Social Media

How to Use Klout for Business

Klout is a popular influence measurement platform that ranks people based on their prominence in social media.

Klout defines influence as the ability to drive an action related to someone’s comments, likes, tweets and retweets. People use Klout to understand how influential they are and to see which topics they are presumably influential about.

The platform provides a score based on a scale of 1 to 100, with 100 being the most influential. It considers multiple social networks in its analysis and bases the score on the level of a person’s overall engagement.

Klout for Business

Klout recently launched a new version — Klout for Business — that contains a set of tools designed to help companies better understand the reach and potential of their most influential audience members. It provides a filter by which businesses can focus on those with the greatest influence and maximize the value of their interactions.

Klout for Business is still in beta, but anyone who has business-related Facebook and Twitter accounts can apply to be included.

Once accepted, follow these steps to use Klout for Business.

  • Go to the Klout for Business home page and click the “Let’s Get Started” button. Sign in using your business’s Twitter account.

Zoom Enlarge This Image

Klout is a social influence measurement platform.

Klout is a social influence measurement platform.

  • Once logged in, you are taken to the Klout for Business analytics dashboard, which is divided into five main areas: Home, Insights, Perks, Profile and Pulse. Let’s look at each individually.

5 Main Klout Areas

Home. This section contains your business profile picture, name and Klout score, along with a list of the social networks to which you are connected.

Zoom Enlarge This Image

Klout for Business helps merchants identify the most influential members of their social network communities.

Klout for Business helps merchants identify the most influential members of their social network communities.

The center column includes details of your Klout score over a 90-day period showing both a composite trend line and network-by-network breakdown. It also includes a list of recent social network engagement activity that contributes to your Klout score.

Insights. Insights is possibly the most important part of the entire platform. With Insights, you can:

  • View cross-network statistics from Facebook, Twitter and Instagram;
  • Track and measure your business’ influence;
  • Discover interactions and topics that matter most to your social media audience.

Zoom Enlarge This Image

Insights enable merchants to track and measure their own influence.

Insights enable merchants to track and measure their own influence.

The ability to identify and measure the most influential members of a social media audience can help you be more proactive in driving conversations that have a positive effect on your business.

Insights contains an analysis of your audience, list of topics covered, recommendations of networks where you should participate, and a list of what Klout refers to as “Moments,” which are the most influential tweets about your business.

  • Audience. View statistics from the last 90 days that include the total number of engagements, people you have engaged with, and the average Klout score of your audience members.
  • Topics. This includes a visual representation of topics the influential members of your audience are talking about.
  • Network Recommendations. This section contains recommendations of social networks where you should participate based on Klout’s understanding of your audience members.

Perks. Perks are advertising opportunities businesses can run to reach out to influencers targeted by category. According to Klout, Perks are a way to generate earned media about a brand or product.

Businesses target groups of their most influential members and offer rewards such as products, discounts or access to special events. The hope is that those who receive Perks will share the information via their respective social networks.

Profile. This is a snapshot of your Klout profile and contains a list of influencers, topics, and Moments.

Zoom Enlarge This Image

Klout Profile contains list of influencers, topics and most engaging tweets.

Klout Profile contains list of influencers, topics and most engaging tweets.

Pulse. Pulse is a curated list of the top influencers based on topics. It gives you the ability to see what topics are trending as determined by Klout.

Wrap Up

Klout is a useful platform for influence measurement, at least in terms of its ability to rank people across a uniform set of standards. It can help merchants find the most influential members of their social networks, drive more proactive engagement with them, and stimulate social sharing through the use of incentives.

Paul Chaney
Paul Chaney
Bio   •   RSS Feed


x