Ever wondered how you compare to others on Facebook or Twitter? Intrigued at who has the bigger influence out of your group? Looking for ways to complete the get found > conversation > generate leads cycle through social media?
Let me introduce you to Klout. I’m Scott Leslie (@pugzley) and I’m part of the Brightfire inbound marketing team. I’ll use my Klout profile (check it out here) to demonstrate for the purpose of this blog.
Klout is a social media analytics company tool that measures your influence across social network paths. It uses data from Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Foursquare, YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr, Blogger, WordPress and Flickr to gauge the size of your network, the content you create and share, and how other people interact with that content.
The key to inbound marketing is getting found and I’ve recently figured out that Klout can help improve your chances of boosting your visibility. In a nutshell, the higher your Klout score, the more people see you and the more chances you have of converting one of those conversations into a lead.
Your Klout Score = Your Influence
The Klout score ranges from 0 – 100. The higher your score, the stronger influence and reach you have through social media. My current score is 47. People/brands with high scores include Mashable (89), Jack Wilshere (85) and Klout (85).
Apart from the Klout influence score, you’re also graded for True Reach, Amplification and Network Impact.
- True Reach – the number of people you currently influence
- Amplification – indicates how much you influence people
- Network Impact – measures the influence of your network
From the graphs below, can you guess when I started using Klout to benchmark my social media efforts?
True Reach is the size of your engaged audience and is based on your followers and friends who actively listen and react to status updates and posts. This gives you a more accurate indication of your leads-converts ratio. While your Twitter/Facebook accounts might tell you that you have 600 followers, Klout recognises which of these actually engage with you so your conversion ratio will actually be higher.
Amplification Score is the likelihood that your update or tweet will generate certain actions such as retweets, likes and comments. The higher your amplification score, the more likely people are to see your value piece or your offer. You can then begin to converse with them.
A high Network Impact means that people you influence are engaging with you. This is a perfect opportunity to move from the conversation stage to the lead generation stage. The higher your network Impact score, the more chance you have of getting a lead across the line. The lead likes interacting with you and must trust you if they return on a regular basis.
The Klout Matrix
The Klout matrix focuses on four key derivates:
- The frequency at which you interact through social media (Casual – Consistent)
- Curator – Broadcaster – Taste-maker – Celebrity (from left to right)
- The range of topics you talk about (Broad – Focused)
- Syndicator – Feeder – Thought Leader -Pundit
- The approach that you take once involved (Listening – Participating)
- Dabbler – Conversationalist – Socialiser – Networker
- The originality of your content (Sharing – Creating)
- Observer – Explorer – Activist – Specialist
Your place on the matrix depends on your social media engagement style. Take me, for example – Klout has labelled me a Specialist – and considers my social media activity highly consistent and focused.
Klout is a useful tool for people who like to engage in social media with the view to gaining leads. If you see yourself as a Celebrity (four squares along, four squares up) but Klout has you down as a Pundit (four along, three up), you know that you have to be slightly more consistent in your updates.
Depending on the type of social creature you are, you can see how people of similar ‘breed’ measure up and where companies/brands you use as a benchmark are currently situated.
Whereas before Klout, it was near-impossible to measure the efficiency of your social media activities, Klout tells you exactly where you stand in the social mediasphere, making it extremely simple to gauge your performance and influence, and work out benchmarks.
Why not try it out for yourself? As I have personally discovered, every Klout has a silver lining – or maybe even two – so I’m sure there will be at least one benefit out there for you.
Lead generation through social media has never before been so simple and visually easy to interpret!
Do you measure your influence and the impact of your social media engagement on lead generation? Share your thoughts with us in the comment box.
Filed under Internet Marketing by on Nov 30th, 2011. 
I know what you’re thinking; big deal right? I know. It’s not a big deal at all 
really. But I did find it very interesting based on my particular circumstances, and I thought sharing might be useful in some way to some of my readers.
So I went on a blog hiatus for a few weeks, and it certainly made a significant impact on my Klout score. I was hovering around 70 for awhile, and after about 4 weeks of not blogging, I dropped down to 67. I’m not entirely sure what I think about that. On one hand I get that one’s “influence” can fluctuate based on the contributions they make to the digital world, but the real question is, should it change that much over a short period?
