Do you ever look at one of your friends or even just a challenge, and think, “I can do this!”? One of the times when this competitive streak shows is during NaNoWriMo. The challenge was created to out-write your internal editor, and if someone can do it, why not me?

Some days it’s the same thing with those grading sites. Marketing Grader and Tweet Grader were mentioned today, though we’ve also compared Klout on occasion. If you send us (and I’m talking about a specific friend who shares my competitive drive) one of these tools, we try to integrate it into our knowledge base.

And why? What does it matter if my Klout score is 15 or 57 or even 95? [For the record, it is none of those.] That won’t sell my books. It doesn’t matter if the Marketing Grader says my website is 0 or 100 out of 100. Did any of you check the scores before buying a book or a service from someone?

I think it’s even funnier that I can admit that those scores are geared toward businesses selling a product online, but many of the people I know who try to learn from it are online but not necessarily selling a physical product. [Yes, I know books are physical products, but bear with me a moment.] I can look through all of the stats and see whether I’m capturing an audience by Twitter followers, or Tweet Graders or other options. I can figure out what I’m doing on Facebook by fans and shares and other activity. My blog has subscribers and links to various social media.

So what are we doing with it? Just checking. It’s a sliding scale to see whether we’re engaging someone or just talking in a bubble. Are we using the platform not as intended but as we can to get conversations moving?

And then, when it’s quiet, my friend and I try to outdo each other strictly by the numbers. If you’re curious, we have the same Klout score and our Marketing Grades are a single point different. It probably helps that she and I share information and little tricks when we find them and also encourage and support each other to keep up with blogs and tweets and posts. It’s a crazy thing to try to keep all of these things up, but somehow it works.

I’m really grateful that she’s there to help keep me motivated and focused on the target. My target isn’t a number – I’m just here to talk and share and learn as I write and publish. Life and work are good, but it can be good to remember it isn’t just a numbers game.

Except I can’t stop trying to get those numbers higher!