Klout Of­fers FREE So­cial Me­dia Shar­ing Tool– What’s In It For Klout?

Just a few days ago Klout rev­o­lu­tion­ized its pub­lic fac­ing ser­vice. It’s a gi­gan­tic shift; Klout trans­formed into some­thing com­pletely dif­fer­ent – on the surface!

What’s in it for Klout?

Klout be­fore the transformation

It’s an in­flu­ence mea­sure­ment ser­vice that tracks your ac­tiv­ity on se­lected web sites. It also tracks how oth­ers re­spond and con­nect to you. As a re­sult, it cre­ates a Klout score, a value that is sup­posed to show how in­flu­en­tial you are online.

On their web site Klout.com you have a pro­file which will show your in­flu­ence score, your re­cent in­ter­ac­tions, and some in­for­ma­tion how your Klout score is calculated.

• If you don’t cre­ate an ac­count on Klout.com, Klout will sim­ply use all in­for­ma­tion that is pub­licly avail­able about your so­cial me­dia activity.
• If you DO cre­ate an ac­count, you’ll con­nect your so­cial me­dia ac­counts to Klout, giv­ing Klout di­rect ac­cess to your so­cial me­dia ac­tiv­i­ties and connections.
• You have the op­tion to com­pletely opt-out of Klout. Klout will stop col­lect­ing and pub­lish­ing in­for­ma­tion or a Klout score for you.

The first thing you saw on Klout BEFORE the trans­for­ma­tion was your in­flu­encer data:

Klout af­ter the transformation

All the stuff that was Klout be­fore (the ‘your-Klout-score’ stuff), has been moved to lower level pages, and it needs ex­tra clicks to find that in­for­ma­tion. Klout has ef­fec­tively de­creased vis­i­bil­ity of their con­tro­ver­sial in­flu­encer scor­ing content.

Top, front, and cen­ter at Klout you’re now pre­sented with ar­ti­cle snip­pets from blogs and news sources. Klout has in­vented an easy to use shar­ing tool, and you can use it to share those ar­ti­cle snip­pets to your so­cial me­dia accounts.

The ‘of­fi­cial’ rea­son for cre­at­ing a new so­cial me­dia shar­ing tool is that Klout now …

“… helps you find share­able ar­ti­cles that are likely to res­onate with your friends, fans and followers.

Klout … in­tel­li­gently rec­om­mends con­tent that will strike a chord with your unique au­di­ence on so­cial. We can do this be­cause we un­der­stand both the top­i­cal in­ter­ests and the cross-net­work be­hav­ior of your au­di­ence.” Source

The first thing you see AFTER the trans­for­ma­tion to the #NewKlout is the shar­ing tool:

 

What’s in it for Klout?

While a lot of blogs cov­ered the new shar­ing fea­tures, sur­pris­ingly no one an­a­lyzed what the change means for Klout’s core busi­ness - mea­sur­ing on­line influence.

De­vel­op­ing a large scale con­tent cu­ra­tion tool (=so­cial me­dia shar­ing tool) is no small feat. Klout must have spent a lot of money on this. It’s also en­ter­ing a field with lots of play­ers, lots of competition.

Klout’s share tool sports fea­tures that you have to pay for with other con­tent cu­ra­tion tools. For Klout, it means de­vel­oper cost, server cost, and bandwidth.

But why?

• Up un­til now, many peo­ple have ig­nored Klout, be­cause they were sim­ply not in­ter­ested in their on­line in­flu­ence score. By ig­nor­ing I mean: They didn’t sign up to Klout, they didn’t con­nect their so­cial me­dia profiles.
• Some peo­ple have ac­tively re­sisted Klout and opted out. They’ve cut off Klout from gath­er­ing their information.

How does the free shar­ing ser­vice fit into Klout’s busi­ness model?

Very rarely peo­ple talk about how Klout ac­tu­ally makes money.

Klout makes money by con­nect­ing brands to influencers.

1. They col­lect data and cre­ate pro­files of so­cial me­dia users, i.e. you.
2. When a brand wants to run an in­flu­encer mar­ket­ing cam­paign, Klout will fil­ter its data to find the best in­flu­encers to target.
3. Klout will then send the cam­paign to those in­flu­encers on be­half of the brand.

Brands pay Klout for the ser­vice of us­ing Klout data to find good in­flu­encers for a campaign.

Brands pay the bills for Klout!

Well, ac­tu­ally the in­vestors do, Klout is just up to be bought for 100+ Mil­lion, but sell­ing ser­vices to brands is Klout’s core busi­ness con­cept. The more in­flu­encer data Klout has avail­able, the more valu­able it is for brands, the more in­flu­encer mar­ket­ing cam­paigns Klout can sell.

