Klout Scores Explained and How to Improve Them

Author

Reads 3.6K

Hand holding a smartphone with Twitter icon on screen. IPhone with a social media app logo.
Credit: pexels.com, Hand holding a smartphone with Twitter icon on screen. IPhone with a social media app logo.

Klout Scores are a way to measure your online influence, and they're based on your activity on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Your Klout Score can range from 1 to 100, with higher scores indicating greater influence.

Your Klout Score is calculated by looking at your social media activity, including the number of followers you have, the engagement you receive, and the topics you're talking about.

To improve your Klout Score, you need to increase your online engagement and reach a wider audience. This can be done by sharing more content, engaging with others, and using relevant hashtags.

Understanding Klout Scores

Your Klout Score is a measure of your overall online influence, with a scale of 1 to 100, where 100 is the most influential. It's not just about being active on social media, but also about engaging with your content.

Having a high Klout Score doesn't necessarily mean you have a lot of followers, but rather that your content is resonating with people and generating real influence. This is especially true in influencer marketing, where companies are looking for people who can generate real reach and response within social communities.

Klout's system analyzes multiple social networks to determine your influence, so it's not just about one platform, but about how you're performing across the board.

Readers also liked: Cnn Website Not Free

What Is Score?

Credit: youtube.com, What's Your Klout Score?

Your Klout Score is a measure of your overall online influence, ranging from 1 to 100, with 100 being the most influential.

It's not a reflection of how active you are on social media, but rather how engaging and influential your content is.

Having a high number of followers doesn't necessarily mean you have a high Klout Score, especially if they're not interacting with your content.

Klout is like a grading system that reviews your social media activity to determine your online influence.

Your Klout Score is a numerical value between 1 and 100, which is determined by analyzing your social media activity across multiple networks.

It's not affected by buying followers or trying to get follow-backs on Twitter, which can actually harm your Score in the long run.

For more insights, see: Online Video Analytics

Why Measure My Influence?

Measuring your influence may seem inconsequential at first, but it's becoming increasingly important in the job market. Job applicants have started including their Klout score on their resume to help them stand out to potential employers.

Credit: youtube.com, How Klout Is Using Analytics To Measure Social Media Influence

Companies are looking beyond vanity stats and numbers to determine real influence and social media reach. They want to know who can generate real response within social communities.

Influencer marketing is on the rise, and with it comes the risk of faking reach numbers. This is where systems like Klout can provide more accurate and trusted metrics.

Klout score is used by many as a measure of social influence, and it's becoming a key part of social marketing strategies. The more transparent and accurate Klout becomes, the more utility it will provide.

For more insights, see: Marketing Cloud Adobe

Improving Your Klout Score

To improve your Klout Score, create content that people want to share and respond to. This is the best way to increase your score.

The more others engage with your content, such as through retweets, mentions, likes, comments, and +1s, the higher your score will be. Engagement is key to building your score.

Don't try to "game" the system with blackhat techniques, as this will likely result in your efforts being short-lived and wasted. Instead, focus on engaging and exciting your audience.

Adding all your social networks is often all you need to do to get started and get an accurate Klout Score.

You might like: Klout Score

Reasons for Low Score

Credit: youtube.com, How to increase your Klout score

If your Klout Score is lower than you'd like, it's time to take a closer look at what might be holding you back. A low Klout Score can be a sign that you're not engaging with your audience or that your online presence is lacking.

The average Klout Score is 40, but if you're below 50, you might want to ask yourself some tough questions. Users with a score of 63 are in the top 5% of all users, so if you're not there, you've got some work to do.

Connecting all your social networks is crucial to getting a accurate Klout Score. If you've left out a network, Klout won't even consider it. Make sure you've connected all your accounts to get a complete picture.

Your community is your lifeblood, and if you're connected to the wrong communities, your Klout Score will suffer. Avoid accounts that just follow you back or use a certain hashtag in their tweets. Build a community of people who are genuinely interested in what you have to say.

Credit: youtube.com, 10 Ways To Increase Your Klout Score

You might be boring. Yeah, it's an uncomfortable concept, but if your content isn't engaging anyone, your Klout Score will suffer. Think of social media as a conversation, not just a platform to sell products or services.

