I see people blogging all the time about how blogs are doing great, or dying. All of these posts are, frankly, stupid.  They deal with a symptom and not the cause. Then the other kind of posts you see is “How to be a good blogger”, which is more vomit spewed onto a keyboard and words magically appear. Often I read these blogs and wonder how so many don’t have the common sense to just know these things. Reply to comments? Are we really that oblivious?

The reality to all these silly motivational “You Can Do it!” posts and questions about the life or death of blogs can be answered very simply – Not everyone is suited to be a blogger. Oh quiet Zach, don’t be such a wet blanket. Too bad. The reality is many people start a blog for the wrong reasons. People considering a blog will find all sorts of cheerleading online, but they don’t find the real answers — do they have what it takes to be a ‘good’ (and I know that’s subjective to every person, but believe me, I know what’s good and what’s bad,) blogger. (Exception: Doing it not to really have a blog, but just to rank higher in search engines.)

1. You have no opinions.

Most bloggers should instantly disqualify themselves from blogging on this point alone. I see way too many people writing blog posts with no opinion. A blog is inherently self-centered, if you have the balls to think that people are going to care about what you have to say then you better say something! If you are afraid to say I like X and dislike Y, just hang up your keyboard before you start.

2. You post a bunch of pictures and nothing else.

This phlog phenomenon is awful. There are almost no interesting phlogs. You’re a photographer? Tell a story! Cool picture, but what’s the point? If I decide to visit your site, keep me there by telling an interesting story about it. If you’re going to phlog because you have an iPhone and instagram… stop right now. We don’t need the nonsense.

3. You tell me about your day, every day.

Dear Blog Readers, today I woke up and took a shower. Then I had breakfast. Then I went foodshopping. Then I came home. Then I blah blah blah. The hell is this?! There are few people who live such interesting lives that they can get away with constantly writing about their day. A hooker might have an interesting blog. An assassin for hire, that would be an interesting one. You cut grass and walk dogs? If your friends are bored by it, don’t post it online.

4. You don’t write often.

Tri-monthly you post some piece of junk that’s nothing. Literally nothing. Don’t start a blog. It’s not worth it. Let’s say one day you get a genius idea that ends up as a blog post… don’t post it. Instead offer it as a guest blogger for someone else! If it’s actually good I want to read it, but your trimonthly blog is not the place for it.

5. You have no personality.

Lots of blogs are consistent, they have words (what a concept), they have good ideas…. but they are terribly boring! Stephen Hawking has a better personality than some of these bloggers! If you can’t write with any kind of ability to tell a story or keep some interest, don’t! Attention span is short, your boring blogs shorten it.

6. You repeat content that’s been blogged to death, reanimated and then blogged to death again.

Sort of ironic because this post is kind of one of those repeats… but cmon people! Atleast give us something new. When I finished writing this I Googled it to see I was repeating anything. Yes there was a couple, but most are unique. Social media experts are the worst blog fornicators pumping out garbage repeats. If the blog isn’t going to be unique, abort it!

7. Your blogs are too long and have no breaks.

Damn those blogs drive me nuts when they are 2000 words with no breaks. You type and type and type and don’t provide an image to give my brain a break! After two paragraphs I’m done… and I have more patience then the average reader!

8. You can’t write a title to save your life.

I’ll give you a real example (slightly changed so you can’t Google it)…

First Sentence: “In a short  survey I conducted, 130 girls answer a question about how many guys from Twitter they had slept with.”
Blog Title: “Girls on Twitter”

Talk about not capitalizing on something actually interesting! The person who wrote the article is lucky to have caught my attention even! Make your title stand out or it slips into oblivion.

9. You don’t read my blog.

You’ve taken the time to read this post and if I know you have, I’m going to be far more likely to want to read one of yours! But, really, my blog is pretty fantastic. You should subscribe! So read others blogs and others will read yours.

There are approximately 1 billion blogs, worldwide and 450,000,000 of them are English.. If you promise not to do any of the above 9, chances are you might be a good blogger! If you question your ability to do that, then don’t start a blog. Simple.

An interesting thing happens when you do something “controversial” like compiling a list of the top 150 influencers… you get a lot of different characters that suddenly have a unique voice and they aren’t afraid to voice it. It’s also a great source of personal joy when something I spend time on creates that kind of reaction. Besides the fact that it trended Toronto and Canada wide, it revitalized a discussion that made me think.

“Do social media scoring sites, like Klout, matter?”

After reading all the various tweets and blog posts that were spawned from the list, and some personal debate I now have an answer for you.

