As Klout says, influence is big. The Klout site uses your social network profiles (and what you do with them) to determine your influence on a scale from 1 to 100. It looks at metrics from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other networks to look at the size of your network, the content you produce, and how others interact with that content.
For the past five years Klout has been used as a measuring tool for many businesses in their research when considering to contract or hire someone, or by conferences considering a certain leader for a speaking engagement. There has been great debate over whether Klout scores matter. The fact remains, however, that Klout exists, and people use it. That is reason enough to want a healthy score in case anyone thinking about working with you uses the platform in their decision-making process.
There are scores of articles that explain how to increase your Klout score. Some are logical, and some are not. In all honesty, I’ve not really focused on increasing my score – rather, I simply interact with people and try to produce and share great content that means something.
So, how did I increase my score from a paltry, just above average of 42.82 to 55.91 in just three days? By being me. That’s right. I didn’t participate in any exchange of links or post shares; I didn’t get atop a higher soap box. What made my score climb is that I became more active than before. And I don’t mean I flooded people’s timelines. I simply shared more of what I was doing and what I found interesting.
At the time of writing this, my Klout score is 60. It doesn’t seem like much, especially since Justin Bieber’s is 92, but it is 40% higher than it was on July 19th.
Still, I do question Klout’s report on my network contributions. It shows my Facebook at 68% – this is my personal Facebook profile, not a Facebook page. Twitter is half that, though I post more on Twitter than anywhere else. My Google+ is a big fat donut.
It’s also confusing to me because one of my clients falls in a very niche market, yet has great interaction with its customers across several networks. It has a Klout score of 45.
Whether or not you think a Klout score means much of anything, there is one good reason to peruse yours from time to time. It’s a decent indicator of how others interact with your accounts overall.
Do you rely on Klout? Do these scores mean anything? Let me know what you think.
