Klout Transforms Into “Social Media Resume” With New Design

Avid Klout users around the world will notice a reconfiguration in numbers today as Klout is undergoing a major overhaul and redesign. All user numbers will change and and selected groups will see a shiny new experience, as Klout aims to become your “social media resume.” This means that more social data will be pulled, more items will be tracked, and more reporting will be available.

The new score changes will take effect for all users at 10 AM PST today and the redesign will be rolling out to groups throughout the month. Here are the main components that are included in the new version of Klout:

Klout Score Changes

The new Klout score will incorporate more than 400 signals from seven different social networks, thanks to the addition of LinkedIn and Wikipedia data. This score will be processed daily and includes:

• Facebook – Items tracked include mentions, likes, comments, subscribers, wall posts and friend counts.
• Twitter – Items tracked include Retweets, mentions, list memberships, followers and replies
• Google+ – Items tracked include comments, +1’s and reshares
• LinkedIn – Items tracked include title, connections, recommenders and comments
• foursquare – Items tracked include tips completed
• Klout – Items tracked include +K’s from others (capped in a 90-day measurement cycle
• Wikipedia – Items tracked include page importance, inlinks to outlinks ratio and overall number of inlinks. It should be noted that Wikipedia can only help your overall Klout score.

One thing Klout made clear was that one of the signals that are significantly depreciated are follower counts, thanks to the rampant follower buying. For Klout, engagement is heavily favored over sheer follower/friend numbers.

The score summary has also been changed to show users exactly what sites and factors calculated into their score. When looking at my specific score I can see that Twitter alone helped to get me to my overall number:

Of course, connecting more accounts will lead to more potential Klout.

Layout Changes

The most dramatic change to Klout is the new look timeline-esque format aimed to become a “social media resume.”

Instead of the focus being on just Klout score, users can now see all content and what is performing the best. Users can see how well others are doing and just who they are influencing on social media with the new layout.

All account content is now neatly pulled into one main location for easy access, reporting and monitoring.

Transparency & Moments

Each post will now feature a slick visual layout with slide-out metrics to show which pieces of content are influencing other users. This allows users to see the exact impact of their content on their Klout score.

This can be seen for all users and actually help others discover influential content.  When looking at Search Engine Land for instance, I can see a top tweet that influenced quite a few folks:

Users will now be able to see that specific updates are engaging different folks, something that’s very powerful for marketers. Klout also told us that business pages for Facebook and Google+ aren’t part of this release yet “we are definitely planning to add this to the score.”

The new Klout is quite an improvement, look for new scores out today and the redesign live to all users by the end of the month. For more information, see the Klout blog.

About The Author

Greg Finn

Greg Finn is the Director of Marketing for Cypress North, a company that provides world-class social media and search marketing services and web & application development. He has been in the Internet marketing industry for 10+ years and specializes in Digital Marketing. You can also find Greg on Twitter (@gregfinn) or LinkedIn.