Recently, I discovered a social media measurement service called www.Klout.com. That’s as in: “Who’s got clout?” My question is, do you have clout? Do you need it? How do you get it?

Greatly simplifying, Klout measures a person’s influence based on how many friends they have on Facebook and how many followers they have on Twitter. I’m not saying that those are bad measures of influence. In fact, if in business I’m deciding whom to influence, I want to influence the influencers. Klout is a valuable tool.

Still, as a social media professional, I’ve made two radical decisions regarding business social networking.

1. I don’t try to be everywhere or to be all things to all people. Businesses have limited resources; do one thing well, rather than five things poorly. For business social networking, I use only LinkedIn, not Facebook, not Plaxo, not Spoke, not Ryze, not … anything else.
2. I connect with (or follow) only people that I actually know. And respect. As a result, even though I was one of the first 99,000 members of LinkedIn, and 99,900,000 members have followed, today I have fewer than eight hundred connections. But they’re real connections. When I ask them for something, I usually get it. And when they ask me for something, I’m happy to assist.

Social networking is a lot like real life. When you invest in your relationships, they pay dividends. Yes, it’s a little counterintuitive but I say go for quality over quantity.