When it comes to personal branding with social media what might come to mind are things like keeping your Facebook and Twitter accounts professional should your prospective employer Google you; or, deciding on your visual branding. But did you know that Klout can also help you build a brand?
Wikipedia defines Klout as: “…a website and mobile app that uses social media analytics to rank its users according to online social influence via the “Klout Score”, which is a numerical value between 1 and 100. In determining the user score, Klout measures the size of a user’s social media network and correlates the content created to measure how other users interact with that content.”
It’s not how many Twitter followers or Facebook fans you have – Klout measures how effective you are in interacting and how often others spread the word about you or your brand. How far does your message reach? Klout provides that metric.
Does social measurement matter?
Since Klout upgraded its algorithm in 2011, the controversial company has become the standard for social influence measurement. Like it or not, your activity is being recorded from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram, Foursquare, and YouTube. If your name or business has a Wikipedia page, count that in as well.
As your business or individual persona becomes more widely known, then a new term ‘social influence’ – the ability to drive action – goes into effect. When you share something on social media or in real life and people respond, that’s influence. While interacting on social media and connecting with fans and followers, Klout is measuring your daily activity, producing a score based on a 90 day average – your social influence score.
You can’t improve what you don’t measure
We’ve all heard the adage. The original quote by Dr. H. James Harrington is, “Measurement is the first step that leads to control and eventually to improvement. If you can’t measure something, you can’t understand it. If you can’t understand it, you can’t control it. If you can’t control it, you can’t improve it.” It’s not a stretch to say that any person or business who wishes to perform better or accomplish more has meaningful points of measurement. Think of Klout as the Google Analytics for social media.
There are several ways to use Klout to build your brand and influence:
- Connect your social media with Klout. Signup is quick and easy through Twitter or Facebook. It is well worth becoming a part of the social measurement service, and establishes you as a credible brand. After creating an account, you will want to connect as many of your ‘active’ social networks that you can, as these will factor into your score. Currently Facebook and Twitter are at the top of the list for measurement.
- Find other Klout influencers in your niche. Through Klout’s powerful search tool you can find others who are already in your social networks, or those you would like to connect with. By creating the topics that match your brand you can give what is called a +K for their topic, which can be sent out as a tweet or a post to that individual. Most people will return the favor, which all helps your Klout score.
- Maintain a healthy, active, and engaged community. It is vital to provide fresh content and interact with your fans and followers. Contests, questions, videos, images, and other interesting posts that create a relationship with your community and get shared carries a lot of weight.
- Create a list. Klout now allows a user to create a list, just like in Twitter or Facebook, and add influencers to that list.
- Become a Klout Expert. One of the benefits of Klout is to answer questions in its newer service called ‘Klout Experts.’ This is a great way to show off your skills, create potential leads, and have your answers appear in Bing’s search results.
- Login to Klout daily. This is an important step to keep track of your progress, view any action alerts, thank influencers who have given you “K” on Klout, and find new people to connect with.
