Since Klout, the online measuring tool for social influence, was launched in 2009, over 100 million people now have a Klout score. Everyone has an opinion about Klout, whether it’s good or bad, but it’s hard to ignore and not get sucked into it…

What is Klout anyway?

Klout is an online tool that measures the social influence of a person or brand across a number of social networks including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare and more recently, YouTube which was added in August and Google+, which was added last month.

Based on your ability to drive action, Klout scores you between 1 and 100 (with 100 being the most influential). It uses data from the range of social networks to measure your true reach (how many people you influence), amplification (how much you influence them e.g. when people respond to your messages and share it) and your network impact (the influence of your network). In short, it measures whether people trust and like you enough to respond to the things you talk about.

Should you care about your Klout score?

Klout has always been something I’ve looked at and have had fun with whilst comparing scores with different people in the office on a personal level, but nothing more. However, while managing our client’s social media accounts and recording who is following them, I’ve taken their Klout score into consideration. The bottom line of Klout is that it gives me a good indication of how our social media efforts are working out.

It also helps me discover who the big players in our client’s industry are, follow and engage with them and have them follow us back.

But it should be taken into consideration that it shouldn’t be used as the only tool to decide who to follow as we do come across people who seem to have a very high Klout score – but only post spam or advertising, so we know that Klout can be gamed (as with many other things on the internet) and Klout can’t measure every type of influence, so it’s not the be all and end all and, perhaps, should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Other benefits of Klout?

After Klout took to the spotlight more recently, I discovered ‘Klout Perks’ which are used primarily by US brands who offer exclusive products or experiences that you can earn based on your influence. Previous examples were gift cards from various online retailers, tickets to events and hotel discounts.

But when accessing these perks, I got excited to see that a perk was available to me – a free sample of hair gel from Axe. However, the tagline on the ad was ‘Finally… a strong hold that she’ll want to touch’… hang on a second… then I read the spiel “When it comes to a guy’s hair, male and female satisfaction are often at odds…” I am definitely a girl, and I thought that Klout would be able to find this info using Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn’s API.

Anyway, I ignored this and tried to claim it anyway, but a message popped up saying “This perk is for US residents only” which is a fail, considering that information is on my Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn and Klout has access to the API’s for these social networking sites.

A bit of an anti-climax and obvious room for improvement from Klout, but I am hoping that UK companies will jump on the Klout bandwagon soon.

At the moment I have a Klout score of 51 (just over half way there to getting the perfect score of 100 like @JustinBieber), and for an unknown reason Klout tells me I’m influential about hotels and the Maldives (might have tweeted that I’m going on holiday there in the past), so I have my fingers crossed that a company will give me a free holiday one day.

At the moment, Klout is fun and can be useful, but we don’t need to become slaves to this measurement tool yet. Only time will tell whether Klout will be 100% reliable, we will just have to wait and see!

Last week, Facebook introduced some new changes on their social networking site. A few days later, Google+ made their social media accounts available to the general public. Could this be the start of a real social media battle?

Even though Google have denied that they are in direct competition with Facebook, everyone who has both these social networking accounts can see how similar they are to each other and how there’s always going to be some rivalry (let’s not forget Facebook’s association with Bing instead of Google).

Last week, Mashable ran a poll and just fewer than 35% of the 5,346 people who voted said that they hated the new Facebook! People also vented their anger and confusion using Twitter which then saw #NewFacebook trending.

However, we all know, from past Facebook changes that users will moan about the updates for a little while but then just accept the new changes and forget all about the old Facebook, allowing the social networking site to retain its users and continue growing.

Facebook has now reached over 800 million users whilst Google+ is also growing at a very quick rate, and has over 43 million users. Although the number is not as impressive as Facebook’s numbers just yet, we have to remember that Google+ is only 3 months old and has only this week become available to all people, rather than invite only.

With Google+ now open to the public, we are wondering if Google’s real time search would make a comeback after Twitter and Google failed to agree on terms so that Google could keep Twitter’s real time tweets in their results.

However, it seems that they are still at loggerheads with each other rather than working together. Bing renewed their contract with Twitter earlier this month to have real time results in their search engine, but who actually chooses Bing over Google when it’s not their default browser setting?

I have to admit that I’m one of the people that complained about the new Facebook changes and contributed to the discussion on Twitter, but still found myself using Facebook. Facebook is still the social network that most of my friends are using which makes using it much more interesting than Google+, where nothing is really going on in my circles yet. However, if I find that more people I know start using Google+ more I may get weaned off Facebook. It’s just what happened to my Myspace account, once everyone I cared about joined Facebook, my Myspace got deleted.

