Did you know that as a blogger, you’re uniquely positioned to influence not only your readers, but entire social networks as well? Every item you publish has the potential to be seen not only by people who visit your website, but by countless others as it is shared across the blogosphere. As a result, measuring online influence has become big business and a growing number of companies now specialize in providing individuals and businesses with these metrics. Today I’d like to introduce you to the leader in the field – Klout.
CEO Joe Fernandez founded Klout in 2008 to measure online influence across a variety of social networks. Klout analyzes data in the public domain to derive Klout Scores – meaning, you may be one of over 100 million people that has a Klout Score, whether you know it or not!
Klout likens these scores to social media credit scores and a growing number of companies now take Klout Scores into consideration when making business decisions! For instance, Waterbrook Multnomah recently announced plans to use Klout scores as a major factor in determining how books were allocated in their blogger book review program.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with Klout – and those trying to gain a better understanding of how Klout works – here are ten things you need to know to understand how Klout works!
Ten Things You Need To Know About Klout
1. Klout defines influence as your ability to drive action across networks in various topics. They measure success by the degree to which people respond to you. For instance, Klout considers a person with 100 followers and a highly engaged audience more influential than a person with 1000 followers and no interaction.
2. Klout assigns you a score from 1 (low) to 100 (high) based on your level of influence. Based on their scale, the average Klout Score is 20 – not 50. If you score above 40, you are considered highly influential on Klout! Only one person – Justin Bieber – has a perfect score (100)!
3. Your Klout Score is comprised of three components:
- True Reach – The number of people you influence
- Amplification – The degree to which you influence them
- Network Score – How influential the people in your network are
Since Klout updates occur daily, you may see minor fluctuations in your score based on current activity. You may see more signicant changes from time to time when Klout fine tunes its proprietary algorithms.
4. Klout evaluates how you communicate on social media and places you into one of 16 Klout Style categories, which may change over time as your Klout Score and communication style changes. Bloggers with identical scores can have different Klout Styles.
5. Klout believes you influence others topically and over time, assigns up to 20 Topics it believes you are influential in. If you disagree with its assessment, you have the ability to delete that topic from your profile. If you are influential in Klout, you also have the ability to choose the topics you are influential in. A person with a lower Klout score but with expertise in a particular topic wields greater influence in an area than a person with a high overall Klout score who lacks topical expertise.
6. Klout users have the ability to award +K to users it believes have topical influence. While awarding someone a +K does not currently affect their overall Klout score (it may in the future) it DOES impact the level of influence they have in the topic (low, medium, high, or strong), which is used in determining eligibility for Klout Perks.
7. Klout recognizes the Top 10 Influencers in key topics and the Top 100 +K Recipients in a topic during the past 90 days by awarding them Gold and/or Blue Sashes on their Klout badges. If you are in the Top 5, you are featured at the top of the Topic Page!
8. Another nice feature of Klout is that as your score grows, you may be eligible for Klout Perks! Klout Perks are exclusive experiences or products, offered to select Klout members, based on a variety of factors, including Klout Scores, Topics and sometimes Location. Klout Perks, when offered, are available in limited quantities – you can choose the ones you want to participate in!
9. You can use Klout to track your social influence across a variety of networks. Currently, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and Foursquare activity counts towards your Klout score. Klout allows you to connect a number of additional networks, but those networks don’t currently influence your Klout score.
10. Additional features on Klout include Achievement Awards, the ability to create lists, and the ability to monitor who you influence – and who influences you – based on your personal interactions across your networks.
Now that you know a little more about Klout, what do you think?
- Does the concept of scoring online influence and its implications excite you, scare you, or intrigue you?
- If you’re a current Klout user, has your experience with Klout been positive, negative or mixed?
- If you are new to Klout, will you be opening an account to see what your Klout score is?
Please leave a comment and share your thoughts!
Useful Links
This is my first week of blogging and my first intro to Klout! I had no idea. Thanks for the info!
like the title of the post!! 😀
I love the blurb about our creative nature – so true! And I’ve been a member of Klout for a while – it’s an interesting way to evaluate your influence!!
Klout is annoying as hell to me. It kind of feels like the Katey Perry song..
Cause you’re hot then you’re cold
You’re yes then you’re no
You’re in and you’re out
You’re up and you’re down
http://www.sweepstakesmama.com
Never heard of it – adding to the list of things to look into “someday.” 🙂
Sigh….just one more thing to keep up with.
