Blogger’s Guide to Klout: Part Three (How to Increase Your Klout Score)

This is part three of a three part series covering what Klout is, why you should bother with it and how to improve your score.

Part One: What Is Klout
Part Two: Why Klout is Important for Bloggers

So we’ve covered what Klout is and why you should care about your score. Not the big question is, how do you improve it.

First make sure you are familiar with your score as it is now and your social media stats in your profile. See where you are at now.

NOTE: Your score will fluctuate. You will get it increased and then it will go back down a bit. It will not just go up. Instead of focusing on small changes like 46-48, concentrate on getting it above 40 at least. Remember Klout is still in Beta and they are still making improvements too. As mentioned before, the higher your Klout score, the harder it is to get it higher. So a change from 46 to 47 is harder than 24 to 25. Anytime you slow down on interaction, either because you have been spending less time on the computer, you went on vacation or you have interacted the same but others seem to be interacting less, your score will go down. If you look at my graph, it shows mine going up steadily in April but going down in May. It’s only gone down by a few small points though so I am not worried. Right now my personal goal is to keep it between 45-50.

First I’ll go over what improves your score, and then how you can go about working on this. If you recall your score is made up of three smaller scores:

• True Reach (number of people you influence)
• Amplification (how much you influence people)
• Network (the influence of the people in your true reach)

To increase your True Reach, you need to increase the number of people you influence. This means not only increasing your followers on the social media networks you have but getting them to interact with you so that they are counted as someone you influence. (I have over 7000 twitter followers on my @callista83 twitter account but my true reach is not 7000 people, only the ones who have interacted with me count.)

To increase your amplification, you need to work on how much interaction you get on your social media accounts. Interaction meaning likes, mentions, retweets, shares etc.

To increase your network score is a bit harder. You want the people in your true reach to have high Klout scores.

So what do you do?

1. Link up as many social media accounts as you can to Klout, but at LEAST Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Linkedin and Foursquare. Why those five? Because those five are the only ones that contribute to your score currently. If you don’t have one of those, I suggest you get one.
   NOTE: Only facebook profiles and Google+ personal accounts count towards your score. You can link up your facebook page but it will NOT count towards your score.
   NOTE: Linking up another account will NOT lower your score. Even if you aren’t active on it, it will not make your score lower.
2. Increase your followers on those accounts. The more followers you have, the more of them that will likely interact. When you follow someone on twitter, tweet them. Preferably not just @heyyou I just followed you, please follow back. I only mention that I followed if it’s a twitter follow hop and you are supposed to. Better to make it something in response to one of their tweets or about their webpage or something. @heyyou Just read your blog post on dogs, I love that idea! Participate in follow hops or sign up for giveaways that include one of your social media accounts as an entry. There are paid cash giveaway ones (payment is small and goes towards prize) and some free ones but I recommend only doing those where the prize is over $100.
3. Know what counts as interaction. Remember interaction includes likes, comments and shares on Facebook, mentions and retweets on Twitter, comments and likes on Linkedin, Tips, To-Do’s and Done on Foursquare and Comments, Reshares and +1s on Google+.
   NOTE: Only PUBLIC posts on Google+ count towards your score.
4. Increase interaction by making your tweets easily retweetable and your content on any network interesting so that others will WANT to share, like or comment on it. Make tweets shorter so there is room for RT @username in front of it or even room for the retweeter to add a personal message. Encourage interaction by inviting likes, comments and retweets. Join blogging groups that have retweet or engagement exchanges. Add tweeting you or retweeting you as an entry into your giveaways. Since your personal profile on facebook is being used towards your score, take advantage of having family on there and post baby pictures and other cute things that is sure to get attention.
   NOTE: Be aware of the terms and conditions for the social networks you participate in before including them in your giveaways. For example you can’t use Google +1 in your giveaways, nor can you ask them to comment on your facebook wall.
5. Follow and interact with those with a higher Klout Score. I found this YouTube video that shows how to filter your twitter followers by Klout Score using HootSuite. There is also an add on for Chrome and one for firefox that displays a user’s Klout Score in the twitter timeline.
6. +K other people and get others to +K you. Although the number of +K you get doesn’t in itself add to your score, if others +K you, they are counted as being influenced by you which ups your true reach part of the score. Also if others tweet that they gave you +K, since it includes your twitter username, it counts as interaction.

I hope this series has been helpful for you. If you have any suggestions to improve your Klout Score, please share in the comments. I’d also love to hear if it helped you in any way.

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#Bloggers Guide to #KIout Part 3: How to Increase Your Klout Score via @blogathon2 bit.ly/KerYzr

— Kathleen (@Blogathon2) May 23, 2012

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