I certainly don’t lose any sleep over my Klout score. It’s just one of many ways to measure one’s online influence, but anyone that says it doesn’t matter is kidding themselves. Many businesses are using Klout as a measuring stick for influence and not just for their perks program. For that reason, I definitely pay attention to it, but quite frankly it’s really just a matter of making significant contributions to my blog and my social media streams, which I would do anyway.
So back to the topic at hand. As I’ve blogged about many times before, I’m a user of Triberr and have found it an invaluable tool to increase awareness of my blog and drive more traffic here. Over time I’ve associated myself with a number of relevant tribes, and now almost like clockwork, anytime I publish a new blog post, I can expect an extra 100 tweets or so of my post, as well as roughly 1000 unique visitors. In addition to my own promotional efforts, combined I am seeing that simply posting to my blog increases my Klout score fairly significantly. My post about losing website visitors brought my stale 67 score back up to 68 in one day. I anticipate if I blog regularly over the next few days, I’ll be back up to 70 in no time.
Moral of the story? If increasing your influence is important to you, consider a tool like Triberr to increase your reach, and ensure that you blog as often as you can without too many large breaks in between.
Filed under Internet Marketing by on Oct 25th, 2011.
Klout is a social media tool that measures your online influence by evaluating your activity on a variety of social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, LinkedIn, Foursquare, YouTube, and others. It doesn’t just take into account your actions but also how your fans/followers/friends react to what you share.
According to Klout’s website: “The Klout Score measures influence based on your ability to drive action. Every time you create content or
engage you influence others.” The Klout Score uses data from social networks in order to measure:
- How many people you influence (after filtering out spam and bots — how many people are you really connected to).
- How much you influence them (what action do they take based on what you share).
- How influential they are (the reach and influence of the people that you inspire to take action — the ripple effect).
All of that data is crunched together and you’re issued a score from 0-100, with 100 being the most influential. To give you some sense of scope — the average score is about 20. The score becomes harder to increase as you move up the scale. David Armano has a score of 82. Joe Pulizzi has a 71, Arianna Huffington is a 75, and Chris Brogan has a 77. All four would be considered mega stars in the world of Klout.
I can hear you now…it’s just about ego and popularity contests. And if it was just about a magic number — I might agree. But the real value of Klout isn’t really the score. It’s the label.
Klout has divided and defined influence into a 16 grid scale. (see visual above) So it doesn’t just measure volume and reach — but it measures HOW you influence. Based on your behaviors and what people do with what you share — you are given a label. Looking at our examples again — David Armano’s behaviors and interactions make him a tastemaker. Joe Pulizzi is a pundit, Arianna is a celebrity, and Chris Brogan is a curator.
I think it’s the grid that makes Klout worthy of our attention. There are a wealth of tools that count what you do. The number of tweets, how many comments your Facebook status update receives, and the quantity of thumbs up you get on your YouTube videos. But there are very few that allow us to see how the sum total of our interactions are perceived and what actions they inspire.
You may see yourself as a thought leader but discover that the world sees you as a dabbler or activist. Your Klout score refreshes every day – so you can experiment with different blends of content on the various social media tools to see how your new behaviors are perceived. This allows you to learn and change.
Based on your own marketing and social media goals — you can keep tweaking until your label (and to a lesser extent — your score) matches your intentions. Being able to see how you are perceived and then being able to make adjustments to that perception are what makes Klout a very unique and valuable tool worthy of your attention.
Guest Author:
Drew McLellan is Top Dog at McLellan Marketing Group and the author of AdAge’s Top 150 blog, Drew’s Marketing Minute. Wall Street Journal called it “one of the ten blogs all entrepreneurs should read.” Drew wrote 99.3 Random Acts of Marketing and is co-creator/editor of the ground-breaking Age of Conversation book series. He is also a Marketing Profs Daily Fix blogger and can be followed at @drewmclellan on Twitter.
Filed under Internet Marketing by on Oct 4th, 2011.
I recently did a little training here at SIGMA about Klout scores. What’s the big deal really? Some people obsess over their Klout score like they obsess over their weight. If you are dieting, stepping on the scale every day is never recommended. The same could apply to checking your Klout score I suppose (though I do tend to check mine daily).
As a B2B social marketer, I use Klout to gather up helpful insights about social conversations – by reviewing topics, influencers, and so on. Today, I wanted to take a moment to talk about a nice way to use Klout that can boost others and spark conversations. I believe social is more about giving than receiving. Sharing is caring right?
