Klout is something your either using, or have seen dotted around the shop, but Klout is a helpful extension from not just Twitter, but all of the social media platforms, including the recent Google Plus. In a nutshell, Klout is a form of analytics that you can use to measure your social efforts and receive a detailed report in a few different areas. The most famous and recognized is your Klout score.

Everyone on the social media web has a Klout score, and you will find yourself somewhere between 1 and 100, Klout takes 3 separate factors into consideration: True reach, Amplification and Network, don’t worry I’ll go into more detail soon. This score is updated every day and put onto a graph, this way you can see and measure your efforts, what is working and what isn’t.

I personally find this invaluable because as we all know, the social world is constantly changing, and we need to change with it, Klout helps me to see if I am on the right track or not.

It’s all well and good having thousands of followers, but if there is no interaction, then what is the point in even having them. The true reach scale shows how many followers you have that actually interact with you, I think this number is more important than the amount of followers that show up on your Twitter profile because this amount of users actually care and act upon your posts. Similar to the Klout score, it is extremely helpful because if you are losing “followers” but your true reach is increasing, then those who are active in regards to your posts have stayed and are increasing, where as those who are not interested are leaving, which means that your followers are becoming more valuable.

Everyone dreams of their posts being shared, but it is extremely difficult to make this happen, but it is nice to know how well you’re doing in terms of this.

Your amplification score is measured on a scale of 1 – 100, similar to the K! score. One way to look at the amp rating is how much you influence people, if you are 100 you greatly influence your followers and they practically hang on to your every word, on the flipside a 1 will result in your posts being practically ignored. Network impact is quite a complex scale, when compared to the simplicity of the others. Basically, when you engage with someone who is very influential, this will increase your network impact, because you will be appearing in their newsfeed or posts and so on. This means your profile is becoming more open to new people and not only that, you are engaging and building a relationship with someone influential and possibly important in your industry.

How Accurate is Klout?

Klout has been questioned many a time for its accuracy, and there has been some research done to prove it too, http://bit.ly/qidTSw in Klouts defence it is still a beta, so some aspects are bound to be a bit on the primitive side. What I have found is that the longer your social media profiles have been active, then the more active your score is. The Klout score is an odd concept to, but I did a little school boy trial and error mathematics, and I have found that the K! score heavily depends on the network impact and amplification, this is only in the case of profiles with a huge following, those with a smaller following, like myself have the true reach come into play.

Conclusion

Klout is a valuable source for tracking your progress in social media, it is something everyone that is heavily involved in social networking should be aware of and make a part of their daily routine to quickly check their score.

This article was written by Lewis Austin, he is the Social Media Manager at SEO Positive, for more information on SEO Positive, follow their Blog or Twitter Profile.