How I Increased My Klout Score by 30% and How You Can Too!

Written by Zac Johnson
social social social

For anyone who is active in the online media and social networking world, you probably already know about Klout. In the world of online marketing, having a social media presence and sense of branding and authority around your name is everything. I’ve never been one to take a huge advantage of social media and using social networks to their fullest advantages, but lately I have been getting more active. Since 2008, Klout has been measuring authority online and basically gives you a score and rating based on your overall presence, reach and influence online.

What is Klout?

If you don’t currently have a social networking account like Facebook, Twitter or Google+, you might not have even heard of Klout, or even care what it is. While Klout won’t really get you anything special, it is a great way to see how you stack up to the competition of online marketers and other voices in the world of social media. The full definition for Klout can be seen below.

The Klout Score measures influence based on your ability to drive action. Every time you create content or engage you influence others. The Klout Score uses data from social networks in order to measure:

  • True Reach: How many people you influence
  • Amplification: How much you influence them
  • Network Impact: The influence of your network

How to Check Your Klout Score

If you are already tracking your Klout score, you probably already have a good idea where you are ranked. If not, you can sign into Klout.com right now with your Twitter or Facebook profile and it will sync up all of your accounts and provide you with a score.

As mentioned earlier, I was never really focused on using Twitter, Facebook and Google+ for interacting with others, besides posting about the latest blog posts and other cool stuff I came across online. So a couple weeks ago I started getting more active and it’s actually been quite beneficial as it’s been getting me active with some new people and a great way to share information and resources. Before all of this, my Klout score was sitting around 39 for a year or so. Now that I’ve been pretty active (mainly Facebook), you can see my Klout score is up to 54, up nearly 16 points in the last 30 days.

UPDATE: My Klout Score is now in the high 60s range.

What Determines Your Klout Score?

The way Klout comes up with a score for you and your account, is how active you are in online social networks and how people are responding to your content. If you are reaching a lot of people and they are “liking” or “retweeting” your content, this is a good thing and would increase your score. True Reach, Amplification and Network Impact all play major factors in your overall Klout score.

  • True Reach: How many people you influence
  • Amplification: How much you influence them
  • Network Impact: The influence of your network

You can see my track reports for the past month below, all of my factors have been on an upward trend since being more active in the major social networks.

How to Increase Your Klout Score

There is nothing magical about increasing your Klout score, it’s more about being active and providing quality content to your followers and being an influencer online. In the graph below you can see my activity on Twitter, Facebook and Google+. Clearly the most activity is through Twitter and Facebook. I use Twitter for mostly blog updates, Facebook for interacting with others and sharing content… and I still rarely use Google+, as I still don’t see as much overall activity from everyone I’m following through there. Still, this can all be improved, which would probably push me into the 60s on Klout.

Last year Mashable wrote up a post on 7 Surefire Ways to Increase Your Klout Score. I’ve highlighted their key points below.

  • 1. Build a network. The key to increasing a Klout score is similar to finding success on the social web in general: Build a targeted, engaged network of people who would be legitimately interested in you and your content.
  • 2. Create meaningful content. Adopt a strategy to create or aggregate meaningful content that your network loves to share with others. Provide links!
  • 3. Engage. Actively engage with others in a helpful and authentic way. Ask questions, answer questions and create a dialogue with your followers.
  • 4. Don’t scheme. Any gaming behaviors that fall outside the basic strategies will eventually catch up to you. For example, specifically targeting conversations with high Klout influencers will probably be more annoying than successful. If you keep focused on your network strategy and your content strategy, you’ll succeed.
  • 5. Interact with everyone. Don’t be afraid to interact with Klout users with lower scores – it won’t hurt your own score. In fact, it helps build their score and in turn makes you more of an influencer.
  • 6. Publish. Remember, you don’t have to make a movie or be elected to office to have power now. All you need to do is publish. Access to free publishing tools such as blogs, video and Twitter have provided users with an opportunity to have a real voice, so take advantage of these many platforms.
  • 7. Keep at it. Don’t be discouraged by your score. It’s more important to just enjoy your social media experience and let the chips fall where they may.

Top Klout Score Users in the Blogging & Internet Marketing Space

When using and looking through Klout, you can set your account up as an authority in different niches and topics. Other users can also award you with “K+” points, which will rank you higher in these fields. You can look through Klout and view the top users in these area, and how they are ranking over all. I thought it would be a cool idea to list some of the top bloggers and internet marketers in the Klout world.

As you can see, some of the top influencers in the affiliate marketing and blogging space are already some well known names that you may already recognize, such as Darren Rowse Shawn Collins, Brian Clark, Missy Ward and Chris Brogan.

Increase Your Klout and Follow Me on the Social Networks

If you aren’t currently following yourself and others using Klout, be sure to log in to their site today and find out what your score is. Also, if you aren’t currently following me on the major social networks, I would be glad to see you join and I will most likely follow and join you as well!

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13 Replies to “How I Increased My Klout Score by 30% and How You Can Too!”

  1. That looks like a really cool idea.I will definitely sign up for Klout and share my results. 😉

    Thanks For Sharing,
    Bradley Nordstrom

  3. Zac

    I agree increasing your klout score starts with adding value ad providing quality information, I signed up with them not long ago and I just need to be a little more active but im already receiving adding influencers
    My recent post Republishing Old SEO Blog Post

  4. Wow! That's very inspiring!
    If you have a goal to get a better score with Klout then you will be more active and gain more from the social networks.
    Thanks.
    I will follow you.

  5. The interesting notion for me is that the people who return to check their Klout score care about online influence and managing their web reputation.
    They are the ones who understand how important is to be active and build a network with like-mind people today.
    I see the near future where one of the factors about who gets the job is the online experience of candidates.

    Regards!
    My recent post Click one of the post titles above to include it at the end of your comment

  6. Just wondering… if I am active on one social network and not so much on the others, would adding only that one social network to Klout help boost my score? Alternately, would adding the other social networks decrease my Klout score because of the perceived reduction in true reach?

    1. I think Klout has the ability to check your activity against all platforms. I know I am more active on Facebook than Twitter and G+. Also, if you look through the top users on Klout, many of the people that are ranked aren't "officially" signed up with Klout, but they are still tracked.

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