Tell someone you value their social content by awarding them Klout in the form of +K. Every Klout users gets five +K to give away each day. Letting people know you appreciate them by giving them a “shout out” can be a nice relationship builder, and it’s really quite simple…
Find the person you want to recognize with +K (you can search by name, Twitter ID, etc.). Once you find them, there are two easy ways to award Klout. First, you’ll see the lists of topics that Klout (and others) associate with that person. If the topic you want to award +K in shows in the top 3, you can click the +K button and voila! Klout awarded. Otherwise, click “see all”, to locate the appropriate topic of influence, and then click on the +K button (see below).
Awarding Klout by Topic of Influence.
Clicking on that little orange +K button is all it takes to let someone know you value them. You’ll get a confirmation message, telling you how many +K you have remaining for the day, and the option to share on Twitter or Facebook who you just gave some Klout to.
Using +K has started some brand-new dialogues for me with folks who I’ve been listening too. It can open up the door for new conversation. Who do you value in your social media circles? Let them know by awarding them some Klout!
Reach out and Klout someone today!
Filed under Internet Marketing by on Sep 30th, 2011.
Klout – One word that has created a very big buzz in online communities.
Klout – A measurement of online influence?
Klout – A Marketing company or a measurement company?
Klout. Klout. Klout.
The Klout Story – Part One – Are You reading Between the LInes?
I recently read the post “Does Klout Matter?” In my option, Klout doesn’t and shouldn’t matter. Not at least until the executive team at Klout answer some basic questions and begin to institute some transparency with and for their users. But to many members of online and offline communities, Klout matters because they simply believe it increases the power of their influence.
Klout self proclaims themselves as “The Standard of Influence”. There are many definitions of a ‘standard’. Very generally, a standard might simply be defined as ‘a set of rules for ensuring quality’. But what is the quality standard that Klout provides to us, and how accurate is it? By their own statements, Klout is not accurate. How can they call themselves the standard of influence when they acknowledge on a daily bases that their data is not accurate?
Lets look at influence as well. According to the dictionary influence is defined as:
“ the act or power of producing an effect without apparent exertion of force or direct exercise of command”.
I was recently in a group tweet chat with Ms. Megan Berry as the guest. Megan is marketing manager and privacy officer at Klout. I asked Megan if there was any study available that would support their findings that Klout measure influence. She answered that no studies where ever made.
To be the “Standard of Influence”, Klout should have to provide official documentation to support this claim. Just like the standards certified by the Institute of Science and Technology, and other official gatekeepers for various prestigious and recognized entities, Klout should also be fully vetted before they are allowed to make as well as use such a claim. Until then, what Klout does is simply measure our online movements, reactions and actions as raw data.
Klout & Privacy Issue
There are at least three major concerns in regard to how Klout handles our privacy. In my opinion, Klout breaches everyone’s privacy on daily basis, even if you’re not registered with Klout. When registering with Klout, you simply authorize Twitter or Facebook to connect to your own Klout account. Klout then syncs the data and calculates your Klout score. Here are the three main areas of privacy concern:
1. When connecting your Klout profile to Twitter, you agree to the Terms and Conditions of Twitter. But did you know that when you sign up for a Twitter account you are, by default, agreeing to Klout publishing a profile on your behalf? No where when signing up for Twitter does Twitter’s TOS say you agree to the actions of Klout. The same applies to Facebook.
2. When you do officially register for Klout, you only agree that Klout can read your Twitter timeline, and see who you follow. But whether or not you register, you never give them the rights to publish your full Twitter profile information, including your full name, location, picture, set up Klout label nor either publish your profile across the web.
3. But even if you’re not registered, Klout uses your information to create a profile for you whether you know it, or agree to it, or not. It includes all your Twitter profile information, picture, influence topics, and who you influence, and they expose this to entire world completely without your permission. There are no terms of service or agreements to check, it is just done.
While you may consider your Twitter or Facebook accounts separate from your employer, for example, Klout considers them fair game to display to the entire world without your permission. Furthermore, Klout touts your Klout score as something that employers should be using to gauge your job worthiness. How would you feel if a prospective employer found your Klout score that you didn’t even know you had? What if your terms of influence weren’t what you wanted a prospective employer to discover? Worse, what if a prospective or current employer made decisions about you based partially or wholly on a Klout score you weren’t even aware existed?