At the end of the day, people are going to choose and use a social networking site where they can actually be social with other people, rather than choose a networking site purely based on how great the user interface is.

We’re not sure if people are ready to ditch Facebook for Google+ just yet. Do you have a preferred social media account?

Like most people in SEO, I spend a fair amount of time reading industry blogs, to see what people are currently talking about in the world of online marketing and looking out for the next big thing in SEO, such as Google+.

A couple of months ago you couldn’t move for posts about Google+, with everyone talking about its rivalry with Facebook, its sudden influx of 20 million users and hundreds of debates about how it was going to completely change the game! But now when I look around SEOMoz, Econsultancy, Search Engine Land and the rest I see barely a few mentions of this ‘revolutionary’ new social network.

To be fair, I am no better than the rest, when Google+ first came out I was straight on it and published 2 or 3 posts about how it could topple Facebook, change the way we connect online and add a huge new element to SEO, but now I am paying about as much attention to it as I am to AOL.

The fact of the matter is, so far we have seen little to no impact on SEO by Google+, and although it has 20 million+ users I haven’t seen a fresh update from any of my circles in weeks! Meanwhile, Facebook continues to roll out new features, such as the subscribe button, and both Facebook and Twitter are still much better places to interact with friends, fans and customers.

So where do we go from here?

A couple of months ago everyone was discussing how Google was becoming much more social and how we need to adapt to that and move away from traditional SEO tactics. However, in the last month there has been very little impact from Google+ and Google have not renewed their deal with Twitter, effectively losing some of their social element, rather than increasing it.

So should we just forget about Google+ and social networks altogether? Well no, social is obviously still very important for online marketing, with Twitter and Facebook being excellent mediums for creating brand awareness, customer interaction and content distribution, but I do think it is fair to say that the initial hype over Google+ was a bit much and that, although a move into social is good, abandoning traditional SEO tactics in favour of a social only approach might be a bit too presumptuous.

In recent times, social media has captured the majority of the limelight compared to other channels such as email and search, in terms of digital marketing channels. Marketers love writing and talking about social media, as it’s fast growing, exciting and less money is actually spent on it. We have also seen that in the last couple of years, social media is gaining more importance in Google’s ranking algorithm.

However, according to a study by a Pew Internet survey conducted in May 2011 and results released this week, the proportion of people in the USA using social networking services is 65%, whereas 92% of internet users send email and use search engines. These figures remind us that even though social media is important, we shouldn’t let social become too much of a distraction.

Compared to less than 5 years ago, when only around 20% of adult internet users in the USA were tweeting and liking, 65% is actually a good figure and a tremendous growth, which undoubtedly cannot be ignored. However, when it comes to established, continued usage, social media is still not yet up to the same level as email and search.

Usage of search and email is also astonishingly consistent across demographic categories. For example –
96% of those aged between 18-29 use search engines and 87% of those who are 65 and older use search engines too. 94% of internet users in the 18-29 category use email while 87% of those in the 65+ group also use email.

Usage is also consistent through socioeconomic categories as 90% of those earning $30,000 per annum use search engines and 98% of those earning $75,000+ per year also use search engines, which isn’t significantly higher.

Some people may think that email is dying, however we can see from the survey results this is not true. Many organisations are still undecided about social media and can see emails as a vital part of their business as they use it every day.

Even though there’s a buzz around social networking sites, mainly because they are seen as “the new kid on the block”, search and email should not be forgotten. At the moment search and email can be seen as currently the two most reliable digital marketing channels. Saying this, all three channels have unique attributes and if they are all integrated in a marketing campaign, this can lead to a successful campaign.

This week, Gravytrain’s Account Manager, Matthew Read, spoke to UTalkMarketing.com about the social networking site Google+, and discussed how it can really compete with Facebook.

Since Google+ was launched two months ago, a staggering number of over twenty million users have set up an account; it took Facebook three years to gain the same number of users.

As Google+ pages for businesses aren’t available until the autumn, UTalkMarketing.com discusses what brands and businesses might want to get out of the social networking platform, once they’ve signed up.

One of the suggestions was having an online shopping experience on Google+. Facebook offers online shopping within Facebook pages, however businesses have struggled to measure how much of its new business can be attributed directly from consumer activity on the site. Matthew says “I would like to see the integration of [Google’s] shopping search results, so that businesses can have a direct point of sale on their Google+ profile and therefore accurately attribute sales from this medium”.

The article suggests that Google+ could challenge Facebook by touting itself as an effective new business tool.

You can read Matthew’s thoughts and the rest of the article on UTalkMarketing.com.