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Archive for July, 2010

Influence is all about Context

Wednesday, July 7th, 2010

Are you influential? The truth is, for most of us, the answer is “sometimes.” Unless you’re an all out celebrity (and even then) you have areas of expertise where people trust your opinion and other areas where you get less traction.

Think of your own group of friends. You already know who to go to for advice on restaurants and who to go to when you’re gadget shopping. Klout looks at online interactions to gain this knowledge.

In addition to Klout Scores, we also have Topical Scores on those we’ve processed. We get these scores by looking at what lists you’re on (i.e. are you on foodie lists or tech lists?), what you talk about, and what topics tend to get you the most engagement. You may talk about two topics equally but if people are much more likely to interact and retweet you on recipes rather than real estate, you’re more influential when it comes to cooking.

Right now on Klout, you can see your most influential topics on your Klout Report. In the future you will see more of our topical data as we believe it is some of the most valuable information on influence available. We’re already using topical data for our Klout Perks (with a strict code of conduct) to surface the right people for a given brand or product.

Image Credit:  Katie Petersen

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A Klout Trip to Toronto

Friday, July 2nd, 2010

Two of the Klout Team (myself and @gregarious) recently went up to Toronto (flying Virgin America, of course) to meet everyone  who’s been a part of the Virgin America Perks program. We put together a KloutUp, went to the official Virgin America Toronto launch party and met with a variety of Toronto tweeters during the day. Here’s the recap.
KloutUp in Toronto
The KloutUp: Putting real faces to twitter handles
Monday night, June 28th, we had a KloutUp in the Gladstone hotel where we invited any Toronto tweeters (whether or not they were part of our promotion) to come hang out and have some free drinks. It was great to interact with the Toronto Twitter community more than 140 characters at a time. The KloutUp actually ended up going hours beyond when it was supposed to end and a big group went out to dinner afterwards to continue the conversations. Check out the pics.

Virgin America in Toronto - Thompson Hotel - The Toronto Klout GroupVirgin America Launch Party
We went to the official Virgin America launch party on Tuesday, June 29th. We had a great time (some of us even got pictures with Branson himself) and got to see even more of the Tweeters who were in our program. We wished we could have invited everyone, but the Virgin America party had limited capacity. Check out the pics.

A Learning Experience
Greg and I went to Toronto to see first-hand what this campaign was like on the ground. We got a chance to talk to a lot of people who were selected and also others who were not. It gave us a great chance to learn where people had questions and how we can make what we’re doing clearer for future perks.

For those we didn’t get a chance to talk to, here’s a quick explanation on one of the bigger questions – why some people got invited and others didn’t. For this program, as is true with any, we’re looking to target a certain set of influencers that are right for the brand and the campaign. We have topical scores for everyone that we don’t show on Klout.com. This enables us to select people who are the most influential in a given topic, but may not necessarily be as influential overall. These topical scores combined with Klout Score and other factors such as location are used to produce a short list of who is eligible for a campaign. It’s possible that someone very influential could not be a right match for this campaign and also possible that someone with a lower overall influence level would be influential in the all right areas and get chosen. You can also read a previous post we had on this subject.

Thanks and see you soon!

I need to thank so many people in Toronto for being awesome hosts and showing us a great time. Toronto is growing to become a hub for startups and social media and we look forward to keeping in touch with everyone we met there. Luckily, many of those who got Virgin America flights are choosing to come to SF, so we’ll get to see them again soon.

Photos by @thekenyeung

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