Measurement platforms that say they measure influence are misleading their users. Even though they wrap it up in pretty marketing talk, Klout, Kred and others, are really charging customers for a measurement based on popularity, not influence. Influence is the power to sway and the ability to change behavior. There are nuances involved like novelty, creativity, attractiveness and mattering that can't be boiled down to simple formulas and equations. Yet that is precisely what many of these measurement tools attempt to do.
Measuring online influence is not an exacting science springing forth from today's social media vehicles, even though that's what Klout tells you. They're using a façade of what's happening today to cover up the simple fact that influence has existed for centuries and can't be measured as easily as they state. In fact Klout, Kred and the other tools work very hard to make us believe that the awareness they are measuring is equal to influence.
Kred says they measure the influence of community, which would be nice if this were really true, but it's not. Kred assigns a community to a user based only on data found in the user's twitter profile. So, for example, if users include the phrase "Social Media" in their profile, Kred automatically assigns them to the Social Media Community. Not all communities are available at Kred either, and you have no ability to suggest forming new ones. If there is a phrase that is crucial to your success and they don't have a community for it, you're out of luck.
Kred also looks at who you're talking to or engaging with on Twitter, which can be a bit trickier. For example, you may subscribe to a mothering blog because a friend writes it, but haven't put anything in your profile that you are a mother because you don't want that included in your professional persona. But just because you engage with people on Twitter who blog about motherhood, you are put into this community by default. This is not what really defines a community; it merely gives an indication of interest. There are three major faults with what Klout, Kred and the others are doing:
So What DO They Measure?
Despite the fact that these tools operate under a false definition of influence, they do have some usefulness ... if you understand what they are really measuring:
KLOUT: This tool is helpful for one reason ... topics. But don't let their topic information mislead you into thinking a person is influential on that topic. Use their topics only to understand how people are interested in different subjects. It can also be helpful to look into the activity breakdown to determine if a person is spending more time on Twitter, Facebook or Google+. But here again, knowing how users are instructed to game the system by Klout itself, this data should be used with a grain of salt.
KRED: This is a real time measurement tool using the last thousand days of activity so users can see a person in action, as opposed to Klout, where scores only change once a day. It's extremely transparent as well. If you know their scoring system, you can see the activity of every user. Kred has two scores -- influence and outreach. Completely ignore their influence score because it is based solely on the number of tweets, RTs, @s and number of followers. But their outreach score can be quite interesting as it gives some indication of how engaged the user is. Just be sure to verify if this engagement is unique and not automated activity. Their Leadership Boards are great tool for developing and discovering the engagers in social space who are talking about products or brands. The Leadership boards are custom made using the hashtag. They are available to brands on request.
TRAACKR: This is a great contextual tool with a decent algorithm, but it still feels like there is something fishy here. They are expensive and slow, and you need to use at least twenty keywords (to achieve optimal results), which is just too time-consuming and unnecessary. They advertise that they help you "find influencers who impact your bottom line," but when asked about it, their answer is: "it is better to give our users the ability to do it themselves." This sounds somewhat like buying a car without an engine, and the car manufacturer asking buyers to build and handle the most vital part of the car themselves.
On the other hand, Appinions seems to get the closest in considering influencers for two main reasons. First, there is no direct contact -- since consumers can't just log in and check their score, it is almost impossible to game a score. Second, they measure the source of influence versus the number of retweets, tweets, links and so on. This is the tool that better approaches providing some indication of influence.
WHAT'S A MARKETER TO DO?
These so-called influence measurement tools define influence as something that is all warm and fuzzy, and easy to measure, instead of acknowledging that the real meaning of influence is concrete and stronger. In fact they ignore core elements of influence that don't fit neatly into their score: power, changing behaviors, advantage, authority, effect on people, and benefit.
Instead of measuring awareness and masking it as popularity, as Klout and Kred do, what we need to do is measure the person's "affect" and "effect" on others -- how they motivate others to do things and what that's worth to a brand or business. This takes an understanding of the bifurcated nature of influence (influencer and receiver) as well as how culture drives people's behavior and actions. So instead of just gathering statistics, let's gather data that is meaningful and useful.
Marketers need to develop a robust conceptualization of influence within the context of social media so they don't have to rely solely on the definitions provided by Klout, Kred and other tools. Only then can we really begin to develop possible alternative ways to formulate these components into a valid influence measurement tool.
So there you have it, the unspoken truth of what the measurement tools are actually measuring. Marketers today are wasting too much time, effort and money trying to find social media influencers using these tools without really understanding what influence is. Although these tools can help point you in the right direction, be sure to look before you leap into the social media universe. Don't just believe the hype they are giving you. Think twice before basing your social media strategy on information obtained from Kred or Klout, and make sure you understand what they really do measure.
