A professional freelance writer needs many different ways to find new clients. The idea, of course, is to keep a healthy network of connections that can send prospective clients your way and keep that writing project pipeline full. Unfortunately, that is easier said than done, which is why there are shelves of books about networking in the business section of your local bookstore.
Online networking via social networking websites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn offer easier access. However, these networks can be much less personal, and therefore, much less powerful. On the other hand, the volume achievable is much higher. Either way, a useful internet based social network requires work and attention just like an offline network does.
Klout Score
I stumbled across something today that mentioned a service called Klout, which “measures” your clout on social networks. Supposedly, those with very high Klout scores are sought out by businesses and marketers because of their high level of influence over their followers.
As it turns out, you can put your Twitter username into Klout and see what your own social networking clout is.
ArcticLlama has a Klout score of 11.
If that were on a scale of 1 to 10, I would be the greatest social networking marketer of all time. Sadly, that score is out of 100, so I guess I have some work to do.
On the other hand, my website and my bio links at other websites where I have been published seem to drive most of my new prospective clients to me. Either social networking is over-hyped and I should just keep focusing my efforts where I have been, or boosting up the ‘ol ArcticLlama klout score could lead to even more business.
Which do you think it is?