My Interview of Megan Berry, Director of Marketing at Klout.com
I recently conducted an online webinar on the topic of Klout scores. I invited Megan Berry, Director of Marketing at Klout to be my guest speaker and unravel what some might consider a mystery when it comes to understanding Klout score reports and one’s measure of online influence. You just might be surprised at what it all really means. In addition, gaining a better understanding of your Klout score report may help you with your own social media influence strategy.
A link to the webinar is provided at the end of this blog. You will need Windows Media Player to view. In the webinar I chose one of my favorite technology speakers, Gina Schreck as the live example during the Megan’s guided tour through the Klout report. The live example is extremely insightful and will help you interpret you own Klout report.
What does your Klout score and report components mean? In simple, it is the measure of one’s online influence. You can equate it to a credit report for social media. Klout scores range from 1 to 100. As Klout will tell you – “the Klout score is highly correlated to clicks, comments and retweets.”
What do the varying scores mean? I bet you are thinking that someone who has 10,000 followers will have a much higher Klout score than someone with 1,000 followers. Think again.
As Megan states in the webinar, “follower count is not a useful metric of influence. It is a tiny component.” Klout looks at engagement – how many people are acting because of what you say such as retweeting your messages, placing you on Twitter lists and/or clicking your links. Are you influencing people to take some type of action? The other level of engagement is the “who”, as in who is engaging with you?
What is considered a good score? Let’s say that you have a Klout score of 32 – what does that mean? According to Megan, a score above 30 shows expertise in social media. Above a 50 is approaching social media thought leader status.
Score Subcomponents. There are many subcomponents to your score. One of which is True Reach, which is the measure of your engaged audience. Another is Amplification, which represents how far your message spreads beyond your own network and it is a key component to your online influence.
What is your influence style? Are you an explorer, curator or celebrity? Klout has 16 different types of influence. This is different from your Klout score. It is your influence style and as Megan stated, “one style is not necessarily better than another.” For example, a Curator is defined as one who finds the best content all around the web and shares what they find. This influencer type doesn’t necessarily create the content they share and they usually have a very wide audience. A Celebrity influence style is generally one who is the creator of content and it is content that others engage heavily within.
What if you don’t like your influence classification? How can you go about changing your style of influence? Megan suggests that you look at examples of your peers and those you aspire too. Perhaps your current style classification is that of Curator but you would rather be known as a Thought Leader. Keep in mind that your style of influence can change based upon many online activity variables. You might be an Explorer today and a Thought Leader tomorrow.
What is your Klout influence on Facebook? Klout now measures your influence on Facebook. This is a new feature of Klout that wasn’t in place when the webinar was delivered just a few weeks ago. You can now connect your Facebook account to Klout for a Facebook Klout analysis. You will be able to view your Facebook report card, so to speak and find out what your true amplification on Facebook really is.
Visit www.Klout.comto view your Klout report or anyone else you might be curious about. Klout’s site does a very good job of explaining the influence metric, be sure to visit www.Klout.com/Kreport specifically for the influence metric breakdown.
Don’t’ forget to view the recorded Webinar for a very insightful tour of the Klout report given by Megan Berry, Director of Marketing. In the end, you will know how to interpret your own social media “credit” report or should we say your social media report card. Megan takes us through a live example of @GinaSchreck’s Klout report. By the way, at the the time of the webinar, Gina’s influence style was defined as Explorer and as of this writing her influence style shows as Thought Leader. I think Ms. Gina is own her way to yet another influence style – Celebrity status.
You will need Windows media player to view the recording. You really don’t want to miss this so get your coffee, tea or milk and watch the show! It’s about 20 minutes in length if you subtract the introduction and closing.