Klout does not give your per­sonal in­for­ma­tion to the brands, by the way. Your info re­mains within Klout, and Klout merely acts as a “mes­sen­ger” be­tween you as an in­flu­encer and the brand.

Here’s why Klout’s new ser­vice is a game changer.

With a free shar­ing ser­vice a site that was com­pletely ir­rel­e­vant for most peo­ple, sud­denly be­comes use­ful for every­one in­ter­ested in shar­ing con­tent on so­cial media.

• Peo­ple who did not bother to sign up be­fore, now may find rea­son to do so.
• To use the shar­ing fea­ture, you must con­nect your so­cial me­dia account.
• BINGO! By con­nect­ing your so­cial me­dia ac­count to use the share tool, you give Klout more di­rect ac­cess to your so­cial me­dia ac­tiv­i­ties and connections.

Tens of thou­sands might now join Klout and give Klout ac­cess to their data!

Con­clu­sion – What’s in it for Klout?

By of­fer­ing a free so­cial me­dia shar­ing tool, Klout tar­gets the num­ber one bot­tle­neck in its busi­ness model: the re­sis­tance of peo­ple to give Klout ac­cess to their so­cial me­dia profiles. 

I couldn’t think of a more el­e­gant way to elim­i­nate this bot­tle neck.

Well done – a win-win for users and Klout!

What else might play a role?

Here are 4 more as­pects I came up with. I’m not a Klout in­sider, so I don’t know if I’m hit­ting the nail on its head here.

1. Greater ac­cu­racy in defin­ing your top­ics of in­flu­ence. An­other bot­tle­neck of Klout is to ac­cu­rately find out what top­ics you stand for. In the past Klout has used dif­fer­ent means to find out what top­ics you are in­flu­en­tial in.

• They an­a­lyzed your so­cial me­dia posts, in­clud­ing cats and ba­con. That of­ten led to as­sign­ing com­pletely false top­ics to someone’s profile.
• They had a fea­ture where oth­ers could vote you up on spe­cific top­ics by giv­ing you K+. 
• They al­lowed you to add and re­move top­ics your­self. The ques­tion is, how many peo­ple ac­tu­ally used this op­tion. I’m guess­ing very few both­ered to in­form Klout about what they want to be known for.

Klout’s new shar­ing tool might help them gauge your in­flu­ence top­ics in sev­eral ways:

1. They get first-hand in­for­ma­tion what you share.
2. They also see what you DON’T share from the con­tent they put in front of you.
3. They’ve im­ple­mented thumbs-up and –down but­tons on each piece of con­tent. While many peo­ple may not have both­ered to man­age their top­ics, the vot­ing but­tons in con­tent snip­pets are more likely to be used.  Your votes help find­ing out what top­ics you stand for.

2. By re­plac­ing the links you share with their own redi­rect links they can eas­ily track spread of links and clicks within your net­work and beyond.

Like most ser­vices Klout re­places your links with their own.

When an­a­lyz­ing links you share through other ser­vices, they can only see who the same link. Now they’ll see the ex­act path through mul­ti­ple gen­er­a­tions of shar­ing over time (think Google rip­ples), and – more im­por­tantly - they can track clicks.

That helps them not only to gauge your in­flu­ence in shares or retweets , but also to find out what the mem­bers of your au­di­ence ac­tu­ally clicked on.

Klout just came one step closer to mea­sure real in­flu­ence that re­sults in ac­tions. How cool is that!

3. Klout could make ex­tra money by putting spon­sored con­tent in front of you. They are not do­ing it now, but it’s cer­tainly an op­tion to of­fer brands adding spon­sored con­tent to the influencer’s feed.

The spon­sored con­tent would only be in­jected into the feed of in­flu­encers with match­ing topic and shar­ing be­hav­ior, i.e. those who are most likely to share.

4. Klout might add a paid ver­sion of its new so­cial me­dia shar­ing tool, once the plat­form has matured. 

I don’t ex­pect that to hap­pen, be­cause a pay­wall will de­crease the ad­van­tage the free tool de­liv­ers for Klout’s core busi­ness of mea­sur­ing people’s so­cial me­dia activity.

It was re­vealed ear­lier to­day that Klout is about to get bought by Lithium In­dus­tries.

Ac­cord­ing to an ar­ti­cle on TheVerge.com Klout’s pre­vi­ous busi­ness model failed and is dead. They even say Klout ‘mea­sured on­line in­flu­ence,’ please note the past tense. It’s an obituary!

I’m not so sure about that, yet.

