Last week, Klout launched a new feature that curates content based on a user's interests and influences. Could this platform finally be useful? If you're like most social media marketers, you likely have a love/hate relationship with Klout—or you just hate it. The way scores seem to fluctuate with no rhyme or reason has turned many users off, but that hasn't stopped the average social media enthusiast from wanting an ego stroke from time to time.
"Whoa, my Klout score just went up three points!" *Insert eye roll*
According to Klout's blog post, the company launched this new feature as a way to help individuals raise Klout scores and gain more influence. Klout claims that the feature is different from most in that it takes into account what your followers will enjoy as well. The hope is that if you share articles it has recommended for you, you'll increase engagement within your community.
To get started, you'll need to create your content feed. You can customize the topics you'd like to see—although I've found that Klout's range of topics isn't quite as broad as I would personally like them to be. For example, you won't be able to find inbound marketing as a topic, so you'll want to follow every category that makes up inbound marketing if this is of interest to you.
Once you've selected your topics, you'll start to see content recommendations with reasons why Klout suggested them. In my feed, I saw posts that, according to Klout, are "hidden gems" or "on the rise."
The coolest part of this new feature—especially if you like to geek out over data and analytics—is that once you hover over the articles, Klout will let you know how likely it is that your audience has already seen it or whether or not it's trending. You can either be first to share the news or make sure you don't miss out on what people are talking about. And that’s something social media users love.
If you see something of interest, you can either share it on a schedule or share it immediately straight from Klout. You cannot monitor the posts you've shared yet, but according to Klout, the feature is coming soon. Once it does, you'll be able to track your reach and reaction metrics.
With this new feature, it will be interesting to see if Klout becomes more widely used as it takes on other apps like Buffer and Hootsuite. (Buffer recently played around with a feature that recommends new content to fill your Buffer based on what you've shared in the past). With its history of Klout being nothing more than a vanity platform, I have a feeling it may be difficult to get people to understand the value of this new feature; however, a one-stop shop for discovering, sharing and monitoring new content could be incredibly useful.
