In the world of social media, businesses are built based on influence and reach. It tends to be about how many Facebook fans you have, how many people are following you on Twitter or how many people have you in circles on Google+. It’s definitely a lot to keep up with. How do you know who is an influencer? How do you know who is a fake who bought a lot of fans & followers?
Enter Klout and Kred.
Klout is, according to their website, “a representation of your overall social media influence. The science behind the Score examines more than 400 variables on multiple social networks beyond your number of followers and friends. It looks at who is engaging with your content and who they are sharing it with.”
Klout gives you a score between 1 and 100. The higher the better. There are over 100 million people scored on Klout.
When you sign up for Klout, you add all of your social networks. The more you add, the more you have to score. With Facebook, you can choose your personal profile or your business page. Personally, I use my personal profile – it ranks higher. When I use my business page, my score drops. When you are tagged on Facebook in pictures and posts 9 times out of 10 it’s your personal profile being tagged, not your business page. I know of a few that their scores are actually higher with their business page. I suggest you test each of them and see what gives you the best score.
After you sign up for Klout, you give “K+” to other uses on topics that Klout thinks they are knowledgeable about. Sometime Klout will get wonky and say you are influential in something completely random like toilet paper because you tweeted about toilet paper. You can go in and clean those topics up to make it more relevant.
Is Klout worth doing? That’s the issue. Klout gives perks to those with higher scores from businesses that pay to participate. A friend recently got to test drive a new Chevy Volt for 3 days as a Klout perk. I’ve heard of businesses using the Klout measurement in hiring new employees or guest speakers or consultants.
You will find opinions on Klout divided – some love it and some hate it. I personally think it’s a great way to measure how someone is handling their social media. This especially comes into play if you are looking to hire a social media consultant.
Then there’s Kred.
Kred, according to their website, “is a visual history of your Social Media Influence. Explore the posts, pictures and links that make you influential. ”
Kred scores a little differently than Klout. Kred rates you on 2 levels: influence and outreach. Influence levels ranks you out of 1,000 and outreach ranks you out of 12. Of course, the higher the better. Unlike Klout, where you can link all sorts of social media profiles, on Kred you can only link Twitter and Facebook.
As you can see from my Kredentials profile, Kred shows how many people you are following on Twitter and how many follow you. It also shows @replies, retweets and links posted. What I like is it shows the hashtags I’ve used the most and the links that were posted the most.
All the same arguments for Kred being worth it is the same as Klout. The basis for which these scores are calculated are always scrutinized. When it comes to social media influence, I think they always will be. Social media is ever-changing and like evolution, you have to adapt or die out.
Here are somegreat follow-up articles on Klout and Kred:
Kred Attempts to Build User’s Social Media Profiles with Kred Story from Adweek
Social Influence: How Klout is Impacting Social Media from assistsocialmedia.com
Kred Tells the Story of Social Media Influence from Information Week.
Klout Rating Changes from kimgarst.com.
What are your feelings on Klout and Kred? Love them or hate them? Have you seen a benefit from them? Share with me below your thoughts!
I only use Klout and never had an idea about Kred. Thanks for the info, Mandy!
Thanks Lorii!
Great article on these two social influence sites. I really didn’t know about them till last week. Awesome info.
Thanks Katrina!
I have signed up on Kred as well a few weeks ago; I do it because it is the thing to do but haven’t seen the benefit from it YET!! I also signed up on PeerIndex…we’ll see!! But I really enjoy you explaining to us the what and the why Mandy! Great job!!
Thanks Olga!
Great explanation about Klout and Kred, Mandy. I have always used Klout and Kred is something new to me. I will have to check it out-thanks for the information!
Thanks Lisa!
I am so glad there are people like you who are willing to share and explain all of these social media platforms! Thanks!
Thanks Denny!
My gosh, I’ve not heard of Kred until now. Thank you so much for these clear explanations of the two – how they work and the advantages of using them.
