What is a Klout Score and Why You Should Care About Yours

Do you want your business to be the top influencer in your industry? I really hope you said, “Yes!” If you did, you should care what your Klout Score is and continue reading.

As people and businesses engage online more, it is important to consider your online reputation and span of influence in your industry. When it comes to your Klout Score, the higher it is, the more engaged and persuasive you are online. This level of influence can establish an understood level of trust and value in your relationship with your customer. This can convince your customer to buy from you rather than your competition with a lower score because online you are the industry expert.

What is a Klout Score?
A Klout Score is your ranking of influence in a given subject area. It is a number between 1-100 that is accumulated by how you share your online expertise through social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Foursquare, Wikipedia, and Instagram.

Your Klout Influence is defined as “the ability to drive action”. If your posts result in a number of interactions such as shares, mentions, likes or comments, you are seen as influential in your area of expertise or topics.

These topics vary in all aspects of life from business to parenting and cooking to travel. The subject matter of your posts determines your strongest topics. If you post on business and entrepreneurship frequently, then Klout will identify these as your areas of influence. You may occasionally post about being a parent but if this is not the topic that dominates your overall posts, it will not be highly regarded by Klout. However, if your parenting post receives a ton of interaction from your followers, it may filter into your area of expertise for a period of time. Your Klout Score and topics are dynamic so they change based on your most recent activities.

If you wonder how your score compares to the average on a given topic, Klout will keep you guessing as it is their little secret. The weighted average is yet to be revealed by Klout and has changed a quite a few times since the company started. The Klout algorithm is another enigma that many people have tried to unsuccessfully crack. The algorithm uses an aggregate formula to determine your Score.

Why Your Score Matters
Businesses around the world are starting to take note of Klout Scores and are offering great benefits to those with high numbers. From their perspective, those with higher scores have a stronger ability to influence people’s behaviour, specifically their buying behaviours.

For example, American Airlines offers passengers with a Klout score of 55 or higher access to the airline’s network of premium lounges all around the world. The idea is if the person has a good experience with the airline, they will share it online and given their extensive reach of influence, will entice more people to fly with the airline. There are a number of businesses adopting this marketing tactic such as Sony, Nike, and Disney. Businesses are also using Klout Score as a metric in the recruitment process. In some cases, a person’s score can influence whether they are hired or not. Read more here.

How to Improve Your Klout Score
When you post content through social media platforms, it is accounted in your Klout Score. However, your post activity is only one portion of your score. Klout does not chart relevancy, it relies more on social interaction and popularity. Many celebrities have high Klout Scores with little or no direct interaction or posts. However, their celebrity persona creates a lot of mentions and shares of their content through their followers.

For an example, someone could post valuable information on a business that is seen by a small community but their Klout Score will not rise as much as a celebrity talking about their new song. Popularity of the person rates higher than the relevancy/quality of the information.

Therefore, the online engagement of your posts is the true dictator of your score.

A Few Ways This is Done
Shares/Retweets – When people share or retweet your post, your score will rise based on the number of shares your post receives and the Klout Scores of those who shared your post.

Mentions – When people mention you in their posts, your score will be positively influenced based on their Klout Score. When you interact with others with high Klout Scores, their stardom rubs off on your score and you may see it rise rather quickly.

Responses – When people reply, like or comment on your post, this will have a positive affect on your score relative to their Klout Score.

Things to Keep in Mind
Another thing to remember to increase your score is to connect all your active social media platforms to your Klout Score. Here I will stress the words ‘active accounts’. If you have an inactive account, don’t connect it with your Klout account. A lack of activity and engagement on a social media platform can conversely affect your score. If you do not post or interact online through an account or for a period of time, your score will decrease.

Usually if it is a short period of time, it is not a significant decrease but social media does not take kindly to being ignored. For an example, I went out of town for 2 weeks and did not post a single thing and my score went down by 2 points. However, it took me 2 weeks of dedicated social media time to recuperate my score.

Lesson of the day: Stay active, engaging and knowledgeable on your social media networks and your Klout Score will pay you back with a rising number and positive influence on your customers’ buying patterns.

For more information on Klout Score and how it works, please visit klout.com/how-it-works.

This post has also been posted on my page for http://www.entrepreneurmomnow.com/author/amandaschewaga/