Klout, a company that quantifies people’s online influence, has recently revamped its business model with a new emphasis on content aggregation. While many people have been critical of Klout’s ranking methodology in the past, I want to take a fresh look at Klout to see if this move toward content aggregation can be leveraged for your healthcare marketing.
Klout, a company that quantifies people’s online influence, has recently revamped its business model with a new emphasis on content aggregation. While many people have been critical of Klout’s ranking methodology in the past, I want to take a fresh look at Klout to see if this move toward content aggregation can be leveraged for your healthcare marketing.
But first, some background. Klout, a San Francisco start-up, was founded in 2008 at a time when Twitter was still in its infancy. The rationale behind Klout is to measure users’ influence across Twitter (and to a lesser degree Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn) and rank users accordingly. It assigns users a Klout score, which purports to measure on a scale of one to 100 an individual’s social media influence on various topics. While some people took readily to this new ranking system, many more criticized its method of generating user scores – essentially based on the number of mentions and retweets a person’s content receives across Twitter and the number of followers on social networks. Critics point out that based on its methodology Klout scores are not representative of the influence a person truly has. In this I am in agreement, having long held the belief that numbers don’t mean a thing if you’re not actively engaging people.
Fast forward to two weeks ago and Klout’s announcement of a new content tool which it says will help users improve their scores. You can do this by sharing a link to your own content, sharing content created by others (Klout generates suggested content for you), or you can combine both methods. This is designed to increase your social engagement levels by increasing the chance of your content being retweeted or responded to on Twitter.
Can Klout work for your healthcare content marketing?
Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action. Content aggregation, a strategic element of content marketing, is the process of pulling in content from a variety of different sources across the web, and publishing them on one platform, website, or blog. In effect you are marketing your healthcare brand by providing valuable content for your audience, increasing your visibility and establishing thought leadership, without explicitly advertising your product or service.
How to use Klout’s new features
Klout’s new “Create” tab helps you find shareable articles that are likely to resonate with your healthcare audience. You can also create original posts by clicking the quill in the upper right corner of the “Create” tab.
Klout provides every user with a personalized content stream based on their specific topical interests and what’s likely to resonate with their network. You can filter your stream by individual topics, making it easier to find and share content likely to engage your audience.
Klout’s new personalized scheduling tool recommends the best times to publish based on when your audience is online and likely to engage. By publishing at these times, you’re more likely to share the right message at the right time with the right people (see my previous recommendations on how to use scheduling to good effect).
Over the next few weeks Klout will be releasing tools to help with original content creation as well as a new version of their iOS app that will incorporate many of the features in the web version.
Klout Dos and Don’ts
Do use Klout to help create a healthcare content strategy mix of original (content you create) and aggregated content.
Don’t use Klout to artificially increase your influence score.
Do use the Klout scheduling tool to prime the social media pump with a steady flow of content to your healthcare audience.
Don’t post stories with no value to your audience.
Do use the generated content tool to start conversations that will resonate with your audience.
Don’t forget to engage with those conversations.
Conclusion
As demand increases for timely and relevant healthcare content, content aggregation can be a time-saving solution for busy healthcare social media marketers. To be honest, I didn’t find the suggested content was particularly relevant or engaging for my purposes, but you may find otherwise. It could offer a useful learning tool for those who are just starting to engage in social media. On this basis you could certainly try out the new Klout, so long as you keep firmly in mind that being successful online means interacting, engaging and answering questions in a timely manner. The bottom line is building reputation and influence is based on real engagement with your audience, not on gamification.
Logo by Marie Otskua