Understanding the Influence Metric
The Klout Score is the measurement of your overall online influence. The scores range from 0 to 100 with higher scores representing a wider and stronger sphere of influence. Klout uses over 25 variables to measure True Reach, Amplification Probability, and Network Score. The size of the sphere is calculated by measuring True Reach (engaged followers and friends vs. spam bots, dead accounts, etc.). Amplification Probability is the likelihood that messages will generate retweets or spark a conversation. If the user's engaged followers are highly influential, they'll have a high Network Score.
We believe that influence is the ability to drive people to action -- "action" might be defined as a reply, a retweet or clicking on a link. We perform significant testing to ensure that the average click-through rate on links shared is highly correlated with a person's Klout Score. The 25+ variables used to generate scores for each of these categories are normalized across the whole data set and run through our analytics engine. After the first pass of analytics, we apply a specific weight to each data point. We then run the factors through our machine-learning analysis and calculate the final Klout Score. The final Klout Score is a representation of how successful a person is at engaging their audience and how big of an impact their messages have on people.
True Reach is the size of your engaged audience. This number will be smaller than the number of followers you have because we subtract spam followers and inactive accounts. Klout calculates influence for each individual relationship, so we also subtract the people who you have little influence over. For example, if you are followed by a person who follows 5,000 other people and you two have never interacted, share very few common friends, and generally don't tweet about the same topics, it's likely that your tweets are barely seen by this person, and you probably have little to no influence over them. On the other hand, if a person takes the time to put you on a Twitter list, it means they really value the content you produce, and will increase the influence you have over them.
True Reach is broken into the following subcategories:
Factors measured: Followers, Friends, Total Retweets, Follower/Follow Ratio, Followed Back %, @ Mention Count, List Count, List Followers Count.
Amplification Probability is the likelihood that your content will be acted upon. How often do your messages generate retweets or spark a conversation? The ability to create content that compels others to respond and high-velocity content that spreads into networks beyond your own is a key component of influence.
Amplification Ability is a composite of the following subcategories:
Factors measured: Unique Retweeters, Unique Messages Retweeted, Follower Retweet %, Unique @ Senders, Follower Mention %, Inbound Messages Per Outbound Message, Update Count.
Network Influence is the influence level of your engaged audience. Each time a person retweets, @mentions, lists, or follows you it is a testament to your authority and the quality of your content. Capturing the attention of influencers is no easy task, and those who are able to do so are typically creating spectacular content. The more influential the people who retweet, @ mention, list or follow you, the higher your Network Score will be.
Network Score looks at the Klout score of each person who interacts with you to determine:
Factors measured: List inclusions, Follower/Follow Ratio, Followed Back %, Unique Senders, Unique Retweeters, Influence of Followers, Influence of Retweeters and Mentioners
