Have you got Klout?

Do you have Klout? So often I meet clients who want to start posting on Facebook, join Twitter or launch a company page on LinkedIn. They want to ‘be social’ and I agree, setting up social media accounts is a good place to start. However, as with every digital marketing channel, identifying clear objectives and measuring performance is integral to social success. Social media can take significant investment of time and as such you need to be able to justify a return on investment.

When it comes to social reporting and measurement, every objective, brand and social channel is and should be different. As an eCommerce website you might for example be using Pinterest to drive traffic to your website and convert to a sale – you’ll be tracking Google Analytics to measure the key channels that have driven the highest volume of traffic and pages that have converted traffic to sales. As a brand launching a Christmas TV campaign you may be measuring brand awareness through video views on YouTube over a two-week period and benchmarking this success against last year’s campaign video views.

Klout is one of my favourite tools for measuring social impact. A free application, Klout measures and assigns a number to your digital social ‘influence’ from anything from 1 to 100 – based on the level of engagement you build through your social media channels.  It takes into account:

• True Reach: how many people you actually influence
• Amplification: how much you influence those people
• Network: how influential your network is

The likes of celebrities, publications and large high street brands for example have a high Klout score. At the time of writing this blog for example: Kim Kardashian (89) James Corden (86) The Financial Times (93) BBC (80) Debenhams (86).

American reality star Kim Kardashian’s Klout score is currently 89

The Financial Times Klout score is currently 93

From a customer perspective your online profile is increasingly important when it comes to securing trust, integrity and reassurance that you are who you say you are. That’s why in the case of influence, Klout matters – it’s a measurement of the effectiveness of your online profile in the social media sphere. To an extent, followers go hand in hand with your Klout score. On the one hand your Klout should grow, the higher the volume of followers you have as more followers are engaging with your content. On the other hand if your content is not engaging, you can have all the followers in the world but if they’re not connecting with your content your Klout score will be low.

From an SEO perspective Klout has weight too as it enables you to discover key social profiles to connect with for relationship and link building. If for example you’re a beauty business, you’ll be keen to connect with Beauty bloggers or as an Insurance company the likes of key influencers such as the Financial Times with high Klout scores.

How do you build your Klout score?

1. Make sure your social media accounts are public
2. Link your social media accounts to Klout
3. Connect with key influencers
4. Post content at the right time of day for YOUR audience
5. Ask questions
6. Create content that is easy and engaging enough to want to share

Have you checked your Klout score recently? If you need help with building your social influence speak to Emma on 01992 582824 or tweet us at @CariadMarketing