With a wide variety of social networks sprouting up, it’s only natural for a way to measure your impact to follow. The most popular of these social scoring sites has been Klout.com, where they calculate your online influence by evaluating your various social networks.
Klout evaluates the size of your network and level of engagement to determine your score. As long as you are active on your networks and engaging those you meet, your Klout score should follow. If you are at all curious about the net that you cast online, this is a good place to see what you’re doing right, and what you need to improve.
The technology blog Mashable.com just came out with a fun article with some things you should know about Klout. There are some facts in this article that every user of the site should know.
For instance, giving someone a +K is a nice gesture, but it does absolutely nothing for their Klout score. The score is determined by Klout, based on the level of influence in your various social networks.
So, what is a good Klout score? You probably shouldn’t obsess too much about your Klout score. It’s never quite as high as you want it. The only person with a perfect Klout score is Justin Bieber. So unless you’re a popular singer, just keep using social media to build relationships with those in your network, and your Klout score should eventually follow. Other celebrities have lobbied for a higher score, yet no one else has achieved it.
Different factors can affect your scores. Klout also has different calculations based on which social media platform you are active on. They also factor in international differences in communication patterns.
When the company first began in 2008, the founder and CEO factored all the Klout scores personally, by hand. The traffic has long exceeded his ability to do that. Now, it receives 50 times the traffic of its nearest competitor, PeerIndex.
It’s becoming increasingly popular. If used correctly, Klout can help you gauge your social media presence.
Klout No More
As of 2018 (a handful of years after this article was written), Klout has unfortunately been discontinued due to company merger and the consequent change in business structure. The former Klout website offerst the following explanation as to why:
“Lithium merged with Spredfast to become Khoros and the company does not plan to resume providing Klout…The Klout acquisition provided Lithium with valuable artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities, but Klout as a standalone service is not aligned with our long-term business strategy as Khoros. As a result, we made the difficult decision to turn off Klout.”
Alternatives to Klout
But, if you’re looking to measure your online indluence, don’t fret! There are many other powerful alternatives to Klout. Below are our top 3!
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