Klout is an amazing tool that measures your influence across the social media universe. By linking with your Twitter account, it collects a range of data from your tweets, the content you post, and how people react to it and runs the data through 30 different variable to measure your actual influence. This is far apart from how many followers you have—it’s functional data you can interpret and actually use.
It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood.
This Neighborhood Comparison graph shows you where you fall on a graph of user types, based off of your activity and responses to it.
What kind of Twitter user are you? Are you a Persona with thousands of followers? Chances are if you’re a celebrity, you fall into this category. Maybe you’re a Connector, someone who tweets information others find valuable. You might be a Climber (new to Twitter? Building your voice? Or spamming like crazy?) or like ShannonRose_RK, a Casual user.
You may notice a big, glaring “6″ in the above image. That’s our Klout score, and it’s not very good. The good news is, it’s pretty easy to change. Klout rates you on a scale of 1-100, 100 being the most influential. “The final Klout Score is a representation of how successful a person is at engaging their audience and how big of an impact their messages have on people.” Basically, it’s not who’s got the bullhorn on the mountain; it’s who’s not being tuned out.
I’m tweeting away… who’s listening?
The Klout Stats tab: making sense of your Klout Score.
The above is what the Stats tab looks like. This is where the information gets specific, actually breaking down the individual scores that are used to create your Klout score. I don’t want to give any Calculus professors out there any ammunition for the “When will I ever use math in real life?” question, but the formula is pretty cool. In English: it sees who you’re talking to, who they’re spreading the message to, the size of your available network, and tells you how you’re doing.
Visit this page to see how your Demand measures up: this score specifically shows you things like who is mentioning your handle in Tweets, and who decides to follow you back when you follow them. Cool stuff.
Putting a price on 140 characters.
The Klout Content tool measures what you’re tweeting, what kinds of things you tweet, and how people react.
We all know it’s not about how much you tweet, but what you’re actually saying. Quality over quantity. To get a grip on understanding how you’re doing in this department, Klout offers you Stats that analyze things like links you share, your % tweets with questions in them, links in them, messages, and replies. It’s also helpful to see where you’re lacking, like a gentle nudge.
It’s a small world afterall.
The Klout Network map measures your influence across the globe visually.
Who is affecting what you’re tweeting, and where are they from? This map is a cool visual way to see how you’re networking nationally and internationally.
Another great aspect of this Klout is the ability to see how you measure up. As long as a user is registered, you can check out their stats, what kind of a user they are, and how they’re getting their message out.
Klout is really pretty incredible, like your own personal research department. It makes things concrete, and makes sense of it all. Now, go forth and influence.
Tags: Klout · Klout beta · Social Media · social networking · Twitter tools