While presence in the social sphere is gaining momentum, it becomes increasingly important for organisation to measure the actual impact of the social presence. While it was always difficult to quantify the ROMI, with the advent of the social channel this has increased manyfolds. Success of any venture lies in knowing what to measure and controlling the key metrics within the desired range. While there are a lots of theories and practices of measuring the social media ROI( SMROI), there is no one-size-fits-all kind of a management theory, which can be adapted.
While there are lots of such theories floating around, each claiming one metric to be more important than the other, one of the common metrics which many believe is effective in measuring and controlling is the social influence. One of the established metric of measuring influence in social networks is the Klout Score. Although in social circuit, there are many who question how scientific this measurement is, but till today it is one of the best available barometer for measuring social influence.
The methodology used by Klout is focused primarily on measuring how influential you are in your social networks.When you share, like, retweet in your social networks, you influence people. The more engaged your actions are, the more influential you become. The analysis of your social influence is presented as a score between 1 and 100, the higher the score the more influential you become.
Since your action changes, so does your score. Klout defines Influence as the ability to derive action. Which means that the spread of your network is less important than the depth. Keeping your audience engaged is the key. For Klout to give you a score, you must be able to add your networks to Klout. Now here is a catch, if you are most influential in a network which is beyond Klout's measure then your influence in that network does not influence your Klout score .
The score generated is on a 90 day rolling period with higher weightage given to the later actions. It measures 3 broad parameters:
- Your true Reach: It is the number of people influenced by you directly or indirectly
- Your Amplification: It is the depth of influence you have on your audience
- Your Network: It measures how influential your network is when compounded
So.. What is your Klout score?
Create a profile in http://klout.com/ and check your influence. Do make sure to add all you active network, unless you intend to keep your profiles private. Please go through the data policy though before you create a profile.