By: Garin Kilpatrick
Klout was just acquired by Lithium for $200 million.
Klout has become a standard of social media influence online so I have created this article for you if you are one of the many people who want to increase your Klout score.
At first I was skeptical about Klout but since then I have taken a liking to the site as I have used it to discover some different ways to re-discover people in my network and increase my influence.
My Klout score is 71 and Klout calls me a “Thought Leader,” which is cool. At first I thought 71 was a low score, but then when I compared my score to some business leaders I was surprised to find that most people on my twitter list of influential people scored lower than me.
I saw a tweet from Jay Goldman several months ago complimenting the fact that more and more digital professionals are including their Klout score on their resume. Turns out your Klout score can help you net a job!
Since Klout claims to be the standard for influence I thought it would be interesting to see how some of the people from my Twitter influencers list stacked up.
The first surprising Klout score I found was from Twitter co-founder @ev. Despite having over 1.4 million followers Evan is still six points behind me.
Evan has 6,300+ tweets compared to my 8,800+. The difference between us is that I probably have more retweets, since I position my tweets and content for maximum retweetability, whereas Evan is probably not trying to get as many retweets as possible.
One of the next influencers from my list is WordPress founder Matt Wullenweg.
Matt is so influential I am using his software to publish this very blog post. Millions of wordpress blogs have a link to his blog via the Hello Dolly plugin.
The influence Matt has had on the web is massive; WordPress is being installed into 22% of all new domains on the web, and that is just one of several impressive WordPress stats. Most of my websites are built on WordPress because I like the huge collection of awesome plugins the WordPress community has to offer.
Awesome as Matt is, he is not a social media pro; he does not use a pic of his face for his Twitter avatar, and his social media time is spread thin. Matt has several brands to watch over, such as the official @ WordPress account, which also has a Klout score of 64. I mentioned @Wordpress in a tweet a while back and got a reply from Matt via his personal twitter account @photomatt.
The last Klout score I found surprising was Google’s Eric Schmidt. I know Eric has not been the CEO of Google since Larry Page took the reins, but as the Executive Chairman of the biggest website on the internet I’m sure he still has plenty of influence.
Now that Klout has Google+ integration Eric’s score might go up if he connects his Google+ account!
Eric’s low score is probably due to his highly infrequent tweeting.
How To Step Your Klout Score Up
Klout is growing at a steady pace and with all of the social sharing hooks they have in place it is only become more important as more people discover, use, and share the site.
A factor that has a strong influence over your Klout score is your posting activity, specifically your tweeting. I have tweeted more times than the three other influential people mentioned above, which partially explains my higher Klout score.
There are 3 Factors Effecting Your Klout Score
- How many people you influence (True Reach)
- How much you influence them (Amplification)
- How influential they are (Network Score)
All three of these factors are contingent on your actions and participation in social media, specifically tweeting.
If you have plenty of tweets and are re-tweeted on a regular basis there is a good chance that you have a fairly high score already.
One way to increase your amplification, and get more retweets, is to schedule your tweets so that they are spaced out with your best tweets going out at the busiest times.
Hootsuite enables you to schedule your tweets for any time you want, and the Twitter Tools buffer takes it one step further by allowing you to quickly add a tweet to your buffer without having to specify a time for the tweet to go out.
By spacing your tweets out you will get more retweets, and less people unfollowing you.
The more you build your follower base the more your true reach will increase, as long as you are building real connections with people.
If you want to build your following check out my article about 50 innovative tips for getting more followers.
Reply to People When They Tweet You
Building genuine connections and relationships are what is going to help you get your score up.
The more people you have relationships with the more people there are who are likely to retweet your golden content, when you post it.
Content is King
Content is king today more than ever. If you publish awesome content and make it easy for people to share there is a good chance that they will. If you are publishing on your own blog make sure you have social sharing plugins. On this blog, and most of my blogs, I use digg digg and sexy bookmarks.
Even if you are publishing on someone else’s site you can use a Twitter tool called click to tweet to link your content text with a click to tweet custom retweet link.
Engage With Influencers to Increase Your Klout Score
If you engage with influential people their influence will accrue to you as you exchange tweets with them.
Use classic style retweets to do this, where the tweet starts with RT @Username. If you just use the new style “one click” retweets then the person you are retweeting might overlook you if they get many RT’s. Mentioning the person you are retweeting gets you into their conversational stream every time you help them out by sharing their tweets.
Even influential people feel obliged to respond to someone persistently trying to contact them and will often retweet you back and this can get your tweet in front of their huge following – and this can help you increase your klout score significantly.
Ask Questions
Asking questions on social media sites like Twitter is a great way to spark the engagement that leads to a climbing klout score.
Help Other People
Reciprocity is an essential weapon of influence that can accelerate your klout success. If you want people to retweet you, start by retweeting them. If you want people to follow you, start by following them.