To learn more details on Influence Measurement Tools I strongly recommend to read The Realtime Report's Guide to Influence Measurement Tools.
As a matter of full disclosure: I am serving in an unpaid, advisory position to Kred as a "Kred Leader." I have no affiliation agreement for The Realtime Report's Guide to Influence Measurement Tools mention in this post. The opinions stated in this post belong solely to me.
Follow Jure Klepic on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jkcallas
I believe the next step in this process is seeing how influential someone is vs. a particular topic, similar to what you said about Kred.
As a social marketer I don't care if someone with a klout score of 60 retweets me, unless that person is influential within the audience I am targeting. So perhaps it's a dynamic Klout score that changes when comparing someone to a difference audience. i.e. I doubt Justin Beiber would be very influential in a conversation that interests me, the social enterprise.
A number of firms - like Kxen, Xtract, Ni3 AG, Pursway, and others - have taken this social network analytics approach and applied it to B2C marketing. Using data from companies' CRM databases - or in the case of telecoms, call records - these companies can construct networks to identify the individuals who sit at the center of dense clusters of consumers. They use this information to target new product launches and reduce customer churn, among other applications.
The science of social network analytics is much stronger than the flimsy underpinnings of Klout and the rest; it has been around for decades, advanced by PhDs in statistics at the likes of Harvard, MIT, and UVa. Commercial application is just beginning to reach beyond the realms of crime, intelligence, and defense (where highly technical solutions often get their initial foothold). As the business applications mature though - including in marketing - Klout and its peers will be in for a serious challenge.
-Teddy Chestnut
Activate Networks
www.activatenetworks.net
Regardless, we are going to have to get used to it. There will always be systems for ranking people and performance where the truth may be hidden or masked. True influencers ultimately will have to "back it up". I've seen some high Klout scores that are certainly not indicative of someone I would consider to be influential...to me. It's both personal and subjective don't you think? You have to look beyond the score, but the score might certainly attract some looks.
It is also difficult to target the who and where of your influence. For example, as a business owner in a specific niche, I really don't care about my personal influence on Facebook with friends and family, yet this metric gets significant weight in Klout, which in turn hurts my score. (I spend more time on LinkedIn and Twitter for example, which is where my market is).
We have a long way to go here, but I think Mark is on to something. The perception of influence is pretty powerful.
Thank you for your comment. I agree with you scores do look attractive, but problem is that way too many "eggs" is putted in one basket with scores. Yes marketers or business should look way beyond scores. As I said the core elements that would gives indication of real influence were skipped. But then what do we except when the system were build by engineers who don't have knowledge and understanding of what influence is.
And since I was never a fan of either Klout or Kred knowing these system can be gamed, it made them all the less credible.
Look at it this way, if this post goes viral, are you influencing people? Can we measure that virality? Yes. Can we measure the reactions it elicits in the form of tweets, RT and comments? Yes. That's not just popularity. In fact the post can be grossly UNpopular and still capture influence.
So, in a SMALL way, we can measure an aspect of influence. Not perfectly. But it's only a couple fo years on and getting better. All marketers and businesses need to understand what is really going on here and recognize the new sources of power on the web.
Anothr aspect, as a European: Multi-language. Influence is bound to a topic. I don't know any tool which can measure my influence across multiple languages. Even Klout confirmed that their measuring my influence on a given topic in English only.
thank you for your comment.
Creation of content is not influence. Influence is the power to sway. So reaction does not mean one has swayed anyone; it is just reaction. Reaction doesn't put money in the bank for marketers, persuasion does.
More created content only means more awareness, which is good, because someone who has never heard of something may now hear of it and then out of curiosity, go seek it out. In that way, it has value. But it has value like advertising. It creates more awareness but there is no indication that more buyers (in the case of marketers) are created than with any other promotional tool. Awareness is important to marketers and helpful but is nothing new about it and social media to date is just another way of building it.
Till someone proof positive show that a blog post which went viral created somebody to do something more than pass along information or comment we can only say that blogger has increased awareness, but if blogger created real purchase and behavioral change ( as results of his post) than we can say that initial blogger swayed/ persuaded someone and show a real value to a marketer.
Popularity and awareness are also not the same thing and many people are confusing awareness with behavioral change. What happened with Chris Brown? Hitting Riyana had tremendous awareness but it wasn't popular.
But Klout, Kred and others aren’t influencing anything but ego of people.
If you are using affiliate links you can track how much sales was generated. If you're not then it would be more difficult. That doesn't mean sales are not happening it's just harder to quantify.