Jeff Pulvino

Klout is to Influence what Google is to search. You can use Klout.com to determine how much influence you have online, how to change your level of influence, and identify other influencers to network with. Like Google, Klout uses a complex algorithm (factors, weights, and criteria) to calculate your Klout. Once you understand this, you can refine your online behavior to adjust your Klout and network more effectively online.

How Klout Calculates Your Influence

While the exact algorithm is kept secret, Klout.com outlines some of the criteria it uses to calculate your score. Your Klout Score is the measurement of your ‘overall online influence’.

It ranges from 1 to 100. The higher the score, the greater the sphere of influence.

What Social Media networks are used to calculate your Klout?

Klout uses over 35 variables on Facebook and Twitter to measure this including:

1. True Reach
2. Amplification Probability
3. Network Score

It also factors in your Social Media activities on LinkedIn and others networks. See this screenshot to see some of the Social Media networks it uses to calculate my Klout.

Note: you can follow me on Twitter here.

Klout: True Reach

This is the size of your engaged audience. It is based on your followers who actively listen and react to your messages.

Klout: Amplification Score

This is the likelihood that your messages will generate actions, such as retweets, @messages, likes and comments. Scale from 1 to 100.

Klout: Network Score

This indicates how influential your engage audience is. Scale from 1 to 100.

Therefore, the Klout score is a combination of:

• Clicks
• Comments
• Retweets

How is Klout Calculated?

According to the site, Klout is the ‘influence is the ability to drive people to action — “action” might be defined as a reply, a retweet, a comment, or a click.’

To calculate your Klout, it does the following:

• Defines 25+ variables to generate scores for each category.
• Runs these through its analytics engine.
• Applies a specific weight to each data point.
• Runs the factors through its machine-learning analysis.
• Calculates the Klout Score.

The Klout Score shows how successful you are at engaging your audience and the impact your messages have on others.

Klout: True Reach

This is the size of your ‘engaged audience’. It removes inactive and spam accounts, and only include accounts that you influence. To do this, it calculates the overall influence for each relationship.

Tip: our Facebook page is here.

Klout: 3 Different Types of Reach

True Reach is broken into the following subcategories:

Reach

Are your tweets interesting enough to be shared?

How many have shared your content across Twitter (and other Social Media channels)?

Are you on lists? Are those lists followed?

Demand

How many people do you have to follow to get followers in return?

How often are your follows reciprocated? i.e. they follow back.

Klout Metrics

Next are the metrics they use. These include:

• @ Mention Count
• Followed Back %
• Follower/Follow Ratio
• Followers
• Friends
• List Count
• List Followers Count
• Mutual Follows
• Total Retweets
• Unique Commenters
• Unique Likers

Amplification Probability

This is the likelihood that your content will be acted upon, eg shared, retweeted, or commented upon.

‘The ability to create content… that spreads into networks beyond your own is a key component of influence.’

Amplification Ability

This is determined by:

• Engagement – How diverse is your group of followers? Are you participating in conversations?
• Velocity – How often are you retweeted? Do different people retweet you or is it the same followers?
• Activity – Are you tweeting too little or too much? Are your tweets generating new followers, retweets and @ replies?

Factors measured:

Comments Per Post Follower Retweet %

• Follower Mention %
• Inbound Messages Per Outbound Message
• Likes Per Post
• Unique @ Senders
• Unique Messages Retweeted
• Unique Retweeters
• Update Count

Klout Network Influence

This is the influence level of your engaged audience.

Engagement is measured based on actions such as:

• @messages
• Comments
• Follows
• Likes
• Lists
• Retweets

Network Score

This looks at the Klout score of each person who interacts with you. It determines the influence of people who:

• @ message you
• Follow your lists
• Follow you
• List you
• Retweet you
• Other factors measured include:
• Followed Back %
• Follower/Follow Ratio
• Influence of Followers
• Influence of Friends
• Influence of Likers and Commenters
• Influence of Retweeters and Mentioners
• List inclusions
• Unique Commenters
• Unique Likers
• Unique Retweeters
• Unique Senders

Will Klout Increase Your Influence Online?

This brings us back to the original topic, using Klout to position your blog as an authority online. How do you do it?

Jason Keath suggests that you listen for pain points and solve them.

Jason Cupp recommends that you add value to a trending topic.

Trey Pennington, in his excellent article Klout is Necessary explains that ‘Klout gives companies something they are immensely comfortable with, readily understand, and can quickly use for decision-making—a two digit number.’

How I Accidentally Raised My Klout from John Hewitt reflects the strategy I’ve adopted. The four steps are:

1. Unfollow everybody you don’t feel a connection with.
2. Write more tweets.
3. Respond to other tweets.
4. Follow people again BUT be very choosy about who you follow.

In other words, put some structure on the way you use Social Media. I’ve written an article about how I created an action plan for marketing on twitter and many of the principles I’ve used there I also use for increasing my Klout.

That’s it! If you want to raise my Klout   please leave a comment below or share this post with your friends. Thanks!

Article written by: Ivan Walsh

Article posted by: Jeff Pulvino, Marketing Consultant located in Sacramento, CA