Identifying Influencers with Kred

“The first totally transparent social scoring system to evaluate among communities and reward generosity.”

What is Kred?In their words:

“Kred measures influence in online communities connected by interests. Kred is the first social scoring system to provide a comprehensive score for Influence and Outreach by valuing engagement and audience quality over follower count. It is the only influence measurement to offer complete transparency so users understand exactly how their scores are calculated. Kred celebrates the power of personal influence and generosity at the true heart of human relationships - tight groups of friends and subject matter experts....”

What is Kred?• Kred is a social media influence metric created by PeopleBrowsr• Introduced on September 29, 2011• Emphasizes two many virtues that set it apart from other influence

metrics:– Transparency– Community Building

• Currently measures influence only on Twitter• Tracks global influence as well as influence within communities such as

Actors, Architecture, Cat lovers, Dog lovers, Fashion, Health, Social Media and UK Mums.

• Calculates two separate measurements for each twitter account as well as each Kred community:– Influence– Outreach

InfluenceKred Influence is the measure of what others do because of you. Influence increases when others take action because of your content.

Your influence grows when:

• Someone retweets your tweet (10, 25, 50 pts)*• Someone replies to you (10, 25, 50 pts)• Someone follows you (1 pt)

(* Points are determined by the number of followers of the person retweeting/replying)

Influence

OutreachKred Outreach is the measure of your generosity.

Your Outreach increases when:

• You retweet (10 pts)• You reply (10 pts)• You follow a new person (1 pt)

As you accumulate Outreach Points, you move to a higher Outreach Level. Because Outreach Points are a reward for being active and benevolent, your Outreach Level never goes down.

Outreach

Transparency

• Scores for every single tweet are publicly available and easily located in each user’s profile.

• Why transparency? It contributes to trust and authenticity.

• You know why influencers have the scores they do (as opposed to Klout, TwentyFeet, PeerIndex, etc).

Transparency

(See all that blue? I’m way more generous than a 3!)

Kredentials

CommunitiesCommunities are groups of people connected by interests and affiliations.

In the offline world, your credibility on any subject varies by your level of expertise. To replicate this on social networks, Kred builds scores based on your unique interests. For example, you may frequently offer expert advice on Dogs and have little to say about Fashion. Kred gives you a score in both Communities; in this case, your Influence is likely to be higher for Dogs than for Fashion.

What determines your communities?

Kred places you in communities based on the interests you express through your Twitter Bio and the hashtags and keywords in your posts over the last 1,000 days.

Kred generates both global and community influence and outreach scores for individuals.

Community Leaders

Each community elects a community leader (or leaders).

Community leaders are provided with extra analytical tools to help them learn more about their community in order to nurture connections amongst members, highlight fresh, relevant content and serve as ambassadors to Brands.

Should You Use Kred?

Strengths:

• Transparency – you can see exactly why the influencers you are looking to contact have the scores they do.

• Improved influence – by participating in the relevant communities, your influencers of choice are going to be well connected. Their tweets really do mean something.

• Independence – Klout offers perks to brands. Brands can provide incentives to influencers (though not directly) in the form of gifts. There is no such sway in Kred, since Kred does not serve as an intermediary between brands and influencers.

Should You Use Kred?

Weaknesses:

• Twitter only – twitter is obviously an important social media platform, but it may not be the most relevant platform for you and your business. There may be people who are more influential on other platforms that are better suited to your business.

• Community placement accuracy – twitter bios, keywords and hashtags may not be the best way to identify communities. (One of my pre-selected communities was comedy!)

• Limited number of communities – the community categories appear to be fixed and they may not be relevant to your business or you may have to dig within a more broad community to locate influencers that touch on your specific interest.

• Additional tools aren’t helpful (yet?) – Kred boasts tools such as an analytic tool (which isn’t available) and a Fresh Content Tool. The fresh content tool isn’t so useful. (It currently recommends that I retweet posts that are in Spanish and Korean).

ResourcesTechCrunch, “You May Have Klout, But What’s Your Kred?”http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/29/kred/ Wikipedia, “Kred Influence Measurement”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kred_Influence_Measurement Econsultancy Digital Marketers, “Klout vs Kred in the Social Influence Game”http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/9032-klout-vs-kred-in-the-social-influence-game Mashable, “You Know Your Klout Score. What’s Your Kred Score?”http://mashable.com/2011/12/21/kred/ Kredwww.Kred.com