WOW — There are so many aspects of blogging that I still have no information on. Thank you for giving some great information on this aspect of blogging. I will definitely be using this info in the future!
Thanks for the great post!
I recently signed up for Klout, but haven’t had the time or energy to look into it closely. Thank you so much for sharing this timely information!
suzy
Twitter: CreateWithJoy1
says:
You’re welcome! Of course, Klout is once again tweaking its site so I hope that everything remains timely! 🙂
I’ve never heard of Klout before, this is very interesting. Thanks for sharing.
Wow this sis really interesting- I may have to check it out. Thanks for the info!
Twitter: CreateWithJoy1
says:
You’re welcome Mary – when you check it out, come look me up!
I was very excited when I saw the title of this post. I have heard of Klout and the other day I logged in for the first time, but I did not understand it at all. I am a 37, so apparently that is decent. I’m not sure how I am going to use Klout just yet, but I am very glad to have a better understanding of what it is and what businesses are looking at it for as well. Thanks!
Twitter: CreateWithJoy1
says:
When I first heard about Klout my score was in the 30s – that is a really good place to start! If you are active you will grow and if not you still have a respectable score.
For all of you who have Klout accounts, have you checked out the current Gilt Perk? Unfortunately I missed my 60% discount but I believe the 20& discount is currently available. I made a purchase from Gilt last year and was really please with my items (journals) and the service I received which is why I mention it to you! (It’s a rolling discount but it is time limited – and quantity limited – even if it says you don’t qualify, click the box to see what happens – sometimes it says you don’t and then it surprises you!) Their system is NOT without bugs!
Never heard of Klout. It sounds interesting, and I will look into it. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for the great information. I’m not on many social media sites so I doubt my score would be very high.
Twitter: CreateWithJoy1
says:
Your score will depend on the site(s) you are on and how active you are there. My score is built and based entirely on Twitter activity.
I don’t really know too much about Klout, but my current score is 50
Twitter: CreateWithJoy1
says:
You are doing great if your score is 50 – congrats!
I have seen Klout score badges on blogs, but I never knew what it was. I think I will wait to check it out after I grow my blog a little more. 🙂
Thanks for the great post on Klout! That’s probably the one thing I don’t take full advantage of.
Wendy
Around My Family Table
I haven’t heard of Klout before. Very fascinating concept!
I’ve never heard of Klout but I’m going to definitely check it out!
I have never heard of klout before. Probably because I am new to blogging. I think I will wait to check it out once my blog is a year old or something. I’d have a big thumbs down if I looked now.
I had never heard of Klout before. It sounds interesting and I may check into it in the future. Thanks for the info.
I learn something new everyday! I have never heard of Klout! Thank you for the intro and all the information!
Twitter: CreateWithJoy1
says:
You’re welcome – I’m really glad I wrote this article, seeing how many people are new to Klout! 🙂
I see several people commenting that they don’t want to sign up because they’re worried their score will be low. Actually, unless you’ve opted out, *everyone* on Twitter has a Klout score, even if you’ve never logged into the Klout website. So you may as well be aware of what your score is, especially if you do product reviews and want another statistic to pull in products and advertisers.
Twitter: CreateWithJoy1
says:
Amanda thanks for pointing this out! I mentioned this in my article but I think it got overlooked due to its length.
One of the things you need to know is that stats are being collected on you all over the place – whether or not you are aware of it – from the moment you go online! Don’t be afraid to open an account to find out what your score is because you are new to blogging or because you fear your score may be low. The BEST time to start monitoring these things is early on when you can start to control them by becoming aware of the things that affect the score. So – on Klout – if you want to be able to control the topics that they say you have influence in for example – work on getting Klout in Klout. If they give you something funky like Circus that you don’t want to be know in – delete it from your score BEFORE people start awarding you +K (if you delete it after you develop influence there it could negatively impact you). When you have topical influence in Klout for 5 +Ks you can pick the topics you want to be known as being influential in – but this only works early on because of the 20 topic max. Early on you can strategize…later on it’s more difficult to change things mid-stream.
Thanks for the info…I had never heard of Klout before! Who knew that Justin Bieber was that influential? lol
I registered at Klout because it wqas required in the giveaway i entered but never really take to study it. Thanks for posting. I think I`l revisit my Klout account
Thank you for the clarification. I have seen “Klout” around, but wasn’t sure what it really was.
