In a blog post today, Klout announced that Google+ influence will become part of the Klout Score. Users were given the opportunity to connect their Google+ accounts to their Klout Scores back in September, and now that connection will pay off in the form of – you guessed it! – a higher Klout Score! What this really means is Klout wants you to connect all of your social networks to its service, and if you do the reward is a higher Klout Score. Like any rewards system, if you give a little more, you get a little more back. And Klout, like any other social media marketing tool, means business.
Klout users are no doubt socially media-savvy folks. Klout expains that, of their users, “62% are active on Google+ and therefore should see it affect their Score based on their ability to drive action on that platform.” Klout does not penalize folks who haven’t connected their Google+ accounts, however.
Google+ has more than 40 million users. As a result, it has ramped up its social networking efforts, adding brand pages and Google Chat in Google+ Circles. Social media monitoring tool HootSuite recently integrated Google+ Pages into its dashboard offerings.
What’s more interesting than the fact that users who post publicly and use Google+ will see a score increase? Klout took a closer look at the types of users on Google+ versus users on other social networks.
Facebook users, as you can imagine, are the mostly tightly connected. Accepting a Facebook friend request is a much bigger deal than following someone back on Twitter, say. Facebook friends automatically receive each others’ updates in the news feed that, much to users’ dismay, is constantly changing, and not always for the better. On Twitter, everything is more casual. You can follow someone and receive their updates because you’re interested in what they are saying – but that person doesn’t necessarily need to follow you back. Google+, which is still mostly used by tech folks and early adopters, falls somewhere inbetween Facebook and Twitter. Says Klout’s blog: “Google+ incorporates elements of both models with the use of circles, and is therefore more tightly connected than Twitter, but not as tightly connected as Facebook.”
It all comes back to the Klout Score – and really, that’s all Klout power-users really care about, right?
