According to Klout, I’m pretty influential about technology. I’m also a big influencer when it comes to Facebook, social media and, my personal favorite, beer.
Besides bragging rights and the occasional perk, being an influencer on a topic on Klout hasn’t really translated into much outside of the service ... until now.
Starting Wednesday Klout is offering the opportunity for topic influencers to increase their influence in an area -- and share their knowledge about a topic with the world -- by answering topic-related questions that Bing users often search for.
"There’s actually about a billion queries a month that algorithms like search can’t solve,” Klout CEO Joe Fernandez told Mashable.
Called Klout Experts, Klout will now prompt influencers in different areas to answer questions in 300 characters or less pertaining to the topic they're influential in. For instance, my social media influence qualified me to answer the question:“What are the three most important pieces of advice you can give to someone who is new to social media?”
Answers are posted on Klout, and are highlighted in Bing search results at the top of the search results page, along with a photo of the person answering the question. Klout has been trying out the feature with a small group of users and currently has answers to over 150,000 questions, representing a response rate of close to 70% from the influencers it's queried.
If several users have posted good answers to the same question, then search results will rotate through the available answers.
“The whole Internet is changing from being thing-centric to people-centric,” says Fernandez. "This is the first baby step towards search through people."
People are starting to be interested not only in finding information, but also knowing where that information is coming from. When getting advice on how to take care of your garden, for instance, you’d probably much rather get advice from an influencer in the subject rather than someone who was just getting started gardening.
“We know what questions people are asking, so we’ve curated the best questions and tied them back to the topics where people are influential” says Fernandez.
From Bing search results, clicking on an answer will bring up the full text of the answer. Readers can give an answer +K, share it, or respond with their own answer.
The whole process helps Klout users grow their influence on a particular topic and stand out as thought leaders, and helps Bing users get the best answers to their search queries. It's the first time through Klout that users can do something that will directly impact their influence on a topic, and their score.
“Connecting them during their time of need during search is pretty powerful,” says Fernandez. “This is a small step of something we think is a big idea.”
Klout Experts is available now for a small group of influencers selected by Klout. If you’d like to give the feature a try, you can sign up to be included on the company’s wait list.
What do you think of Klout Experts? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.