If you have any sense of social awareness, you're well aware that being involved in social media is an important part of staying current in today's society. It's even more important if you're a marketing agency trying to stay on top of current trends. To help you understand your level of involvement, several websites have taken on the task of measuring and rating your interactions with others on sites like Facebook and Twitter.
The three most prominent of these are Klout, Kred and Peer Index. While all three may have the same purpose, they all set about the task of analyzing your influence in different ways. The DSM Group has done the research to figure out what differs among the three, and which you should rely on to leave your social media mark.
Klout Influence
Klout measures and quantifies your ability to drive the actions of others on social networking sites into one individual score known as Influence. Your influence is rated by the amount of involvement on several social sharing sites including Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Wikipedia and many more.
Klout uses a different system to measure influence for each site available. For example, on Facebook, influence is measured by mentions, likes, comments, subscribers, wall posts and friends. On Twitter, influence is measured by retweets, mentions, list memberships, followers and replies.
The specific list of websites, and factors used to measure your Klout score, can be found on their website. Once all of the factors for each website have been quantified, Klout takes the amount of reactions you generated on your social sites and compares it to the amount of content you share. This ratio then determines your finalized Klout Score.
Kred Influence
Your rating on Kred is sectioned off into two categories, influence and outreach level. Influence measures how frequently and how many people make actions directly connected to your content on Twitter, Facebook and any other social media websites that you link to your Kred account.
Kred strongly focuses on how frequently you are retweeted, replied, mentioned and followed on Twitter and the amount of posts, mentions, likes, shares and event invitations to your name on Facebook. These measurements are based off of a point system, which are then totaled and translated into a Kred Influence Score of 1 to 1,000. The higher the score, the more influential you are.
The second category, which measures your interaction with others over social media sites, is known as your outreach level. On Twitter, points are added when you retweet, reply or follow a new person. On Facebook, points are added when you post, like, mention or comment on someone else’s Facebook content. Once again, these factors are individually measures then totaled for an Outreach Level Score; However, unlike Influence, this score has no range and is unlimited.
The points collected from the individual factors (i.e. retweets, posts, comments etc.) are converted into your total score by the Points to Score Conversion. This is a mathematical equation and graph that specifically identifies how your points from each factor relates to your total score.
As your points rise, the slope of the graph grows steeper. Therefore, the more point you obtain, the more points it takes to move up in ranking. Kred makes all this information transparent, meaning you are able to view each point given and how your points are transferred into your total score.
The Difference Between Klout and Kred
Both Klout and Kred provide you with a score that determines how influential you are on social networks. Although Kred has two measurements, they both, more or less, measure the same factors.
The only noticeable difference between the two is the transparency of Kred. A transparent score can allow you to identify specific areas of your social networking abilities that need improvement. While this could be helpful, it also be detrimental due to the possibility of "gaming the system." Because of Kred's transparency, people can find ways to improve their score in the most efficient way without actually improving their influence on others.
Since you are unable to analyze the data in Klout like you can in Kred, it is harder to try and manipulate. Still, Klout seems to be much more trustful, despite how little it does to help you improve your ranking.
PeerIndex
While finding out specific details of PeerIndex was tough, it seems as if the ranking system used is very similar to that of Klout and Kred. Factors from different social networks are measured and then evaluated into a total score.
Your PeerIndex is measured by the content you create and the people who consume and react to it. As PeerIndex monitors the rate and quantity by which you share information, the site notes the type of content you are sharing and endorsing (by retweeting, liking etc.). As your content is interacted with online, your authority on a subject is increased.
What differs PeerIndex from Klout and Kred though, is that it's more focused on the company rather than the individual. PeerIndex uses a reward system wherein the higher rating you have, the more rewards you get, mainly products from other companies.
This leads me to believe the goal of PeerIndex is find influential users and have them review their products. Although this isn’t a bad or untrustworthy website, it is a little misleading. The other two have a rewards system as well but near as big or strongly advertised as PeerIndex.
Klout vs Kred vs PeerIndex
If you are looking for an honest review of you influence over the Internet through social media, we recommend Klout as it appears to be the most reliable source. However, this does not mean the other websites are by any means insufficient. In fact, we believe Klout and Kred should be used side by side, not one or the other. PeerIndex on the other hand, although it is a great rewards site, should not be used for the sole purpose of rating yourself.