What is Klout? Klout.com that is..

My great aunt asked me a question on facebook a few weeks ago that made me really think for a second, she asked “I don’t understand Klout, can someone please explain it to me”. I have been on Klout for almost a year and I have a general understanding of Klout with a score of 61 but personally I still don’t totally understand the algorithm or how to easily make my score go up or down. I don’t expect them to explain their algorithm in full because just like Google’s search or Facebook’s newsfeed, that is proprietary information, but I do expect them to release more information on how to enhance and utilize Klout so that more people and organizations will embrace it.

According to Klout.com:
“Klout measures influence online using data from your social networks. Anywhere you have an online presence, you have the opportunity to influence people by creating or sharing content that inspires actions such as likes, retweets, comments and more. The more engagement your posts receive, the more influential you are. Klout uses this information to provide you a Klout Score that measures your overall influence.”

Initially I thought Klout was just another software out there that you can sign up for and hopefully it becomes more useful in the future but now I am starting to see the benefits of Klout as my score continues to increase. I have connected Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Youtube, Linkedin, Foursquare, and Instagram accounts and therefore as I interact normally with social media than my score increases. I can see how this could help a ministry or business because you can sign up as an individual influencer or a brand influencer and connect your social media accounts. One glaring thing that’s missing from Klout is Pinterest, there is no way to connect your Pinterest account to Klout and that needs to change in the near future.

Finally, as more organizations use Klout and take the scores of influencers into consideration, people will continue to take steps to increase their score. Here is a great article from Wired about Klout – http://www.wired.com/business/2012/04/ff_klout/all/ and I think this will give a great explanation on the benefits and drawbacks of it. In my short time on Klout I have found that the more I post (which I use bufferapp.com to post continuously) the more my score rises.

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