Deutsche Bank's social media accounts are almost as influential as Justin Bieber's

Deutsche Bank’s social media team will be rejoicing over their Tweetdeck accounts today because the bank has just been told it has  the best social media presence of any other global bank and asset manager. With its main Twitter handle boasting 417K followers alone, Deutsche is placed with a score of 91, according to Ignites Europe, an FT publication. This is just one point below Justin Bieber, to put that into some sort of context.

For the uninitiated, Klout is an online tool which ranks your social media profiles from 1-100, 100 being Kayne West, and 10 being Zac from Saved by the Bell. Once you get past the worry that people are spelling ‘clout’ wrong, it makes sense that brands want to measure the success of their social media accounts, be they Twitter, Instagram, WordPress (full list here).  This means you can rank yourself amongst the best and worse, as well as setting yourself targets.

But it’s not just about getting lots of followers. Rob Tarkoff, president of Lithium, which owns Klout, told the FT: “The Klout score is made up of over 400 signals from social networks. We apply all these signals to our Klout score algorithm to calculate individual scores.”

To break that down into non-marketing speak, it’s also made up of the interactions you make and the usefulness of those interactions. For example, if you’re trying to reach asset managers, one retweet from an asset manager is worth two from a spambot. Actually, it’s worth 10 million retweets from a spambot, but I digress. Klout analyses what topics you tweet about, and where your expertise lies, for example, in digital marketing. Ever been added to a list by somebody on Twitter? As long as it’s not ‘top 10 annoying Twitter users’ then you should be very pleased, because being added to a list tells the Klout algorithm mice that you’re kind of a big deal.  Also, if a follower with a high score engages with you, you should see your Klout score improve. The more social networks you’re in (should) add to your ability to share your expertise, which will also improve your ranking. Many of the top ranking banks have more than one social media account. If your business has lots of arms, or operates in many different regions, or you would like to have a special Twitter handle dedicated to  your press team, for example, then it follows that you’d want to split up your social media accounts into several – because each of those accounts would have a separate audience and objective or even a language. There’s a lot to think about but it boils down to just two things.

1. Who are you talking to? If you’re talking to a lot of different people, in different time zones or with different interests, it makes sense to have several accounts. You wouldn’t send hard rockers to a Justin Bieber concert, would you? Klout or no clout, the most important factor of a successful social media account is its relevancy to its audience.
2. Are you speaking in their language? I.e: is it relevant, is it useful, does it make sense, are you using the right distribution channels (i.e: Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat etc).

After Deutsche Bank, IShares by Blackrock scored 79, while Standard Life Investments and M&G’s Bond Vigilantes each scored 55. The latter has 35 social media profiles across five countries, with its Bond Vigilantes blog (which looks as if it’s made on WordPress) making up one of the many reasons for its success. Content is king, but then we’ve known that a while (I just like saying it as much as possible).

You can use Klout for free to an extent, so why not find out what your personal score is? Before I go, I’d like to share the Klout scores from the digital team:

Me: 94

Michael Taggart: 6.8

Lucy Watson: 65

For more information on Klout scores, or boosting your social media profile, why not talk to us and we’ll reveal our true Klout scores in exchange.