What is Klout and How Can it Help My Business?

You may have heard of Klout or not.  Either way, it’s an important tool to use for your business and one that I’ve just recently discovered.  What is it? Klout measures the influence you on the Internet.  The influence is evaluated based on Social Media.

A quick side note: If you aren’t using social media to advertise your business, you’re missing out.  The Internet is our playground.  Millions of people go there to find restaurants, plumbers, doctors, you name it.  Open a Facebook page for your company, start twittering, connect on LinkedIn.  It’s a free, yes free, way to advertise.  It only takes a little bit of time.  If the whole thing freaks you out, there are companies that will manage it for you, for a fee.

Ok, so you now have a FB page. You’ve got a decent following and your posting about deals and tips.  How do you measure the importance and impact your posts have? That’s where Klout comes in.

Klout keeps track of how many ‘likes’ you get, how many people are posting on your wall or retweeting your tweets.  The more people engage, the higher your Klout score is on a scale of 1-100.  They also track trends.  If your business is a flower shop, you might be influential in flowers and plants.  People can also give you Klout points on a topic they feel you’re influential in.

Klout also gives out perks.  What exactly are perks?  I’m not sure why or when you get them.  I recently got mine.  I logged onto Klout and received a message that because I was such a strong influencer, I was getting a perk. Awesome!  My perk was an advance release of Stephen King’s newest book in the Dark Tower series, plus another paperback book of his and a t-shirt.  I have no idea why I got this stuff, but I’ll take it!  They also give out energy drinks, plane tickets, movies etc.

So, what can you do with all this info besides get into contests with your friends to see who can hit 70 first? (By the way, to give an example of a celebrity’s Klout score, Justin Timberlake is at 72. It’s not easy moving up.)  Well, you can look at what topics you are talking about are having an impact and are engaging your audience.  Maybe roses spawned a lot of conversation but daisies did not.  That tells you where your customer’s interests may be stronger.

Whether Klout sticks around for awhile or is replaced by a newer system to measure social influence, it’s a fun and free vehicle to use right now.  And in such a competitive market place, getting an edge is a welcome thing.

Lisa Coronado is a content writer for CoolBlueWeb Blog.