Using Klout to assist in Personal Branding
In today's digitalised life, measures of our online influence and reputation are slowly becoming an accepted fact. Soon, a good online reputation will be the most valuable currency in our hands. Like it or not, Klout and other tools are already becoming a part of the recruiting process - especially in industries where building online influence matters (e.g. PR, marketing, sales).
Can Klout help us develop our personal brand online?
To answer this question, let me start with personal branding fundamentals and how Klout relates to them. Credibility, visibility and having a strong network are three fundamental elements of personal branding.
Credibility: Klout Score and Influential Topics can showcase your expertise in your focused areas. Concentrate on a few key career-value based attributes!
Visibility is a starting point for influence: Klout Moments show your mentions and most influential posts, and can help you understand the impact that various activities have on your score.
Having a strong network: Klout helps you to identify influencers around topics of interest that you would like to associate with. However, you will need to identify and activate them, not just follow them!
How does Klout monitor our social activity?
1. Firstly, it looks at the size of your engaged audience. And secondly, whether people follow you back. This measure is called True Reach.
2. Then, there is Amplification. This is a measure of how much you influence these people. It looks at the following three areas:
Engagement: Do you participate in conversations? Do you reach a wide range of people?
Velocity: How often are you retweeted? Who retweets you? Is it always the same few people, or is it many different people?
Activity: How often do you engage in social networks? What is the frequency of you updates? Are people replying?
3 And finally, Network: It is the level of influence of your engaged audience. The higher the Klout Score of the people who are engaged with you, the higher your Network Score will be.
And to sum up:
1. I see Klout as an online personal brand monitoring tool rather than an accurate measure of social media 'presence' - notice that I am not using word 'influence' here!
2. Klout Moments show which posts made your Klout Score go up. This can help you with your content strategy for growing your brand influence.
3. The general rule for increasing Klout Score appears to be the following: Direct engagement is more influential than casual sharing!
4. Klout enables you to build a network relevant to your brand.
5. Klout allows you to benchmark your social media engagement against your peers and, consequently, motivates you to stay engaged.
6. But remember: If you take your Klout Score too seriously, the social networking can become very time consuming!
The latest news is that Klout algorithm now extends beyond social media and is making its “first steps towards including real-world influence" (e.g. How important you are at your company? Are you important enough to have your own Wikipedia page?).
My advice to you would be to focus on quality! I would also like to share this piece of timeless wisdom: The way to influence people is by getting to know them and understanding is what makes them tick!
Dean Demellweek, Branding and Digital Strategist, with 20 years of FTSE 100 company experience on both corporate and agency sides, specialised in B2B Integrated Brand MarketingCommunications. Dean blogs and tweets about brand experience, brand communities, social brands and personal branding.
You can follow Dean on Twitter: @Branding_Guy
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Dr Amit Nagpal's Perspective from India
Leaders are supposed to have influence or clout over their
followers. The clout can be offline or online. The three most popular sites to
measure your online influence, currently are Klout, Kred and Peer Index. Let us
look at the major features of Klout and how you can use them.
Home Page
Home Page of Klout.com features the break up of influence
viz. the percentage of influence coming from Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter,
Google plus, Klout and Linkedin.
It also features your latest social media
updates and shows the engagement happening on each update besides the mentions
about you. The brief summary of your social media statistics is also available
as given below:-
Social Media Statistics Summary (on Klout)
Twitter
|
Facebook
|
Google +
|
Linkedin
|
Mentions
|
Friends
|
+1s
|
Connections
|
Lists
|
Likes
|
Comments
|
Recommendations
|
Retweets
|
Comments
|
Reshares
|
|
Followers
|
Wall posts
|
Profile
Name, Social Media
Icons & Tagged pages
At the top left, your name and social media icons (links)
are displayed.You can tag the search results of your Bing searches (the option
of search and tag is integrated on Klout itself)
Influencers and Topics
The people influencing you and the topics of your influence
are shown here. You have the option of sharing your influencers and topics on
Twitter or Facebook.
Moments
The most popular updates are listed as moments (for Facebook,
Linkedin, Twitter, Google plus, Klout and Linkedin)
Friends
Under Friends, you can see the top scorers on Klout, among
your Facebook friends and Twitter followers.
Pulse
Under the pulse section, you can keep a watch on world's top
influencers and see where each stands among their peers.
Others
Besides these you have the usual sections like Help &
Settings. At the top right, you also have the Klout perks (rewards given to you
from brands in recognition of your influence) section and the notifications tab
to see who all have given you +K and for what topics.
Klout as a Motivation Tool
You can also use Klout as a Motivation Tool in your online journey.
Best of online influence and personal branding.
Klout as a Motivation Tool
You can also use Klout as a Motivation Tool in your online journey.
Best of online influence and personal branding.
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To find out more about Dr Amit Nagpal, visit www.dramitnagpal.com
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