I like Kred better because I think they have been MUCH for transparent than Klout. There for a while, many people stopped using Klout and not all have come back because of their inability to share how they were coming up with numbers. Having said that, I have received my share of cool Klout perks and do participate. I’m just saying I treat that site with caution. Kred rules in my book! Great post!
Thanks Martha! I agree!
Great information Mandy ! I love to look at all the different social media measurement to see where I am ! Thanks for the link to Assist Social Media with the our Klout story..;) I was really hacked off at Klout for the longest ! LOL
Thanks!!
Glad to see other comments that I’m not the only one not to have heard of Kred! Some great information here Mandy. Thank you!
Thanks Carolyn!
I deleted my Klout account when they started giving influence points to teen and tween Facebook account holders. I signed up with Kred. I recently re-upped, so to speak with Klout, and had good numbers until a week ago when my score dropped 15 points because I chose not to connect my personal Facebook – which is personal – and wanted to use my page.
I got a form email stating that would be working later in September. Funny they failed to mention that when they changed their algorithm and scores. The drop occurred a week post change.
Back OT, you have to take these numbers with a grain of salt. Are you getting comments, shares, likes, retweets, circled, etc.? If so, you’re doing OK.
I agree Mallie. Klout drives me up the wall!
Great info Mandy! like everyone else I use only Klout. I will have to check Kred. Thanks for sharing 🙂
Thanks Maria!
I never heard of Kred..it is so hard to keep up-to-date with the fast pace of social media.
I changed my Klout over to my business page..I expect my score to drop and, if so, I’ll switch it back. Thanks for that information (and all the useful info you provide)!
Thanks Meryl!
Thanks for the information. I haven’t really paid attention to either one.
Thanks Jean!
I’ve always thought of Klout more as a game, and have been given Kred a couple of times but not really explored it at all yet. Do you have a preference? Or is it worth having a presence on both, do you think?
I think it’s worth being on both – some look at one, some the other.
I am signed up for both but only active on one for now. If only there were more hours in a day 😉
I know Anita! Too much to do, not enough time.
I’ve set up Klout profiles for my businesses so it tends be a bit confusing. I do monitor my score on a regular basis though but since there aren’t a lot of people that go by the Klout score, I don’t really worry about it. They also make it complicated to connect to some of the other platforms because it attempts to connect you to personal information instead of the business profiles. I haven’t heard of Kred so I’ll have to check it out.
I’m liking Kred a lot!
So many platforms to consider. Signed up for Kred now we will see if Klout can withstand the competition.
I know, right?
I’m on the fence with these sites. You see a lot of industry “celebrities” with high scores, which unfortunately makes me wary. I’ve only used Klout, and my score tends to go up and down. I notice it goes down when I’m busy actually working on my social media – or being social – so that’s something that doesn’t sit well with me. I think these sites need to be more transparent in how they score, and what constitutes a higher score. While I’m all for a site that can tell us who’s who among thousands of “wanna be’s”, I think there needs to be more clarity. Just a humble opinion!
I appreciate you opinion! Klout drives me crazy in how much it fluctuates!
I’ve never utilized kred. How are the new features added by klout similar to this now?
They are both similar in how they work and what they do. The look of Kred is different – it’s more like a story board.
When I was first starting out I tried Klout (it was new then too) and I felt judged and found wanting and never went back. But as my audience and activity has increased, I find myself wanting (like all geeky marketing types do) some real data on how I’m doing overall, not just FB Insights. So you’ve inspired me to give it another try!
Good luck Kerry!
Hmmm… not sure I even want to invest time learning another app! Is Kred really worth it? Hmmm… (-_-)
Kred is more transparent than Klout when it comes to how they score. I see more and more credibility going towards Kred.
I have profiles on Klout, Kred and PeerIndex, too. Not really going to them often…as I am busy working for clients. 😉
I do value some of the information and certainly look up scores for peers as I contemplate outsourcing or collaboration.
Very clear blog post! TY 🙂
Thanks Dorien! I am not on them often either!
