The specific algorithms used to determine Klout aren’t explicitly known. The impact of a higher Klout score is still being developed as well, but I expect these scores will increasingly be used by a variety of search and sort tools (including Google) to increase visibility of tweets from users with high Klout scores.
Therefore, the higher your score, the wider reach and influence you have beyond your direct followers.
Create content worth sharing
This may sound obvious, but it’s all too easy to focus on content that you alone care about. Who are your followers, what are they interested in, and what are they likely to read, engage with and share with their own networks?
Start discussions and ask questions
All social networks thrive on conversations. Start some. Ask questions to not just learn yourself, but to find out what a group of like-minded people think. Ask about things in the news, for feedback on a particular product or service. Ask questions that you know others need answers to as well, which will spark the discussion and generate retweets.
Respond and participate
Go out of your way to help others on Twitter. Help those who ask questions, offer unsolicited advice to those who are struggling with something. If you’re ambitious, do a search for keywords you’re particularly knowledgeable about and respond to new people you don’t yet know. Great way to get new followers and increase the measured reach and influence you have across the network.
Register with Klout (and connect Facebook)
No cost, takes three minutes. Make sure Klout knows who you are. They’ll even give you direct, personalized stats and recommendations for how to improve your score. If you’re active on Facebook, connect your account so that Klout gives you credit for influence on other networks as well.
Host a Twitter chat
Pick a topic, a time and a hashtag. Get friends, colleagues or like-minded followers to go online at a specified time and start talking. By initiating the chat, your account will be that the center of dozens if not hundreds of tweets. You’ll also meet and be exposed to a bunch of new people.
Show appreciation and thank people publicly
If someone retweets your stuff, thank them. Individually. It will mean a lot that you did it, and Klout likes etiquette.
Make time for Twitter
You don’t have to be on Twitter all day. But set a few pockets of 5-10 minutes each day to go on, be active, and engage. Even that short amount of focused time can go a long way.
Be careful who you follow
Don’t automatically follow anybody who follows you. Make sure those you follow are relevant and interesting to you. Set the bar wherever you want based on that definition, just avoid spammers.
Keep it short
Leave plenty of room for retweets. I try to leave at least 25 characters at the end of a tweet.
Use hashtags (sometimes, and only when relevant)
Klout likes tweets that don’t have a bunch of hashtags. If you include 3-4 hashtags in each post, it looks like you’re trying to bait people into finding your stuff. If you’re at a conference or event with a hashtag, by all means join the community. But be careful about using hashtags too often, or tagging generic words throughout your tweets just to get them noticed.
If you’re already using Klout actively, what else have you found that’s working? And are there tactics you’ve tried that have actually reduced your Klout score?
Matt,
I am engaged in a self experiment since a while and have my reservations about Klout.
The experiment basically is me daily (morning session and afternoon session, if I find the time) checking what happened on Klout and the web in my areas of interest and retweeting (mainly with comments) or commenting and tweeting the articles. Sometimes I also post a blog and publish that via twitter. I do that because I am not really convinced that the algorithm gives back influence as opposed to my own activity level. I still haven’t fully understood the algorithm but think that the definition of influence at this time is far too biased on my own activity instead of real engagements. I cannot explain Klout scores high in the 40s or even beyond that else for tweepers with low activity but a huge network.
There recently has been a nice article tht confirms my doubts. Have a look, the correlations are interesting: http://gary.arndt.com/wordpress/2011/04/13/klout-vs-peerindex/ One of the author’s findings is that it is important to follow many people!
What I think is that it is good to have a measure but before really pushing the measure it should be sort of accurate. Now you could say the error is systematic and thus irrelevant but then the result often contradicts expectations.
Klout – as well as many others – still have a long way to go.
Cheers
Thomas
Hi Thomas, thanks so much for your comments. Klout is clearly far from perfect right now, but I think the idea of somehow empirically separating the authentic accounts from the spammers is a good one. I expect Klout and similar services/tools will only get better over time.