Who cares about Klout?

Your Klout score is a measure of your online influence. When you create, recommend and share content it impacts others. Klout score measures that influence on a scale of 1 to 100. Didn’t know Klout existed? Not signed-up for it? Doesn’t matter. If you have a Facebook or a Twtitter account, then you have a score and you can find out what it is here. (There is of course an opt out option on the site.)

But so what? Maybe it’s not that big of a deal this side of the water right now but Seth Stevenson reports on how things stateside are a little bit different. For example, Calvin Lee who is a graphic designer in LA with a Klout score of 74, has received Klout perks (benefits) ranging from a freebie Windows phone to the loan of an Audi A8. Virgin Atlantic used it a campaign a couple of years ago by giving free flights to key influencers.

There is a flip side however. In his article, Stevenson relays the tale of a job hunting marketeer.  Despite having 15 years experience working with big brands, he found his interview cut short when he admitted to not knowing what his Klout score was and the interviewer subsequently pulled his rather low score up on screen. The poor guy spent a number of months building his score up after that. As his score rose, so too did the number of job offers. Coincidental?

A few weeks ago, Klout started rolling out their new Brand Squadswith Red Bull as its launch partner. By turning a brand into a topic, Klout is expanding brand promotions into engaging, trackable metrics for the social crowd. The top influencers are users who have the most +K’s in a specific topic, rather than those who have the highest overall Klout score. Top influencers will naturally receive Klout perks.

So after all that, maybe you still dont care? Well if you do and you want to build up that score, here are some quick pointers:

• Link up all your networks
• Tweet often about your areas of interest.
• Focus on one or two topics rather than all of them. Tweeting about all them wont help your score
• Engage with influencers – retweet their tweets, like their posts and comment on their blogs. If they return the favour, then this will push up your Kout.
• See a popular topic online? Then tweet about it, share it, comment on it. You could like or share this post for example 🙂