Great post, Mandy! Thanks for sharing your Amazing knowledge of both. I am beginning to really like Kred.
Thanks Susan!!
So I read this marvelous article, then jumped over to Klout – just had to come back and thank you for a marvelous post. Now off to explore Kred… 🙂
Thanks Ronae! Good luck!
I love that my Klout score went way up! I have no idea why but I finial am not ashamed of it ! Thanks for the tips about Kred.. I’ll have to look into it!
Thanks Barbara!
Great info about both platforms Mandy! I love the notion of measuring social influence. It’s so relevant as even search is becoming more social. I haven’t dove into Kred as much as Klout but I am learning. Great tips 😉
Thanks Angie!
I don’t use either, and only recently heard of Kred. One day, with information like this I will include myself 🙂 Thanks for the breakdown, I really don’t understand them…
Thanks Suzanne! They can be kind of hard to grasp at first, but the more you use it, the easier it gets.
My Klout score dropped dramatically after the last change and I haven’t bounced back yet as they have not added my Facebook stats in. It’s a bit frustrating. I’m looking into Kred and trying to stay optimistic.
Thanks for comparing the two Mandy. I honestly haven’t even had the time to look at Kred yet, but thinking I need to add that to my list of “to do” . Great resources your included.
ThanksMandy! That explains a few things I was comfused about. I haven’t used kred yet so I have nothing to compare kloit to. I still think it’s womky overall! LOL! Christiane
Guess I’ll need to try out Kred too. I’ve been on Klout for awhile and been on-the-fence about how helpful it is! There seems to be so much involved in these rating sites that I wonder how people spend time on such entreprises. But then I remember the ‘geeky’ endeavors I enjoy and have to forgive their obsessions!
Love the information, Mandy! Though I have to laugh – sometimes I feel like I’m in some kind of crazy video game when people give me +K on this or that. It’s interesting to glance at for relative information, but other than that, I’m just too swamped to put too many brain cells into the thing. Probably bad, but it’s my reality these days! 🙂
In my book, I think Klout is more enjoyable. You know why? It’s the thrill of waiting to see what kind of PERKS you get on there that makes it fun! =)
I have not signed up for Kred yet. I am still in the look and see stage.
I do have a Klout account but my score has done some wild swings. I am not really sure why or how though, so I always take Klout with a huge grain of salt!
I don’t like Klout, and consider it a necessary evil. I think, given how screwed up they have become lately, that anyone who hires me or doesn’t hire me based on my Klout score is someone I don’t want to work with. They claim to come up with their score based on all of these 100s of variables, but many of the scores make no sense. There are major influencers with scores similar to or lower than scores of people who are great, but who just clearly don’t have anywhere near the same level of influence.
Kred, on the other hand, I like. It only measures influence from FB and Twitter, so that’s a downside, but at least you know exactly what it’s looking at, and the scores seem to make sense to me.
Bottom line, none of them are perfect, but hopefully they’ll continue to get better.
I am tired of those who bash Klout but maybe I am one of the few who understands it’s vision and purpose. Yes, Klout may be “inaccurate” but what is truly accurate when it comes to measuring something? Do you think your credit score is 100% accurate? No but it is a good guideline on how your spending habits are and whether or not you pay your bills on time. Klout is the same when it comes to your social media activities. Do you post anything that is worthy or compelling? If so others will respond and you want others to respond to what you put out. And the more you do it, the better. That is what Klout measures. And I am in complete favor of employers in marketing fields looking at Klout scores of applicants. If you are going to be working in any kind of marketing position you MUST know how to utilize social media properly. And again Klout will measure that even if it is not 100% accurate. Not to mention, they are constantly improving and I like their dashboard. It is nice and clean unlike Kred where the moments are spread all over the place. It’s a mess. The only positive thing I can say about Kred is that it is good that your output is measured in conjunction to your influence but as for everything else about it, I give it a thumbs down. Their tactics are shady and I know this firsthand. Klout wins.