Here are some common reasons for a low Klout Score:

How to Increase My Score

Increasing your Klout Score is a great goal, and the good news is that it's achievable with a little effort. The best way to increase your Klout Score is to create content that people want to share and respond to.

Creating engaging content is key, and asking questions or posting content that encourages responses is a great way to build your Score. The more people engage with your content, the higher your score will be.

Don't try to game the system, as this will only result in short-lived and wasted efforts. Klout's website notes that the Score is the accumulation of your influence across all your networks, not the average.

Adding all your social networks is often all you need to do to get started. Get an accurate Klout Score, and then you can look at how to build it.

Klout Criticism and Methodology

Credit: youtube.com, Why Klout Matters to your Social Networking Influence

Klout's methodology has been widely criticized for its flaws. Klout measured influence by using data points from Twitter, such as follower count, retweets, and list memberships.

Critics argue that Klout scores are not representative of a person's real influence. Barack Obama, the President of the United States, had a lower influence score than some bloggers.

Klout's algorithms were updated to better reflect the importance of influential people, but some critics still question the accuracy of the scores. Klout's methodology has been described as "socially evil" by science fiction author John Scalzi.

The site was also criticized for violating the privacy of minors and exploiting users for profit. Klout's business model was even found to be potentially illegal in the United Kingdom due to its conflict with the Data Protection Act 1998.

Criticism

Klout's methodology was criticized for not accurately representing a person's real influence, as seen with Barack Obama, the then President of the United States, having a lower score than several bloggers.

Mobile Phone With Social Media Icon On Screen
Credit: pexels.com, Mobile Phone With Social Media Icon On Screen

Critics argued that Klout's score devalued authentic online communication and promoted social ranking and stratification by trying to quantify human interaction.

Klout was accused of violating the privacy of minors and exploiting users for its own profit.

John Scalzi described the principle behind Klout's operation as "socially evil" due to its exploitation of users' status anxiety.

Charles Stross called Klout "the Internet equivalent of herpes" and advised readers to delete their Klout accounts and opt out of Klout services after analyzing the company's terms and conditions, which he found to be in conflict with the Data Protection Act 1998 in the United Kingdom.

Ben Rothke concluded that Klout's results of influence should carry very little influence.

Klout's methodology was criticized for being opaque, with some claiming that advanced machine learning techniques were used, while others found that a simple logarithm of the number of followers was sufficient to explain most of the variance in scores.

In November 2015, Klout released an academic paper discussing their methodology at the IEEE BigData 2015 Conference, attempting to address some of these criticisms.

Some employers made hiring decisions based on Klout scores, as reported in an article for Wired, where a man with 15 years of experience was eliminated as a candidate in favor of someone with a higher score.

Methodology

Credit: youtube.com, How to critique a research article - evaluate the methodology

Klout measured influence by using data points from Twitter, such as the following count, follower count, retweets, list memberships, and how many spam/dead accounts were following you.

These data points were combined with information from other social networks, including Flickr, Blogger, Tumblr, Last.fm, and WordPress, which users could link to their Klout account.

The Klout Score was supplemented with three additional measures: true reach, amplification, and network impact.

True reach is based on the size of a user's engaged audience who actively engage in the user's messages.

Klout's methodology was validated through a year-long experiment, where users with varying Klout Scores were targeted with perks and encouraged to post about their experience.

Of the 87,675 users who posted, 18,308 posts received a total of 394,083 reactions, with users having higher Klout Scores garnering more reactions.

Klout also compared their scores against real-world measures, such as the ATP Tennis Player Rankings and the Forbes Most Powerful Women list.

Credit: youtube.com, What is Methodology?

However, these comparisons showed mixed results, with Klout's methodology being more effective in tracking fluctuations in online influence, as seen in their comparison with Google Trends data.

For example, Klout's scores for Starbucks and Airbnb showed similar fluctuations compared to their Google Trends, indicating a strong correlation between online influence and search popularity.

