When I wrote this I was in the middle of my Social Media
experiment where I was literally exploring and trying to get my head around the
many different aspects of each specific media that we, as bloggers, use.
Klout was a new aspect for me to discover and use and that
is why I created the previous post. What I didn’t realise is that a lot of
people still didn’t and don’t understand Klout at its basic level; I thought
that I would try to break it down to its lowest points.
That impact score is measured and explained further in the
post above.
The higher your impact score will show how influential you
are and how much “Klout” you carry. This then equates into your overall Klout
Score.
Most bloggers will find that their Klout Score is placed
from 55 – 80. However, before we humble bloggers give a cry of hurrah at having
a higher score, I will point out that the ranking system is from 1 – 100 and
each tier gets progressively harder to achieve.
This means that it will be hard to move from 68 – 69 but
even harder to progress from 69 – 70.
Using each social media to its fullest and having a large
interaction on them will make it easier but even then it can be difficult for
those who have mass followings!
For example celebrities such as Lady Gaga and Rihanna have
scores of 94 and the truth is that only one person in the world has a perfect
100! (It’s Justin Bieber by the way)
It does mean a lot of interaction and impact across all
social media to be able to achieve this but connecting all your social media is
a good place to start!
You do this by going down the left side and clicking on
Settings and then selecting Network. This opens up the possibility to connect
all your active networks, including your Blog!
If you follow the tips in the previous post you can help
concentrate on increasing your impact and influence towards your score.
How do you use Klout?
Well apart from the social media impact there is also a
Klout aspect for you to use. In this sense you give “Klout” to others; this
usually appears as one person giving a +K to another.
In the search bar at the top you can put a person’s name,
Twitter Title i.e “Inside Martyns Thoughts” or their Twitter tag. 
Once you have found a person you will see that they have a
category of labels that they are “Experts” in.
These tags are obtained by over 400 klout search criteria
that read all of your influence and create a list of things that are most
spoken about or similar. So if you are constantly talking about cake, sharing
pictures and links of cake then you will be an expert in cake. 
If you hover over a label you will see that you get an
option to give a +K.
You click and reward that person by clicking on the Klout
logo. 
Everybody is allowed to give 10 +K per day. This contributes
to their impact scores and gives you an impact score for using the service.
If you are looking to boost your score then, as suggested
above, it contributes to your impact and influence. Being active and
interactive across Social Media is really important but so is using the
individual Klout service.
If you choose someone to give +K I would also advise that
you tweet that person to say that you have done that.
In this case you are not only creating an impact source on
the Klout influence you are also creating one on Twitter; two for the price of
one.
Now if people reply with a Thank you (Which we all hope that
everyone would) you then have the option from that to tweet a conversation to
them “How’s your weekend been” etc and this benefits your Klout score as it
increases the impact response on both Klout and Twitter.
I would say that giving anyone +K to start is a good thing
but I would also suggest connecting with people who are higher than you. I wouldn’t
be solely targeting them as the higher you climb the harder it will be to find
people higher but It is worth doing. It’s not what you know but who you know; they
have good social influence and the fact that they’re interacting with you will
only help.
So that’s the basics of using Klout. My best advice is to
use it as often as you can and you will get the hang of it.
18 comments:
Great post, Martyn - you explain Klout very well. I was clueless about it last year. I had seen all of these +k tweets & had no idea what they were. It's an important network to join for bloggers - I'm sure this post will help a lof of people out. Thanks for hosting #BlogStorm
I am fairly new to Klout and I am still trying to figure it out!! thanks for sharing these tips..Let me give it a try to the Klout!!
Brilliant post. You've reminded me I need to go back and pay a little more attention to Klout - I've been avoiding it while I looked at other things!
Fab post :) Klout is such a useful tool but so many people don't really know what it is or how it works and I think this explains it really well. Thanks for hosting #blogstorm and for choosing my post as your featured post :)
Debbie
I'm glad you wrote about Klout again, I needed to read this! Thanks for all the tips :)
Look at you Mr. 72! Damn, great tutorial by the way.
You haven't mentioned about adding your posts to Klout or about sharing tge articles within the topics you have selected to be an expert in.What about Klout perks?
Oh I see now...it's like a blogger's LinkedIn! That makes more sense. Thank you! I shall have a look later and share some love for my blog buddies.
Thanks. It really is a useful tool for bloggers to use. Just get to grips with that basic is a good start.
Thanks Klout isn't a mystery but it can be confusing to start. It's one of those places that the more you do it then the easier it gets.
Thanks Vicky. It's one of those sites that are good for bloggers but easily missed as we cover so many other places. It's good to include it in your blogging routine though
You're welcome. And thank you. Its a useful tool for bloggers so to use it just on the basic level is a good start.
You're welcome. I use it a lot and get the different aspects to it and it's a handy tool to understand
Haha thanks Gary! I think it's a great place to get used to and subsequently something bloggers should use.
Hey. For a start klout doesn't do perks anymore. It stopped them last year so didn't include them for that reason. As for sharing content, well that is one aspect but I didn't think that it's classed in the basics of it. Or in the previous post in understanding klout impact scores.
I think it's an important part to use and can make a difference but very few people share content with it or from it. I also didn't mention how you can change you expertise and create labels that suit your page. Again, it is an important part to it but isn't something I would class in the basics. I'll write a 3rd post soon and include those features.
Ha yes. That's exactly it. Makes it easier doing it that way. It's great not only for work, businesses and the blog but also for sharing the love for other bloggers.
You forgot to say be aware it randomly breaks and disconnects your social media and then it'll take you months to gain back your original score ;)
Stevie :)
Hahaha yes! Think I might include this in a bad parts of klout post!
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