Leverage Trending Topics and Viral Content
If you jump in on trending topics these can help you get retweets and build connections with new people since these streams are highly visible. Posts about social media spread well on social media, so keep that in mind and keep quality content on your radar.
I use a Twitter list I created called awesome content to keep track of people sharing cool content on Twitter, and I use Google Reader to keep track of every cool blog I find.
Be Bold
Fortune favors the bold. Klout does not measure whether or not people like what you say, only if they share it. Don’t fear controversy, it has elevated more than a few bloggers to internet fame.
Speak your mind and although people will not always agree with you, you will gain respect for voicing your opinion.
Retweet This Post
You should retweet this post because if you do there is a good chance your followers will retweet you. Also, if I notice you retweeted me I will follow you and send you a tweet saying thanks.
Update
Today (August 14th, 2012) Klout changed their algorithm.
Click the image below for more information Understanding the Klout score.
How Do You Increase Your Klout?
Let us know in the comments if you have any thoughts about klout, or tips for getting a better klout score.
People getting hired based upon a klout score? Seriously. I find this article to be quite fascinating. Thanks for the info. Good stuff.
Thanks Audrey, subscribe if you want to stay in the loop.
Cheers
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Hey Garin.
your posts will never stop amazing me.
they are short but very effective.
each time i receive a mail from you i'm very happy cus i know something refreshing is coming.
thanks for the good work
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Thanks for your encouragement!
I'll do my best to keep the quality content coming.
Have a good one.
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Hey Garin,
As always you bring insightful and genuine content to my inbox. Thanks for a great post! Do you have any advice on getting re-tweets?
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You're welcome!
If you'd like more re-tweets check out this post: http://twittertoolsbook.com/35-ways-to-get-more-r…
Cheers.
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Getting hired based on klout score? It's like getting picked first on a team. Klout is nothing more than a popularity contest.
Whenever I pick someone for my team I pick based on who can help the team the most, not who is popular. If you are using popularity as a synonym for influence I agree with you!
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Well done Garin with a few simple tactics I could help you take your Klout score from your 70 to 80 in around a fortnight. You might be surprised how little it has to do with Twitter. I have been pretty much offline the last 3 days and have dropped from 83 to 82 but before that I went from 59 to 83 in around 2 months. It was quite easy and I explain it here. http://michaelqtodd.com/klout9
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Thanks for sharing that link Michael, I think your tip "Create at least some kind of content in your niche and publish it every day" is especially powerful.
Frequent publishing / tweeting is certainly a factor, but constant tweeting is not really my style, so it might take me a bit more than 2 months to catch up to your Klout score and your 24,899 tweets from my 8,880!
Hmm, I wonder if dying my hair green would help with my Klout score?
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Really great overview of Klout and the scoring system. Retweeting and engagement are key, not only retweets from same users but retweets from unique and original users as well as how many "different" people retweet all share in the network. With Klout linking Facebook, LinkedIn as well as Twitter to build your Social Klout you can't rely on one network anymore.
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Good point it's important to diversify your social media efforts for sure. Cheers!
If you join a good tribe in Triberr with a considerable number of member you can easily increase your Klout score. So I think the score can be gamed pretty easily up to now.
Thanks for the tip, it looks like I need an invite code to join though, do you have one you can hook me up with?
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Great post. Content is indeed king.
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Glad you liked the post!
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Great article – I have an article half written similar to this after realising I have a klout score of 71-72 – all from a non-professional angle. I enjoy social media from a true social sense, using it to promote my blog too. I have been turned off networks such as Triberr simply because they have been used to falsely raise Klout scores – I can't think of one artificial action I have taken that would/could increase my Klout score. For me, it's all about engagement and Itotally agree with the "Content is King" viewpoint – that's a major point in my "Blogging 101" 5-minute overview when asked to give tips to new bloggers.
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Cool comment Nicki, it seems to me that your Klout score will probably go up next week due to your positions of "it's all about engagement" and "content is king" which are two powerful ways to build your network and your influence online.
My recent post Crazy Enough to Change The World
I find Klout intriguing, but am not sure how it would necessarily help me in a job situation since I primarily use social media as a social thing / a way to promote my blog / get people to attend shows I'm in, but interesting that it's becoming a measure for other people. It's a neat measure that I find fascinating and I'm looking forward to more transparency from the scoring
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Hey Ashley I hear where you are coming from, especially since most people are not actors and singers like you are, but Klout is very viral and growing fast so before long it might be as recognizable as Twitter. If the topic of Klout comes up with the right people it might help you land a gig.
If you mention that you have more Klout than several celebs that could give you some serious cred, for example you have 30 more Klout points than Kirsten Dunst (@Kdunst). Congrats.
My recent post Crazy Enough to Change The World
Great article. I found this very interesting. When will the new algorithm take effect? I better put some of your tips and advices to practice 'cause I don't want my score to drop. I want it to go up!
@Garin, There has got to be more to it than this. I am sure that people will do everything that you outlined and still have a lower Klout score.
