Blogger’s Guide to Klout: Part Two (Why Klout Is Important for Bloggers)

 
This is part two of a three part series covering what Klout is, why you should bother with it and how to improve your score.

Part One: What Is Klout
Part Three: Improving Your Klout Score

Klout Topics

Let me quote Klout.com for a moment:

While the Klout Score is useful for ranking overall influence, we also strongly believe you’re more than just a number. Whether you’re a musician, an engineer, or the President of the United States, everyone is special in areas that can’t always be boiled down to a single number, and Klout wants to recognize you for that.  – source klout.com

On your profile in the left side is a link to your topics. Your topics are generated every so often based on what you tweet and post to Facebook about. You can also add a topic that you think you should have but hasn’t shown up on it’s own however that costs 5 +K (explained more later.) If you find a topic in your list that you don’t think you are influential about or for any reason don’t want in your list, just click the little x to make it disappear. You can only have 20 topics total. Sometimes you get something weird, like I had a giveaway for a movie with Selena Gomez so since people were tweeting about the giveaway with my twitter id, it thought I was influential about Selena Gomez. I took that out of my list. You can see my full list of topics here.

Explanation of +K

Giving someone +K means that you are indicating that you think they are influential in a certain topic. You have to have your own”+ K to give some. When you log in to Klout, you are automatically given some +K and then you can get more by giving out a bunch of +K

The image above shows a small section in the lower left of you screen that shows how many +K you have to give out. Each time you click a button to give someone +K you use one +K. Your +K resets every day. So you use your +K to show support to other people in whatever topic you think they are influential in. You can only +K once per topic every week.

Giving +K

So let’s say I want to give MamaNYC +K. I got to her profile page and find her topics.

I love Mama NYC’s posts on blogging tips so I want to give her Klout in Blogging. If you hover over the Give +K button next to blogging it looks like this:

So I click the button and I get confirmation of my +K. Also the Give +K button for that topic will turn grey until it’s open for me to +K again. My avatar will also show beside it under the Recent +Ks.

I can stop there or I can tweet or facebook share about giving +K.

You can edit the message before it tweets. By tweeting you are showing your twitter followers that you +Ked a friend. Since you are mentioning the person you gave +K to, perhaps they will take notice and return the favour.

Top Influencers

For the most popular topics, Klout has topic pages. Topic pages will show the top influencers in that topic and the top +k recipients.  Top influencers receive a gold sash on their Klout score. Top +K recipients receive a blue sash. If a person is a top influencer and top +K recipient, they receive a blue and gold sash.

This is an example of the Ontario Topic page. It shows top influencers and top +k recipients. See me on the far right there.

For each influencer or +K recipient you can see their score, invite them to Klout if they aren’t registered, see more about them or give them +K.

On the +K recipients page for Ontario I’m number 5.

Perks

So you’ve seen how the score is calculated and how to show what you are influential in but what’s the point?

Anyone who is on Klout, whether they are a blogger or not, can qualify for perks. Your Klout score can qualify you for free products, services or even tickets to try out. You aren’t required to review them or write about them although of course they would appreciate if you tweet or Facebook about them if you enjoy them. However you can get your perk and not doing anything in return if you want.

The Klout Perks page shows what perks are available and if you qualify or not (usually based on klout score and where you live.) One perk is shown at the top and if you scroll down, it shows you more perks available. When I took these screenshots, I was able to get a Free Dove Body Wash Perk.

To claim your perk, just enter your shipping information. If you have the little box checked, it saves your information for the next time.

When you receive the item, you will usually receive a card that says something like this:

“A little [image of birdie] told me you’ve got a ton of Klout! Your audience trusts you to create great content, and you tell it like it is. Your influence has earned you a Klout Perk! We hope you have fun with discovering this Klout Perk. Enjoy and tweet #HASHTAG to tell the world what you think. Let us know if you have any feedback.”

The #hashtag included of course is relevant to the perk. The Influencer Code of Ethics is included too and includes info on the privacy of your info with Klout, that participating or not will not change your score, that you are welcome to tell the world you love the product, dislike the product or say nothing at all and that if you do talk about the product, to disclose about it.

This is where you go to leave feedback if you want to about perks you’ve done. I’ve done three perks so far and I love free stuff!

Bloggers Who Work With Companies

More and more companies are starting to take notice of Klout scores. I’ve been asked for mine at least twice in the past two months. That’s why it’s a good idea to work on raising yours and defining the topics you are influential in. Even if a company doesn’t directly ask for your Klout score, you don’t know how many are looking you up on Klout themselves. Your topics tell them if you are influential in the topics their product is under.
Klout is even being used offline and in resumes:

Quantifying one’s Internet popularity has real world corollaries. Klout scores are showing up on resumes, for example. More than 2,000 companies have purchased Klout’s data, which they use to prioritize customers. A high-scoring visitor to a Las Vegas hotel may be awarded a free upgrade, says Klout CEO Joe Fernandez.
A VIP on the Internet should be treated that way offline too, or so the idea goes. “It’s like a social credit score,” Fernandez says. – source

Regardless of whether you agree with how Klout measures their scores or whether companies should care about Klout scores, if you want to work with companies for reviews/giveaways or monetizing, you should care at least a little bit about your Klout Score.

Continue to Part Three….

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— Kathleen (@Blogathon2) May 9, 2012