What is Klout? Klout is a mobile and website app that measures users’ online influence (the ability to drive action). In other words, Klout measures your ability to influence other people to do stuff – pretty impressive!

klout scoreKlout derives their scores by incorporating a user’s activity among a number of social media applications such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Instagram and Wikipedia to develop an aggregate score. Klout measures the size of a user’s social media network and correlates the activity and content posted to measure how other users interact with that content. Klout scores are a ranking that range between 0 – 100. President Obama’s Klout score is 99 and Justin Beiber’s score is 92 – the average score is 40.

You can discover your own Klout score by registering at klout.com. To get the most accurate view of your social media influence, you’ll want to connect all of your social media accounts within Klout. The amount of activity does not impact your Klout score as much as the type of activity. You should be posting relevant content that engages your social circle and drives people to take action. Other factors that can impact your score are the number of your followers, frequency of updates, the Klout scores of your friends and followers, and the number of likes, retweets, and shares that your updates receive.

Having Klout Can Get You Free Stuff!

Some business have jumped on the Klout band wagon and are offering perks to influential individuals– these perks include free products, invitations to events and travel upgrades. Free stuff is a pretty cool but there are other benefits too. Some business have begun looking at customers’ Klout scores to ensure that they are providing the best products and services to the individuals with higher Klout scores since these individuals will be more likely to share their experiences with the online world (both good and bad!) thus providing free advertising for the company. For businesses this is a good way to stretch limited marketing dollars – spend on their most influential customers and let these customers help market the company by word of mouth (or posts, blogs…).

looking at computerKlout is especially of interest to people who want to influence others – like sales people, advertisers, and politicians. Klout provides a measurement tool for the amount of online influence you have so that you can track your social media reach and impact.

Employers and recruiters in some industries are even beginning to look at Klout scores of prospective employees as part of the hiring process so as you are updating your resume you should be checking on your Klout score too.

Klout has increased its popularity over the last few years and is constantly reviewing and tweaking their scoring algorithm to improve the accuracy of their scores. It looks as though our social media ranking will become more and more relevant in our day to day lives.

Meet Christy Hickey

Christy is a Project Manager with Launch Digital Marketing. She has worked as a Project Manager for 20 years. Christy enjoys reading, the beach, wine and spending time with her husband, two daughters and numerous pets.