How and Why Klout's Scoring Model May Affect Your KLOUT Score
Klout.com has been constantly evolving its platform in the online social media measurement arena.
Klout.com has the very popular +K's whereby individuals can give Klout to those that they deem deserving for specific topics. For example, you may have a business associate on Twitter that is an influencer in social media. You could visit http://www.klout.com/#/theirtwitterusername and give them +K under the topic social media.
Klout.com has continued to update their platform by releasing additional changes in their social media influence platform. Klout.com assigns a number that is supposed to reflect how active and engaged individuals are on specific social media platforms. This number is based on a number of factors and a series of algorithms that they closely guard.
Klout's scoring model “represents the biggest step forward in accuracy, transparency and our technology in Klout's history,” says Ash Rust, Director of Ranking, in a post found on Klout's blog.
These Klout changes address the following:
True Reach
True Reach is a measurement of the number of people you actually influence through your social media presences. Klout.com states that they “analyze over two and a half billion connections and pieces of content every day” to calculate your true reach.
Amplification
This is a measurement of how many people act upon your content. Klout.com has further refined this to measure the true effect that your content has on your audience. As an example, if someone rarely comments or likes someone else's content but, today, they decide that something you shared was great and they commented or liked your post, Klout is going to give more amplification weight to that person's comment than someone who comments numerous times a day.
Accuracy & Transparency
Klout's changes will include a system that shares with you why your Score is where it is and if it drops, Klout will tell you why. For example, if you Score goes up because more influencers are sharing your content, Klout will notify you that this is why your Score is going up. This information will be very helpful moving forward.
Influence the Ability to Drive Action
The primary reason for these changes, according to Klout, is to accurately measure actual engagement and not the number of tweets sent, the number of followers you have or how many times you post on Facebook. Your Score and thus, your true influence, will revolve around having influential followers who interact with your content.
How will this affect you? Klout's latest tweaks to their algorithms could impact your klout score; positively or negatively, depending on how you measure up against their new standards. Rust is also quoted as saying “a majority of users will see their Scores stay the same or go u but some users will see a drop.”
Many top niche influencers found that their Scores dropped substantially with the new changes implemented by Klout.com. Personally, even though I was also affected negatively by the changes, I think this is a good thing. Many influencers have lost touch with their audiences and maybe this will be a wakeup call and encourage more direct involvement from here on out.
The bottom line is to not get caught up on the number or Score assigned by klout.com. Social media is all about engagement. Only you know who and what influences your business. We also have to realize that measurement tools are just babies and are going to change and adjust as they learn more about reliable ways to measure engagement. For goodness sake, do not let your klout score dictate who you do or do not talk to online. You may lose some incredible connections if you let their influence scores influence you.
Just get out there, focus on your audience, engage them and the rest will take care of itself!
Also see Got Klout? Klout Scores and Social Scoring…What's the Big Deal?
Visit me on Klout.com.
I would love to know how you fared with the new Klout.com changes and if you agree or disagree with them. Please leave your comments below.
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Thanks so much for the update! I had signed up for Klout a little while ago but didn't do much with it because I wasn't sure what it meant. Off to check and see if my score was changed!
I definitely need to address the ‘perks’! Thanks for pointing this out. What is your favorite perk so far?
Hi, Kim, Thanks for the great post. My Klout score showed a slight trend starting down – but didn't actually change. Looking forward to more great posts and tweets. Have a great week.
Thanks for dropping in, Dave!
You get 10 “klout’s” a day to give out. They are replenished as people give you Klout.
Great article. I didn't know they were making changes. I have been so busy I hadn't checked in until I read your article. Mine is about the same, but would love to see it increase over time.
Thank you for explaining the Klout score changes. I recently signed up for my account and was interested in what Klout uses to determine the score. I was wondering if it is best to keep my websites separate, or combine them into one Klout account. I would think it is best to keep them separate so I can track each site separately, but not sure.
Thanks Kim! You have always valuable content on your blog and Klout is really interesting to follow… Many people says a lot and most of them with lower scores use to complain so improvement is always great!
Very interesting. I didn’t know about Klout. Thank you.