I looked at http://clicktotweet.com but I don't understand what it is supposed to do. I have my own link shortener site that I use, and anyway Twitter shortens links itself (though only sometimes – another mystery). How do you use http://clicktotweet.com ?
I like your dropdown for 'Subscribe to …. with the option to subscribe to replies or all new comments, or nothing at all. Are you using a plugin for that?
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The fading yellow on comments is terrific. Never seen it before and it sure got my attention. Is that a plugin? [By the way, heads up that I posted this comment and made a typo. When I edited the comment it saved it, but with a whole lot of back end stuff visible. I will mail it to you.]
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I've tested a few things to see how it affects my Klout-score, and one thing I've noticed, is that it seems overly sensitive to tweeting-frequency, and not on a long-term basis. If I don't tweet for a day or two for whatever reason, I always drop 1-2 points, while it takes me 1-2 weeks of more than usually frequent tweeting to get back up on my previous score. And it seems to be disadvantageous to those of us who operate bilingually. In periods where I tweet a lot (and get mentioned and retweeted) in English instead of Norwegian, most recently because I spoke at a huge international conference, my Klout-score also drops significantly. Perhaps it's a big fish in small pond etc type issue.
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Garin, I noticed your score dropped nearly 20 pts (19) after the algorithm change. I also noticed you mentioned a lot of generalities and what sounds like assumptions ( "I have tweeted more times than the three other influential people mentioned above, which partially explains my higher Klout score."), but no specifics about Klout scores (other than what Klout reveals). Do you know why they dropped your score so much?
Hi Earl,
My Klout score has since gone back up.
I think Klout tweaks their algorithm to get people who are invested in their scores fired up. In turn Klout reaps the benefits of free press from social media posts as thousands of people complain or celebrate their new score.
Cheers,
Garin
What kind of effect, if any, have you seen from adding Foursquare to your Klout account? A number of colleagues have seen their network impact scores go down after adding Foursquare.
I still don’t get it. To try and better understand what I need to do to increase my KLOUT score, I compared mine to 2 people I know with higher scores. They barely use their twitter accounts (I use mine constantly) and I have consistent retweets, where they have none. I easily get more of my FB posts “shared” than they do. Yet their scores are still noticeably higher…baffling
Great blog post! Looks like I have a higher Klout score than I thought. I love the concept of the site and I just linked a bunch of sites I have. It is buggy to connect my Google+ though.
Klout is going through many different changes every other week. Waiting for them to implement a Facebook measuring point has been going on for awhile.
@tonygreene113 I can’t wait for them to actually implement this. I like to see measurements rather than just a score.
Social Scoring is quickly growing, I am not sure how many people are aware of what it actually is and why it is helpful but more and more sites are being created around the topic such as: http://www.socialscorerewards.com, http://www.socialscorebureau.com, and http://www.ambitsocial.com. These three sites have just popped up rather recently online and these as well as others are gaining speed quickly. What an interesting time in social networking.
Hi Garin, I have to confess that I don’t understand this Klout thing. After reading your article a few days ago, I joined it in order to see what’s there. I’m really disappointed. Lots of money pumped into this thing and the results are terrible. Social media influencers, bla bla. Come on. I know you a little bit and… OK, maybe you’re one of them. Your Klout score is 71, right? Good… Now let me tell you something…
I know quite well one guy who has a Klout score of 72
I guess you don’t know him. He’s just a regular IM-er, no products of his own, not very experienced, etc. He’s a nice guy but… if he’s a social media influential person, then I’m the Pope…
He has a blog having some blog posts (2-4 comments on the most popular posts), Twitter & Facebook accounts having each one less than 700 followers/friends, a G+ account (~1,600 ppl having him in their circles), an YouTube account (300 subs).
Irrespective of how many RTs, mentions, shares and likes someone gets from 3-4K people (the aggregate number of followers/friends), that person cannot be considered an influential person. It seems that Klout “thinks” different than me LOL
What’s your take on this?
Thanks for your comment Adrian!
I think that the success of Klout is largely due to to the fact that it gives some people who might not be recognized by other factors of influence an ego boost.
Although I am an avid blogger with thousands of daily readers I am not even close in terms of true influence to Matt Mullenweg, who influences the direction of the WordPress platform and in turn effects hundreds of millions of sites.
Yet here I am blogging about this topic since Klout seems to think that I am on a similar level of influence.
I agree with you that Klout is not an accurate measure of true influence, however their model has merit as it has successfully played on the egos of thousands to achieve funding, praise, and growth.
Cheers,
Garin
Thanks Garin. I use your material in my classes at my media academy. Best, Shahidul
You’re welcome, and as long as you link back to the source of the material you are using that is fine. Cheers.
Nice set of tips! I just joined Klout, and hopefully, once all of the plugins actually start plugging in, hopefully I can use some of these pointers to raise the score higher!
Also, re-tweeted.