. As Klout fades from the spotlight, I truly believe these scores will not only be more accurate, but much more consistent and more valuable to marketers. Now is the time for resorts to start thinking about what they could do with this number.

Klout Perks? Cool, but I really don’t think that platform is where we find the real value in this score. Instead, it’s using Klout as a secondary dimension to compare with dozens of customer traits like Net Promoter, lifetime spend, etc. so you know who might be good to monitor within the social sphere and who to work with when you need extra social reach in a voice other than your own.

It does sound ironic, but the more people forget about Klout, the more resort marketers should keep it in mind.

About Gregg & SlopeFillers
I've had more first-time visitors lately, so adding a quick "about" section. I started SlopeFillers in 2010 with the simple goal of sharing great resort marketing strategies. Today I run marketing for resort ecommerce and CRM provider Inntopia, my home mountain is the lovely Nordic Valley, and my favorite marketing campaign remains the Ski Utah TV show that sold me on skiing as a kid in the 90s.