Klout and Twitter both need to better define their registration processes and privacy issues. Users need to know exactly the terms of service across both platforms since they’re automatically linked whether we realize it or not. We need to know what we’re really consenting to when agreeing to their terms of service.
What is fascinating to me that my privacy on Facebook is set to high protection and my profile can’t be found in public search, but yet I can be seen on Klout with no advent of modifying that information. Additionally, Klout announced that nearly 2000 companies were accessing the Klout data base on daily bases in search of influential people across the web, but in the Terms of Service published on Klout, there is no information or clause that we agree that our data can be shared with 3rd party vendors of Klout.
“Welcome to Klout. By accessing the Klout website (“Site”) or using the services offered by Klout (“Services”) you agree and acknowledge to be bound by these Terms of Service (“Terms”). If you do not agree to these Terms, please do not access the Site or use the Services. Klout reserves the right to change these Terms at any time. We recommend that you periodically check this Site for changes.”
This is the first Term that we must agree to. The main issue, as I stated above, is that the Klout Terms of Service are not available during the registration. There is no check box or confirmation binding me to the Terms of Service. Klout should ask users to agree to their Terms and Service directly during the registration process.
“Site Content
You understand that all postings, messages, text, images or other materials (“Content”) posted or published on, uploaded to, transmitted through, or linked from (hereinafter, “post” or “posted”), the Service are the sole responsibility of the person from whom such Content originated. You understand that Klout does not control, and is not responsible for, Content made available through the Service, and that by using the Service, you may be exposed to Content that is offensive, indecent, inaccurate, misleading, or otherwise objectionable. Furthermore, the Site and Content available through the Service may contain links to other websites which are completely independent of Klout. Klout makes no representation or warranty as to the accuracy, completeness or authenticity of the information contained in any such site. Your linking to any other websites is at your own risk. You agree that you must evaluate, and bear all risks associated with, the use of any Content, that you may not rely on said Content, and that under no circumstances will Klout be liable in any way for any Content or for any loss or damage of any kind incurred as a result of the use of any Content posted or otherwise made available via the Service. You acknowledge that Klout does not pre-screen or approve Content, but that Klout shall have the right (but not the obligation) in its sole discretion to refuse, delete or remove any Content that is available via the Service, in connection with violations of the letter or spirit of the Terms of Use or for any other reason.”
Now if you take a close look at the section of TOS above, you will see that entire paragraph talks about posting, sharing, uploading and so on, on the site of Service, which in this case is Klout. But Klout is not a platform that we can post, share or upload any content to. What they need to make very clear here is that the content you post on Twitter, Facebook and anywhere else they decide to pull from, and either with or without your permission, is the content they are warning you about. Again, this TOS extends to those with unregistered or unclaimed profiles on Klout, too. This is the same ‘employer concern’ I was speaking of earlier.
There are many more of Klouts Terms of Service that don’t make sense either. The link below will take you to current their TOS and you can read it for yourself. I’d recommend saving a copy due to their ability to change their terms on the fly.
Klout Terms of Service – Klout TOS on September 19 2011
On top of the above Klout privacy and TOS concerns, there also are no options to deactivate your account, nor to hide all or certain parts of your profile. There are no terms in their Privacy Policy that compel us to agree to disclose the entirety of this collected and collated information to the world. There is no clause that states we agree that our profiles and their data can be shared with Klout’s 3rd party vendors.
The only clause in the Privacy Policy on Klout is in regard to their Service Providers. Klout discloses that they use 3rd party data companies to help them maintain their data. Whether you’re registered or not, you’re agreeing to 3rd party data companies accessing your information.
Additionally, it’s my opinion that Klout may be pitting the 2000 companies accessing our data in a possible legal battle against us. This represents thousands of Twitter users worldwide, potentially every single Twitter user out there, due to their unauthorized access of our information published through the Klout website.
I sincerely hope that all 2000 companies who share their API and access our data are aware of the magnitude of the potential privacy breach and that Twitter and other legal entities will take a closer look at the privacy concerns and what appear to be breaches in the Klout system.
To be continued…
Filed under Internet Marketing by on Sep 24th, 2011.