Look­ing at Lithi­um’s web site, they pro­vide a wide ar­ray of prod­ucts and ser­vices about cus­tomer en­gage­ment across ‘all your dig­i­tal plat­forms.’ Turn­ing Klout into a sim­ple paid shar­ing tool seems un­likely, es­pe­cially look­ing at Lithium’s en­ter­prise level client list. Giv­ing up Klout’s brand also does­n’t seem too likely.

Klout’s cur­rent core busi­ness of con­nect­ing brands to in­flu­encers might fit well with Lithium’s en­ter­prise clients. We’ll have to see what state­ments Klout and Lithium will make.

11 Ways To Make Klout’s Con­tent Cu­ra­tion Tool Even Better

For ver­sion 1 this is a fan­tas­tic tool; it re­ceived pos­i­tive re­views within days.

Find­ing, shar­ing, and even sched­ul­ing con­tent is easy and intuitive.

Yet, in its cur­rent ver­sion I’m not likely to use it a lot. It needs to be­come good enough that I’m ready to give up my cur­rent shar­ing tools.

I don’t want to hop back and forth be­tween a gazil­lion shar­ing tools. So, as long as Klout is miss­ing the most im­por­tant fea­tures for a power sharer, it’s not on my A-list.

Dear Klout, here are a few ideas for im­prov­ing your shar­ing tool …

1. In­clud­ing cus­tom sources is a must.  For any so­cial me­dia en­thu­si­ast or power sharer it’s un­think­able to ig­nore all the sites that we are used to share from.

It’s great to dis­cover fresh con­tent that I would not have found my­self. But be­ing a power sharer it’s VERY im­por­tant for me to be able to share from my own fa­vorite sources, too.

I don’t want to hop back and forth be­tween a gazil­lion shar­ing tools. So, as long as I can’t add my own choice of RSS feeds to Klout, I’m not likely to use it.

2. The sug­gested sources are too lim­ited. Scrolling through the stream just for a few posts will al­ready bring up the same sites again and again. 7 posts and 2 sites com­ing up twice as sources for my shar­ing? Given the size of the web that’s not good enough.

Hint: There’s more in the world of mar­ket­ing and SEO than marketingland.com and searchengineland.com.

3. Make view­ing con­tent even eas­ier. I can only see a hand­ful of posts with­out hav­ing to click ‘view more con­tent.’ Tech­ni­cally it is easy to load new con­tent au­to­mat­i­cally as I scroll down.

Please don’t make me click 10 times only to load more posts. How many share-wor­thy posts to you ex­pect me to find in the first 5 or 7 items you show me?

4. Of­fer to sched­ule mul­ti­ple times. Right now it seems I can only sched­ule an item once. Be­ing able to add a few more sched­uled shares would be great. I find 3 to 5 reasonable.

5. Give us a browser book­marklet that al­lows us to share ANY con­tent while brows­ing the web. Fire­fox and Chrome, please.

6. When shar­ing a web site link, let me chose the im­age. When a post con­tains mul­ti­ple im­ages, Klout seems to use the first one or the fea­tured im­age. It would be nice to be able to choose the pic my­self. Not a big is­sue, though.

7. When shar­ing a web site link, let me edit or delete the pre­view snip­pet. Also not a big one. Just a nice-to-have.

8. Add more net­works to share to. Right now I can only share to Twit­ter and Face­book. Not sure if there are more op­tions, Twit­ter and Face­book is what I’m see­ing for the mo­ment. Every­body would love you dou­ble, Klout, if you add shar­ing to Google plus per­sonal pro­files. I’m aware of the API thing, though.

9. Im­prove rel­e­vancy of sug­gested con­tent. Some­times it’s im­pos­si­ble to see a con­nec­tion be­tween my top­ics of in­flu­ence and the ar­ti­cles Klout sug­gests for sharing.

This is not a doc­tored screen shot. It shows the ar­ti­cles that Klout ac­tu­ally sug­gested to me to­day at the top of the ar­ti­cles list. Both are ir­rel­e­vant for my topics.

10. Give us ac­cess to link track­ing sta­tis­tics. Link click-through is an im­por­tant met­ric, Klout can now eas­ily mea­sure it.

11. Kick your web de­sign­ers hard for think­ing it’s chic to have light grey font on white back­ground. Web de­sign should serve us­abil­ity first. I’m over 40, and I ap­pre­ci­ate sites that fa­vor con­trast for read­abil­ity over fancy design.

Again, ver­sion 1 of Klout’s so­cial me­dia shar­ing tool is an ex­cel­lent start. If Klout keeps im­prov­ing, they will give paid shar­ing tools a run for their money!

And they will at­tract new users con­nect­ing their ac­counts in leaps and bounds.

Mis­sion accomplished!