Have you heard of Klout? What is "KLOUT?" In its simplest form, it is a measurement of your social media influence. Do you know what your KLOUT score is and should you care about it?
Let me give you an example of why Klout influence matters….
This is a friend of mine's story and I am sharing…
The phone rings and the voice on the other end introduces himself and proceeds to say that they want to give away a new laptop. He is thinking to himself…yeah, right…this is some sales pitch for sure. He was about to ask to be removed from their call list when the caller went on to offer that they had found him on Klout.com and that since he had influence in their target market, they would like him to try their new product.
The catch? They would like him to share this experience with his audience.
Big brands are using the klout.com scores to find influencers in target markets that will be broadcasters for their products or services.
So what is klout.com again? It is a score, ranging between 1-100, and it is supposed to signify a measurement of your social media engagement. It assigns value to the size of your social media presence and gauges how people interact with your content. The higher your score the better.
I am not here to argue whether or not Klout.com is accurate in the measurement of social media engagement. My point in sharing this is that whether we like it or not, KLOUT has influence and is being used by brands to penetrate their target market.
So how do we raise our Klout scores?
7 Ways To Increase Your Klout Score
1. If you have a Twitter account, you most likely have a Klout score. If, however, you have a protected Twitter account, your score will not move much beyond 10 even if you are the most active tweeter on Twitter. This is because Klout can only access public data. Twitter engagement is a huge factor in your helping to raise your Klout score so I would advise making your Twitter account public.
2. Connect all your social media platforms to Klout.com. Klout.com currently has 13 social media platforms built into their measurement sticks; Twitter, Facebook (personal profile or fan page), LinkedIn, YouTube, Google+, Instagram, Flickr, Last.fm, Foursquare, Tumblr Blogger and WordPress. They are going to be adding Quora, Yelp, Posterous, Livefyre, Disqus, Bit.ly and Brandout in the near future.
3. Twitter engagement will play a huge roll in increasing your Klout score so make sure that you reply to people when they tweet you. Thank people when they retweet your tweets and work on building relationships so that people will be more apt to share your content when you tweet it.
4. Content is KING so make sure that you are sharing your content and even other people’s content that is relevant to your niche and that you believe your audience would find beneficial. Make it easy for people to share your content directly from your website by having social sharing plugins installed. Trending topics or curated content is a great way to find value based content to share on your social media networks. I use Google Reader to curate great content from my favorite blog sites.
5. Engage influencers in your niche. Klout rewards you for engaging with people who have higher klout scores than you do so it is beneficial to reach out to influencers in a positive and authentic way. Respond to what they are tweeting or make a comment on their content. Be unique and stand out in some way so that you will grab their attention.
6. Ask questions because people LOVE to give their opinions about things. Random questions definitely work but you can actually turn every day topics into questions. Perhaps you are in the market for a new phone. Asking people their opinion on whether you should buy an iPhone or an Android will get you tons of responses!
7. If you want to be retweeted, start by tweeting others. This will start you on the path to building relationships that you did not have previously as everyone loves to be retweeted.
Remember, the name of the game is engagement so the more engagement you can stir up, the higher your Klout score will go.
About Kim
These are great tips Kim! I need to work on engaging others in my niche. Great idea!
Great information and quality advice for social media as ever! thank you Kim for your support and inspirations! great job today!
Learned so much from this article Kim! I am guilty of always wondering if what I am doing is really than important on some of the social media venues! I now have a much clearer understanding of Klout! Thanks for all you do!
Great information on our Klout score…but Klout still is a mystery to me
I am sure that when I keep following you, the light will dawn one of these days!! Thanks Kim!!
Thank you for the tips Kim! My Klout score is through the roof on one and struggling on the other..;) I see how to fix that thought! Thank you for all the great tips and advice! You have helped me make a dream come true!!! Big Hug!
wohoo! Glad you got some value from this info!
Awesome post as always Kim. It's so hard staying up to date on all the new information that keeps coming out. I'm so grateful that you simplify all of them.
Lots of great Klout stuff here Kim! Will be sharing on Twitter
Great tips Kim! Thanks!
Absolutely amazing how this all works. Love learning from you Kim! Starting to see more and more how Klout works!
Thank you for the great tips, Kim! I surely need this.
Love this post Kim! There has been many questions about Klout and this no doubt helps clear many of them up! Thanks for sharing! I'm off to help increase my Klout score!
Thanks for the tips Kim. Klout is not my favorite, but I'm learning that I have to live with it. I've had a couple of people contact me because of my Klout score and it's not even very high ~ although, it has gone up 3 points since I started following your advice!
Excellent and timely article, Kim. Thanks for the helpful tips-
Your welcome, Henry!
Kim, this post was very informative about Klout. Will research further.
The Souper
Thanks for dropping by!
You would be amazed at how these scoring sites can play a big role in your social media strategy.
True, right?
This is just the kick-start I needed, Kim! Thank you so much. In my brain, somewhere behind "Write Tweets", "Finish Blog Story", "What will you post on Facebook Tomorrow?" and "Can't you think of something funny to say?" is the dreaded "WHAT TO DO ABOUT THAT KLOUT SCORE????!!!!" Thanks for not only kicking it up into the top tier, but thanks especially for the sage advice on how to improve it!
Awesome! Glad I could help, Anita!