Social Media Corner: Klout defined by Social Media Vocabulary

By Jessica Boles

Social media influence is already a large part of what drives page ranking at Google and Bing. There are different tools out there that can help measure your own influence in social media, but with the changing times, these tools are quickly replaced with new ones. Klout is a service that uses an algorithm to measure your social media influence. You connect it to all of the social networks that you belong to and Klout analyzes your activity and engagement with other people on these networks. Your Klout score is based on your ability to drive action on all your social networks.

Klout measures your social media influence on a scale of 1-100. The average Klout score is around 40. The more that you can inspire actions on your social media pages such as “likes”, comments, shares and tweets, the higher your Klout score will become over time. Your Klout score focuses on more than just the number of posts you have or the frequency in which you are doing it. Klout also looks at the conversations and the interactions that come forth with these posts; being active is a lot different from being influential. Klout’s mission is to rank every persons influence on social media much like Google ranking the relevance of every web page.

Once you understand the concept of the Klout score, it can be very addicting to try and continuously increase that score in your social media world. Some tips from the experts include creating content worth sharing, finding your niche in tweeting and posting about your area of expertise and including photos and quotes. Another way to increase your score is to start a discussion to encourage feedback or actions taken upon your Facebook posts or your tweets. The somewhat obvious tip is to connect to other networks. Even if you don’t utilize all of these networks, add them and see your score rise. The last tip is to engage with your influencers by responding to their tweets or posts and getting involved in their conversations (make sure it is something they can respond to).

Your Klout score is not only measured by how your marketing is working, it also helps to promote your tweets and your profiles. The better the score, the better chance of being found on the web and being followed.  As a result of a higher Klout score, your popular accounts get rewarded in the search rankings.