The Klout app is long gone but was much talked about in its prime. Klout believed that influence is the ability to drive action! I really liked that statement. In many ways the Klout score was maybe the best that we had at the time as one metric to measure social media influence.
The Klout score looked at how many people you influenced, and by how much, and how influential they were, and it used 12 social networks. Klout measured not what you talked about most, but the content that got the most engagement.
There were 3 parts to the Klout scoring system;
True Reach
True Reach is the number of people influenced. They filtered out spam and bots and focused on the people who were acting on your content.
Amplification
The Amplification measured how much people were influenced. It tracked posts to see how many people responded to it or had spread it further. If people often acted upon your content you had a high Amplification score.
Your Network
The Network score indicated the influence of the people in your True Reach. How often did top Influencers share and respond to your content? When they did they helped to increase your Network score.
Klout score vs. PeerIndex score
Klout had become one of the most used metrics for any Social media dashboard. I certainly had listed it in many of the dashboards I created following a strategic overview. I also liked using the PeerIndex score as well, as that used to break influence down into three main parts, audience, authority and activity. PeerIndex described itself as enabling us to have an understanding of our social capital. I really liked PeerIndex as it also provided a way to compare yourself with your competitors.
Increasing the Klout score
There were many theories about how to increase the Klout score. The path to success really lied in how people influenced others and how they reacted.
Klout used to list the people that you are influenced by. People that were likely to respond to and share your content. Simply posting more blog posts, and more Facebook updates would not have increased your Klout score unless people responded and engaged with the content.
What was new in Klout at that time?
Klout perks
Klout Perks were exclusive products or experiences that you could earn based on your Klout score. Klout listed the requirements below the Perk. These perks could eventually get used up, and then they become “full”.
Klout topic pages
Topic pages allowed you to see the top influencers, top +K recipients and top content for any of the topics listed on Klout.com. You could give a +k recommendation to your peers, influencers etc. There was a daily limit of five +K. It was a great feeling when you got a +K from one of your peers. When you gave someone +K that topic was highlighted on their profile. This gave the impression that those people were influential for that topic.
Klout Achievements
These were badges that you could earn based on your activity. Funky badges like “The summer of Klout”.
Klout lists
Did Klout have any drawbacks?
I recall Jeremiah Owyang’s web-strategist blog post of Feb 21st 2011, where he talked about the Klout score being a “useful metric, but an incomplete view of your customer”. He listed six significant insufficiencies:
- Alienating your mainstream customers in desire to serve influentials.
- Consumers will game the system –reducing validity of metric.
- Klout is not representative of a customer’s real influence.
- Without sentiment of the influencer –the gauge is incomplete.
- Relying on this single metric alone is dangerous.
- Influence is not a gauge of true buying potential.
In summary – The Klout Score
Defining a complex topic like influence with just one number is a tall order, but Klout tried to do it. It was not about the quantity, it was about the engagement and interaction with your peers to the content you created. The Klout scoring system was based on 3 areas – Network Influence, Amplification Probability and True Reach.
This was one of my favourite quotes about Influence from my early years in social media marketing, and is a nice summary to keep in mind…
“My simple answer is to surround yourself with industry relevant and influential people; contribute relevant and great comments to their blogs and updates and provide relevant and remarkable content”.
– Terry Crosby, Social Media Strategist and Trainer – Jan 19, 2011
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