People like benchmarks — they’re a way of assessing where we are. Usually we do this through an annual performance review or other indicators (such as a bonus).

If you think about the performance measures you use at work, you know they’re impacted by memory, bias, prejudice, personal opinion, relationships, politics and even the mood of the person doing the assessment. But they’re still useful as a guide, for example on where to spend training dollars.

As in real life, so in the online world, the tools here provide useful and imperfect insights on influence. Therefore as part of establishing your Professional Platform I want you to benchmark your online influence scores. You will probably enjoy the sense of satisfaction when you come back a year later and see how much you’ve progressed.

There are hundreds of online analytics tools that can tell you everything from how a keyword you used in a tweet resonated with communities to how your blog ranks worldwide. But this is not a path for us. It’s technical and can be overwhelming. Digital marketers, communicators, or customer and community managers should use them.

The measures we’ll use are:

• Klout — which ranks you between 1 and 100 for how much influence you have on social media
• Kred — which measures the likelihood that someone trusts and will act on your posts, as well as how much you reach out to others.

Klout and Kred offer ‘social proof’ about your standing online. They should not, however, be your only consideration. As ZDNet’s Paul Greenberg says, influence is a complex subject and not just about digital participation. Word-of-mouth recommendations and prior success on projects are enormously valuable. Having said that, some recruiters are listing a credible Klout score as essential for job applications.

Best-selling author and partner at Future Workplace, Jeanne Meister, says employers are using Klout to distinguish candidates while also taking into account the size and quality of their LinkedIn and Twitter communities. She says a Klout score will soon be a ‘measurable currency’. That said, Forbes writer Anthony Wing Kosner says Klout can be a, ‘blunt instrument, and as such, dangerous in the wrong hands’.

There’s an additional reason influence measures are important right now. Many people are appending ‘social media’ to their résumés as a skill. Some are even advertising themselves as social media coaches without being on the platforms or knowing how to use them. Influence measures are a quick and easy way to do quick (if imperfect) due diligence. A client was recently offered Twitter training, but a quick search revealed that the coach had 100 followers and had only ever tweeted links (called link posting) of content from her website, rather than engaging or sharing the valuable content of others, including her clients. These feeds are rarely successful in the long run because they don’t generate engagement. To be fair, many people who are new to social media start out posting this way until they learn the ropes.

It’s important to know what online scores represent.

We’re used to thinking of excellence as 90 per cent and above (or whatever your subjective figure is). But The Wall Street Journal (Asia) has a Klout score of 68. That puts ‘must have Klout 35 and above’ in a whole new context. Rupert Murdoch is known by most people around the world and has a Klout score of 91. Charlene Li from Altimer Group has a score of 78. You probably don’t know her but active social media users closely follow Li and Principal at Altimer Group, Brian Solis.

When looking at Kred you need to identify what communities they are influential in. A top 1 per cent Kred in Comedian communities is not going to nail the finance role you have in mind.

Despite their flaws, it’s important to be open-minded about emerging social rating systems as they have emerging value. Lithium Technologies, renowned for its high-quality social metric analytics, recently acquired Klout. Social influence and social influence measures are sure to evolve as digital life does.

Klout: the standard for influence

To use Klout go to Klout.com and sign in with Twitter or Facebook. If you don’t yet have either of these, complete this after we’ve worked through those platforms. Then authorise Klout to use your various social accounts, for example Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin.

Once signed up, pick a number of topics that reflect your expertise. If a topic doesn’t precisely fit, look for the closest alternative.

One downside of Klout is that it can be gamed by tech-savvy people who know how to set up automation, but the company is continually evolving its algorithm to prevent it (so they tell us).

Many big brands use Klout Perks to find influencers in particular target markets and then ask them to be broadcasters for products or services within online communities. In return these people are offered Kred Perks that reward them.

Klout only accesses public data so hidden social media networks are not counted towards your score (http://klout.com/corp/perks).

Kred: a transparent influence measure

Go to Kred.com and sign in using Twitter or Facebook. Then authorise the application to access your social networks.

Kred measures energy in as well as energy out — I like that. It looks at who you influence and who influences you, if your material is trusted and shared, but also what you share. Many people use social media to talk about themselves. As in real life, so too online, it’s boring. The ethos of rewarding generosity aligns with my values. You get a score for Influence out of 1000 and another for Outreach out of 12. These are your Kredentials.

Kred tracks communities, hashtags and topics that are important to you, and you can use it as a navigation tool.

Chapter summary

Klout and Kred are instruments to measure influence in an online world. They’re not the only ones but for executives they’re worth knowing about. By benchmarking where you are now you’ll be able to see how you progress as your Professional Platform develops. Used in conjunction with other measures, they can help you distinguish genuine from fictional online expertise. Given you will not scam these systems to artificially raise your scores, they will provide a longitudinal benchmark of your social presence and are recommended as part of your basic social toolkit.