Relevance and Influence

Klout measures influence across multiple social networks, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and more, analyzing over 750 million users. The system collects data from public streams, APIs, and in-house datastores to build a comprehensive picture of each user's online presence.

Klout uses both "Long-Lasting" and "Dynamic" data points in its calculations. Long-lasting features change gradually or infrequently, while dynamic features happen day-to-day and change based on interactions within your social graph. The system weighs each interaction based on five factors: Who, When, Where, What, and How.

Here are the five factors that determine the weight of each interaction:

  • Who: The characteristics of the audience who reacted to the original post from the user
  • When: The difference between the current time and the time at which the reaction occurred
  • Where: The social network on which the reaction was performed
  • What: The unit of original content or action on which the reaction was performed
  • How: The type of reaction

Klout's scoring system takes into account the type of reaction and the influence of the user who performed the action. For example, a re-share from a highly influential user like Barack Obama would carry more weight than a re-share from a peer.

For Business

Credit: youtube.com, The Importance of Your Circle of Influence in Business 📈

For Business, Klout offers a range of features to help you understand your online presence. In March 2013, Klout announced its intention to begin displaying business analytics aimed at helping business and brand users learn about their online audiences.

Business owners can use these analytics to gain insights into their online followers and engagement. Klout's analytics can help you identify your most influential followers and understand how your content is resonating with your audience.

This information can be incredibly valuable for businesses looking to improve their online marketing efforts. By using Klout's analytics, you can refine your content strategy and make data-driven decisions about how to best engage with your online audience.

For your interest: Web Audience Measurement

A Measure of Relevance

Measuring influence is a complex task, but Klout has made it more transparent through research and data. Klout scores are computed for 750 million users from 9 major networks, including Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

To calculate your Klout score, Klout uses both 'Long-Lasting' and 'Dynamic' data points. 'Long-lasting' features are those that change gradually or infrequently, while 'Dynamic' features are those that happen day-to-day and change based on interactions within your social graph.

Credit: youtube.com, Episode 4.2 Common Errors of Relevance

Klout measures each dynamic interaction based on five factors, giving each interaction a weighted measurement to determine their overall impact. These factors are: Who, When, Where, What, and How. The weighting assigned to each interaction is crucial, as it can significantly affect your Klout score. For example, a re-share from a user who's more influential than you will carry more weight than a re-share from one of your peers.

The importance of Klout scores is becoming more relevant as social media matures and grows as a legitimate business platform. Companies are seeking to determine real influence, the people who can generate real reach and response within social communities. This is especially true of influencer marketing, where the practice of utilizing influencers is growing, and so too will the means of faking reach numbers and making money based on those metrics.

To give you a better idea of how Klout scores work, here are the five factors used to measure each dynamic interaction:

  • Who: The characteristics of the audience who reacted to the original post from the user
  • When: The difference between the current time and the time at which the reaction occurred
  • Where: The social network on which the reaction was performed
  • What: The unit of original content or action on which the reaction was performed
  • How: The type of reaction

Klout's hierarchical scoring architecture is used to normalize each person's score, establishing your Klout score based on your influence.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Klout used for?

Klout measures your influence on social media platforms like Twitter, providing a more accurate gauge of your online impact than follower count. Discover how Klout can help you optimize your social media presence and grow your online influence.

Does Klout still exist?

Klout is no longer operational. Its Twitter handle is inactive, indicating the service has been discontinued.

Why did Klout fail?

Klout failed due to its reputation as a "vanity metric" that could be easily manipulated, making it largely useless. This led to widespread criticism and a loss of credibility for the platform.

What is the meaning of Klout?

Klout refers to a platform that measures online social influence, assigning a score based on social media activity. This score, known as the Klout Score, ranges from 1 to 100.

Ismael Anderson

Lead Writer

Ismael Anderson is a seasoned writer with a passion for crafting informative and engaging content. With a focus on technical topics, he has established himself as a reliable source for readers seeking in-depth knowledge on complex subjects. His writing portfolio showcases a range of expertise, including articles on cloud computing and storage solutions, such as AWS S3.

Love What You Read? Stay Updated!

Join our community for insights, tips, and more.