It doesn’t really excite me, though maybe it would if it had more influance over things that affected me.
Twitter: CreateWithJoy1
says:
You gain topical Klout by writing and tweeting about those things that influence you. If you are on Twitter, learning to use hashtags properly for your topics can be a big help! So for instance – if you want topical influence in gardening – every time you write about that – if you’re on Twitter – share your post and include the hashtag #garden or #gardening (you’d have to see which is best) to gain influence in that area. It’s sort of like learning to use Keywords to gain SEO recognition on your blog.
AHHH…another “thing” to keep track of in blogging. Yuck 🙁
But I guess we gotta do it!
I had never heard of Klout before today. Thanks for the very informative post.
Twitter: CreateWithJoy1
says:
You’re welcome! 🙂
I’m not a fan of Klout – It can be very discouraging for beginning bloggers to see low numbers.
Twitter: CreateWithJoy1
says:
Hi Stephanie
Low numbers can be discouraging but once you understand how Klout works – 20 is AVERAGE not low – you can begin to work from there! I hope this article arms you with the info you need to better understand Klout and make it work for you! 🙂
I kind of have a love hate relationship with Klout. I check mine every few days. I am at 53 now. I get asked from Sponsors what my Klout score is, so I do try to keep it up. Though it fluctuates, I try not stress too much about it.
Thanks for all this information. I appreciate it. Very well written and explanatory.
Twitter: CreateWithJoy1
says:
Thanks LaVonne & I know what you mean about that love/hate relationship! I appreciate your feedback!
I’ve heard of Klout before, but I never really got into checking it out. Since I’m just starting out with my blog, I guess I won’t need it for the immediate future, but it’s always good to have in mind the concepts on which the score is based — helps focusing your efforts to the right directions 🙂
That’s really useful. Thanks for linking up with Twinkle in the Eye
Twitter: Easy2SaveBlog
says:
Thanks so much for the great information about Klout. I have one question that I did not see mentioned unless I missed it. Can you get an email alert when a perk is open for you and if you can how do you sign up?
Twitter: CreateWithJoy1
says:
Thanks Victoria for stopping by! Based on my experience, Klout is uneven with the way that they handle Perks. Sometimes, I receive an email notification that I qualify for a Perk. Sometimes I receive a Notification on my Klout Panel under Notifications when I qualify for a Perk. Most of the time, I am not notified – I just have to remember to check regularly (I recommend daily) the Perks to see if anything new has opened up. It’s best to do this anyway because sometimes if a perk moves slowly they will open up things that were previously closed to you – and sometimes, things you qualify fly out the door and you miss them!
If there is a way to officially sign up for an alert – I don’t know about it. If you have followed all of the normal registration procedures, you should be covered! 🙂
I have used Klout off and on for a while. The strangest thing happens to me when I connect a LinkedIn profile (with over 500 contacts.) My Klout immediately drops from the high 40s down to 10 and stays there. Even after I remove LinkedIn, it stays low for a few days before jumping back to the right area. I’ve tried this three times spaced months apart, and it always happens!
Thanks for the Klout, btw, I reciprocated with you and will also give +K to anyone who gives it to me at http://klout.com/#/RetroCollageArt/topics
I have a thought. Maybe I could use EntreCard to bring in Klout, too. I have loads of credit there.
Twitter: CreateWithJoy1
says:
Thanks for sharing! I would contact Klout re: the LinkedIn problem since this sounds like a technical glitch (and one they can track since it happens repeatedly). I am not on LinkedIn so I am less familiar with that but I DO know that the biggest Klout factorings in one’s scores seem to be Twitter and Facebook.
Thanks also for the Klout – I’ll be adding you to my list! 🙂
Have a great weekend!
I’ve never heard of Klout. Research is required!
Klever post! Lots of info you shared! Good to know! Enjoy the weekend and thanks for sharing!
Twitter: Imagesbycw
says:
Hm, I have been on Klout for a few months, but I am somehow not really hooked. Every now and then I’ll go and check it (just now, sitting at 38), but it does not really do much for me. But thanks for the info, explained it a little better.
I learn so much from you!
I’ve never even heard of this. How fun that you’re figuring it out, though.
You have a really active following so I suspect your Klout is pretty inKredible!
Thanks for letting us in on this information!
A+
I haven’t seen a lot of results usong Klout! Am I doing something wrong because you are bragging lke its the best thing on earth! I want to feel that way. K+ me MSANGELMB!