Yes, social media scoring matters.

Uh oh, I sense a new slew of comments complaining about this fact. But the reality is, despite many of us (myself included) who have said in the past that the scores Klout provide aren’t really that important, are wrong. They do matter, and while they may not be perfect at the moment (the whole “what are they really scoring anyway” argument), they can only improve.

In this new and ever evolving realm of “Social Media” where anyone with a thousand followers and enough tweets to rewrite the Bible can be considered someone who ‘gets it’, a way to actually determine who is doing things ‘right’ in terms of what happens on Twitter is a logical step.

People who are, or want to be involved in the social media industry – whether that’s community management, social media marketing, social media recruiting or all the other recently created job (I’ll avoid Social Media Ninjas or Pirates…), have to be vetted to ensure they aren’t just walking and talking the walk and talk. Social media is an industry where it’s easy to pretend to know what you’re doing. “99.5% of social media experts are clowns.“

But hold up, there’s no right or wrong on Twitter is what everyone says. As long as you’re tweeting and interacting, you’re doing it right! Well, this seems to be some misinformation passed along as truth by people who’ve capitalized on buzz words. But this is a topic for another blog post…

Klout is the first serious tool to put a value to what you’re doing online. A way in which we can begin to filter some of these people out. It’s a logical step in a young industry, a classification system which can remove some of the guess work. We have education which makes us eligible or disqualifies us from different industries; an accountant isn’t qualified to be an engineer. But we don’t have the same qualifications in social media. Someone on Twitter, isn’t inherently qualified to be paid to be responsible for a Twitter account. They can learn and become qualified over time, but they have to put in the work required and have successes to be able to take it to the next level with ideas on how that’s going to be profitable for the company.

Think of Klout as a early form of a credit score. Credit scores are based on what you do with credit. Do you pay your credit back? If so, your score goes up, if you don’t, it drops. With Klout, you interact online, people interact with you, retweets occur, following etc., and after all those different calculations it spits out a score on how you’re doing.

Is it perfect? Absolutely not. But, it’s a start.

“But what are they really scoring anyway? It’s a bunch phantom algorithms we don’t even know!” Let’s go back to credit scores. What’s the algorithm to your credit score? Hmm, guess I got you (and me) on that one. I have no idea how it works exactly. If I don’t pay back $10 compared to $12 on time, what’s the credit score effect? I know the different components it uses such as credit, payment history etc., but the actual algorithm, I have no idea… yet we don’t question it. We accept it because it is what it is.

And it’s damn good that we accept not knowing! If we knew the different ways in which a credit score was calculated, we could game it. If you know that 19.5% interest rate credit cards with $5000 credit limits generates a higher credit score than 12.0% and a $20,000 credit limit, it would alter your decision to increase your score. In doing so, we would render the credit scoring system inaccurate and invalid.

The same applies to Klout. If Klout announced the exact metrics on how they calculate scores people will game the system to positively influence their rating. It’s a natural reaction. If you want to be good at something, you want to be good at something!

Now there is a BUT.

Klout doesn’t matter if it’s not your industry. If you’re someone who just uses Twitter casually and your day job is to code software, or you’re a mechanic, or you work for a grocery store – then your Klout score is something for fun. It massages your ego. It’s not something of value to what you do though. So being on a list of influencers isn’t something you should be striving for.

I think with this in mind we can classify people who complained about the list. There are people on the  Top 150 list who laughed at it, and were annoyed that it was compiled. He won’t mind me calling him out, by @tylerconium is a huge detractor of Klout, yet he’s a major influencer on Twitter in Toronto. Social media isn’t his industry. He’s not looking to be a community manager, so to him his score isn’t important.

Meanwhile, some people who are working in social media and were not listed were mad or upset because it directly affects them. Some of these people are paid great salaries with the belief they know what they are doing, that they get what’s going on and that they know how to convert a Twitter follower into a sale (or keep a follower as a buyer). The assumption on which they were hired is that they aren’t just making it up as they go. Naturally, when not included on a list of ‘influencers’, it feels like a shot across the bow.** The natural reaction is to play defense and dismiss the list or disagree with Klout. Their redemption is if the company they tweet for has a solid Klout score. If not, I’d be careful.

Klout matters to the people in the social media industry. As these grading systems improve and become more accurate, you can bet that the people doing the hiring will include them as part of the hiring process. In a young industry, anyone can get into it very quickly without much thought… it’s called a bubble. Eventually the bubble pops and only the true characters emerge from the ashes.

Klout is just the first to put a pin nearby.

**This wasn’t the intent when I created the list.