Return on Influence The Revolutionary Power of Klout, Social Scoring and Influence Marketing (Return On Influence) by Mark Schaefer is an very interesting read and a great resource for anyone who works with social media. It covers Klout quite extensively including chapters about their CEO Joe Fernandez and also features Calvin Lee, graphic designer and influencer, who is a great guy besides. Mark explains social scoring and how it can be used for influence marketing. Learn about the rise of the “Citizen influencer” and get some insight on how to raise your Klout score. *To adhere to FTC guidelines about endorsements and testimonials for bloggers, I would like you to know that I bought this book myself. Although I am was in no way compensated for this review, I am using Amazon affiliate links on this page wherever books are mentioned as links or clickable images.
My main takeaways:
- About Klout
- Social Scoring
- Influence Marketing
- The “Rise of the Citizen Influencer”
- How to Increase Your Klout Score
About Klout
Klout, based in San Francisco, was started by CEO Joe Fernandez. It is the leader in social media influence measurement today according to Schafer.
“Klout is one of a number of new status-measuring companies whose purpose is to curate billions of individual pieces of information, apply complex mathematical algorithms, and feed that information to businesses in ways that will create new marketing programs aimed at selling more of their skin care products, cars, and movies.” (Return On Influence, Schaefer,p. 5)
Klout measures over 100 different factors and will be including offline influence as well going forward. Your score can range from 1 to 100. A score that is over 50 is considered exceptional. My Klout score was 54 as of the writing of this article.
Social Scoring
Social scoring measures your online activity (and soon offline activity too as mentioned above). How you interact with others and how they interact with you. I would assume that all of this data is being captured and analyzed. This activity measurement can be used to determine your influence level and social score. There are a growing number of social scoring services. My 3 favorites right now are Klout, Kred, and PeerIndex. Others that are up and coming include Twitalyzer, PeekYou, and the various Grader services offered by HubSpot.
Influence Marketing
Influence marketing is a channel that can harness the power certain people have (known as influencers) to spread your message far and wide to achieve your business goals. How? Content that is shared by influencers tends to last longer and be disseminated more widely through social media like Twitter tweets and Facebook shares. Influencers are heard above the social media noise and can help you get your message across. Be the influencer in your niche or at least know how to identify, reach out, and connect to them. I recommend that you do both. Tip: Two magic words that you should use often with influencers are, “Thank you”. For even more information read Dr. Robert Cialdini’s book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.
The “Rise of the Citizen Influencer”
A “Citizen Influencer” can be an average person with huge influence online. They know what content to share and how to connect with others in large and growing numbers. Calvin Lee, the author’s example in the book, is a graphic designer in Los Angeles. He has a high Klout score and a massive following on the top social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. We have not yet met in real life, but I think Calvin is someone you should know. Reach out and connect to him on Twitter and Facebook.
“The traditional view of influence assumes that a small number of the members of our society possess qualities that make them exceptionally persuasive, driving trends on behalf of the majority of ordinary people. In business, society, politics, and the press, they may be called our opinion, or thought leaders. Today, anybody can be a hub, a connector, an igniter of a personal epidemic of information, collaboration, or inspiration.” (Return On Influence, Schaefer,p. 63)
How to Increase Your Klout Score
Increasing your Klout score can be boiled down to three steps from the book. Build your networks, create and execute a content strategy, and engage influencers often. Build your networks by hand and be focused on who you are connecting to. Have a strategy of sharing content and creating your own. And engage with influencers:
“Unless you are a true-life celebrity (and if you are, I’d like to meet you so you can sign my book), it does not make any difference how big your network is or how good your content is if it is not activated by engaging with people in such a way that your content moves across the web.” (Return On Influence, Schaefer, p. 164)
How do I think you can to raise your Klout score? Create great content and share it far and wide! The more people you engage with the better. All of the Twitter retweets, Facebook Likes, and Google+ +1′s add up.
- Author Mark Schaefer’s {grow} blog
- Return on Influence The Revolutionary Power of Klout, Social Scoring and Influence Marketing
- Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion - Professor Robert Cialdini’s classic book
Add Return On Influence to your summer reading list! And get to work curating, creating, and sharing great content across your social networks. Sign up for Klout and try other social scoring services as well. Be the expert in your niche and help yourself by helping others.
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How do you measure influence?
About Peter Trapasso
Peter Trapasso is a self-taught social media expert, and owner of PeterTrapasso.com which is listed on the Alltop Social Media topic page. He is a Social Media consultant and Freelance Writer based in San Francisco, Ca. As part of a 15+ year corporate career in technology he worked for Fortune 500 and startup companies. Now he is one of the Top 75 most followed people on Twitter in San Francisco. And a Top 1% Kred Social Media VIP, Klout Influencer, and Socialbakers Ambassador. He is dedicated to social good and making the world a better place for all of us.
I'm Peter Trapasso, self-taught social media expert, and owner of 
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Looks like a great book. Most social media gurus I read either hate Klout or love it. Can’t find much balanced about it.
I worry a bit about gaming the systems. I wished that Klout was a bit more transparent about the algorithm. I watch my personal score move, and it often does not match my expectations.
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Great post, Peter. I love the way you have broken your post into easy digestible bits with the takeaways in bullets and the sub-headings, so that anyone, at a glance, can know what your post is about.
My question to you is that: do you know if Klout measures your blog ratings, traffic and social shares? I see that they have a link for wordpress.com and tumblr blogs but none for wordpress.org. If they don’t then their ratings would lack accuracy IMHO. Thanks.
Thanks Gazalla.
Klout measures over 100 criteria. The top 3 most influential social networks seem to be Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. Social shares, retweets, likes, and +1′s seem to be a big deal.
thanks,
Peter
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Thanks for this book review, Peter. Return on Influence is actually in my bucket list of books I intend to read, once I get through the 5 ones still waiting by my bedside…
This posts gives a great summary, as even though I can see Klout is not perfect and has some obvious flaws, it’s still a pretty good tool to identify influencers, in particular in specific niches.
Cheers from Quebec City,
Frederic
Thank you Frederic.
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First, Klout is not a reliable indicator. It favors FB over others right now. Second, you don’t need create any content. The only thing you need to increase Klout is to share lots of grabbed photos on FB.
That explains it! Thanks Nicolas.
No way! I thought that was just the “Rise of Pinterest” influence?
= “Pin-fluence!”
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Have a Rock and Roll Thursday
Have a fantastic Friday!
Very useful information, thank you for the effort you make
. Just one observation: your floating share bar gets in the way of reading your post. I am using an iPad and that might be why. But just FYI 
Suzy,
I have the same issue with my iPad. Thanks for your feedback. I am experimenting with the share bar right now.
Craig Miller @DDaxxer
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@markwschaefer Thank you so much Mark!
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Great post Peter!!
Klout has been a great tool to measure influence, but influence of what – content, individual or his contacts. Though the only reason I don’t like Klout is, it can be easily gamed and have seen individuals do it often. Have lost my faith in it since.