What Is Klout

Klout, as the tagline suggests, is quickly becoming “The Standard for Influence” for the social web. Using a scoring system which is initially based on your Twitter activity, the people at Klout have developed yet another algorithm to rank user relevance. Similar to Peer Index and Twylah, viewing your Klout profile can give a good indication or an overview, of the topics you discuss most often in social media.

Connect Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to Klout

Log in to your Klout dashboard and authorize the connections with your Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts. Making these profile connections will give Klout more of your data to sift through which should uncover more details about your contacts and give you a clearer picture of your influence within your networks. Although some argue that Klout scores aren't completely accurate, I find the information very useful and perhaps the complaints from naysayers are nothing more than “sour grapes” from users whose scores aren't quite up to par with expectations.

Take Advantage of Your Klout

Based on some questions about Klout that came my way via Twitter, I recorded a video to demonstrate how to access the Klout dashboard to find scores on new Twitter using the extension for Chrome from Kynetx and the Hoverme tool.

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The interface was recently beefed-up by allowing users to give each other a +K in the topics they have influence. This adds a human dimension to the algorithm, which can only get better over time. Since users are limited to 5 +K votes per day, it should prove an effective way to avoid gaming of the system, while at the same time encourage further engagement between you and your followers and contacts.

Let's here your thoughts on the idea of using Klout? Can you think of a way to use it to your advantage? Who knows, you might even gain the attention of an influencer in your niche by awarding them with a +K on Klout!