I remember the moment I learned about Klout. My good friend Jenn Dove and I were sitting at our desks at work and she told me that I had a high score. To be honest, I didn’t even know what the coveted word “klout” meant. All in all, I was happy to hear that I had high score. That meant I was important. My life had meaning. Rainbows appeared and I asked myself what it all meant. I kept track of my Klout score for awhile and noticed what affected my score. It was a pretty logical process. When I tweeted and engaged more, my score rose. When I fell off the radar, my score did likewise.
What is klout? Well here is the official definition right from the source:
The Klout Score measures influence based on your ability to drive action. Every time you create content or engage you influence others. The Klout Score uses data from social networks in order to measure:
- True Reach: How many people you influence
- Amplification: How much you influence them
- Network Impact: The influence of your network
Klout provides users with social media analytics to measure a user’s influence across social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and more. They also analyze and measure content creation, user engagement and how large your network is.
Do you know that The Palms Hotel in Las Vegas is known to give you an instant upgrade if you have a high enough score? You might even jump ahead in a call cue if you’re waiting for an agent to speak with. If you use Twitter, you instantly have Klout unless you opt out. To get the most relevant score you should connect all of your social media accounts.
How can you improve your Klout score? Build your network, create content, engage with your network and be consistant. Pretty simple stuff. Does it really matter? Most people will tell you no. I asked Justin about Klout and he didn’t even know his own score (it was 58 the last time I checked which makes him part of the Twitter Elite in my books). Since I think Justin is an expert at pretty much everything digital marketing related I don’t think you need to worry much about it either.
I like checking out a person’s Klout score when they claim to be an expert or guru online. Since Klout measures a person’s influence in certain topics, you can do your creeper background work pretty efficiently. You can also see what topics Klout thinks you’re influential in. They aren’t always on par as it classified my dear friend Gini as an expert in “army” and “drugs” which couldn’t be further from the truth!
Here’s what I’d like to know from you. Do you check your Klout score often? Do you visit the Klout website for anything else like giving other people Klout points, or checking out scores? Inquiring minds want to know!
