Welcome to the world of Social Influence…yes this is what Klout is really about! It helps to give you a quick gage of how much an individual might be involved in social networks.
The first I would like to say is that: “I see Klout as a tool it’s not good or bad it’s just a tool”. The best thing you can do is educate yourself on how to use it to benefit YOUR goals and then leave it at that! This post is just to get you started and shed some light as to get a better understanding of using Klout to achieve your Social media goals.
The first step is to Set up your Klout account so it reflects your complete social media efforts, one of the first things you will want to do is to link all of the profiles you have to your Klout account. And the reason why this is important is because Klout is measure your ability to drive action. Meaning the amount of Retweets, @messages, likes, and comments YOU drive.
Not that you NEED more profiles it’s just if you spend time at sharing & engaging on Facebook (per example) and your account is not linked these stats will not be taken into account. Here are the available platforms you can link to your Klout account:
- Foursquare
- YouTube
- Tumblr
- Blogger
- Last.fm
- Flickr
Once you have your entire profiles linked gage for yourself the actions you do and how it affects the score. Always keeping in mind the measures are based on the actions YOU drive.
A quick look at your dashboard
Once you log on visit your dashboard here is where you will see details on the following categories:
True reach = # of people that tend to respond or share when you post a message. This is a good matrix for yourself to gage how your strategy is working out. Evaluate who and how well is it being received. Things like how much content you share what do your followers do with the content is it retweeted is it commented on.
Amplification = this represent how much you influence people. Meaning how many people respond to or spread when you post a message. You can study who you influence (meaning who acts on your actions) and are these right followers for your reach.
The more people act on your tweets/posts the higher your Amplification score.
Your network = represent the influence of the people in your True Reach, meaning how often do top Influencers share and respond to your content
This is helpful to see if who are your top influencers if they are sharing your content it is good practice to acknowledge their efforts’ in supporting you.
Understanding this matrix can help you adjust your content & engaging strategy if need be, but not everyone is “playing” this game by that I mean understand how the #’s are scored so basing your engagement with only a specific group could have you miss out on potential connection that could be VERY rewarding.
So bottom line is Klout score is NOT rule for how much influence a person might have it can be helpful in navigating your strategy but not the whole plan.
So to recap:
- Klout Score measures influence based on your ability to drive action.
- Every time you create content or engage you influence others.
What affects your score?
- Retweets
- @messages
- likes
- comments
What does not affect your score?
- Klout perks (Business Brands can use Klout to Target influencers within the target market, Klout then engages with them to try/experience the product which is then amplified via shares on social networks.
- +Klout (shout out used to acknowledge people in your network base on topics you feel they have influenced you o) giving or receiving +K does not affect your score
Stay focused on your goals use Klout as a tool to adjust or crank up your social media strategy and mostly don’t get caught up with numbers this could have you missed out on hidden gems.
I hope this post has “shed some light” on the topic of Klout…do not hesitate to leave me a comment if you have some questions!