Got Klout?

♬ Whatever I do I’m under the influence of you…♬

Music, lyrics and recorded by James Morrison.

Klout

Legal marketers and others who advise lawyers (myself included) have been gently prodding lawyers to start using social media in marketing their practices with such services as: Twitter, Facebook, blogs and others. Oftentimes, we are asked: “How do you know if this is effective or just a waste of time?” Well now all of us can start gauging our effectiveness via a growing number of websites that seek to place a quantitative assessment of your clout (or Klout as it may be) in social media circles.

The granddaddy in all these ranking services would have been Twitaholic (“tracking the most popular users of a certain social networking tool”) which is free, and the newer Twittercounter, which is a paid service. Twitaholic will provide you with your ranking and general stats in your local geographic area as well as your ranking generally on Twitter. For example, @LadyGaga is currently #1 in the world; @BarackObama is #3 and surprisingly, @Oprah is #11 (@TheEllenShow – Ellen DeGeneris outranks her at #8)! Twittercounter, on the other hand, for a small fee, will provide you with more businesslike stats.

According to their web page, Coke, eBay, Yahoo, Facebook and others are clients:

“The dashboard makes it easy to compare ourselves with to our competitors, showing us the effectiveness of our social media campaigns. The yearly stats are perfect for long term insights.” per Sophie op den Kamp – @claqueur

While the Twitaholic rankings are interesting, reading them is rather like eating a Twinkie – you get the immediate sugar fix but feel like you missed out on the entree. So what is the solution?

Klout.com (@Klout) is one of a growing number of sites that try to aggregate your social networking presence and determine your “Klout score”. But it does more than just assign a number between 0-100 to you.

It also looks at your:

“Network Influence”:

Network Influence is the influence level of your engaged audience. Capturing the attention of influencers is no easy task, and those who are able to do so are typically creating spectacular content.

“Amplification Probability”:

Amplification Probability is the likelihood that your content will be acted upon. The ability to create content that compels others to respond and high-velocity content that spreads into networks beyond your own is a key component of influence.

as well as your “True Reach”.

Now we are getting somewhere! You can also determine the Topics for which you are an influencer as well as those who you influence (and their Klout score).

Now you can get some quantitative and qualitative indications of where you stand!

What was most interesting to me what the “Klout Style” matrix that shows where you fit along several axis:

Klout Style Matrix

Klout is a great way to determine whether your social media message is strongly focused, whether it is reaching your target audience and whether you are seen as an influencer or not. Or as they would put it, do you have Klout?