Technology
Got Klout?
›› A cunning use of statistics, or a meaningful way to engage with your clients? Ruth Bushi takes a look at Klout.
lout (http://klout.com), with its fashionably misspelled branding, is a relatively new contender to the online scene. It aims to track an individual’s social activity across multiple and distinct sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and even Wordpress, and identify influencers through a Klout score. The social aspect of the Klout score is clever in its own right: it serves to ‘validate’ users of social media and reward popularity. So in theory, the more online savvy you are, the higher your score. Whether the prestige of a high Klout score is something that users buy into remains to be seen, but corporate campaigns have been quick to jump into the breach. And, in the rapidly shifting online canvas, that’s understandable: being at the leading edge of a new trend is a regular occurrence yet rare opportunity for most brands.
The numbers The Klout score, a figure between 1 and 100, reflects your ability to drive the actions of others, and does so through three aspects:1 ■ True reach: How many people you influence ■ Amplification: How many people you influence; how many repost or respond to your messages ■ Network: The level of influence your influencers have By linking Klout to your social networks, you give permission for the service to access your chosen social accounts. The algorithm then looks at the activity of those accounts, such as the number of followers, posts, likes and so on, claiming to discount spam and dead links.
How much clout does Klout have? Klout has seemingly come out of nowhere to piggyback – rather cleverly – on existing
social media sites, and to cash in on notions of popularity and influence. Having launched in San Francisco in 2007, Klout already features in the social marketing campaigns of some very influential brands. On landing at www.facebook.com/audi, users are invited to calculate their own Klout score. The page has a back-end scale, set by the page owner, which allows users to receive a tailored response depending on their score. For those identified as influencers, with scores above a particular threshold, the pay-off includes freebies, offers and even a test drive opportunity. In October 2011, a “more accurate, transparent” scoring mechanism was revealed by Klout;2 but as many users found their scores inexplicably plunging, the backlash (through Twitter, of course) was swift and angry. While some have likened the Klout scoring mechanism to a daily horoscope in credibility and value, others in the US have placed more faith in it. Mathew Ingam, blogging about the new scoring mechanism at Giga.com, remarks that, “One of the most popular comments said that Klout was used by some companies for job searches, as well as employee performance reviews and other similar purposes, and that the company’s changes could affect people’s livelihoods”.3
What’s in it for you? If your business has a Facebook page, you may like to explore what the Klout app (developed by Involver) can do for you. Yet it’s not without its issues; FitPro endeavoured to use the Klout mechanism for a campaign to entice influencers of its annual FitPro Convention in late 2011, but technical problems with the app meant that we ended up creating our own campaign based on principles of influence and identifying influencers ourselves. Whether it’s Klout or your own
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endeavour, the principle above all is a sound one, and mirrors the work of global brands such as Disney Pixar who match their clout with those of online influencers. In April 2011 they invited YouTuber Alex Day to the studio in Los Angeles ahead of the release of Cars 2, putting it in the stream of his Nerimon channel’s 12 million views. Now … that’s clout. fpb
For references, see www.fitpro.com/references
Ruth Bushi is publishing and social media manager for FitPro Ltd. www.fitpro.com
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