Recently I am seeing many posts and questions being asked, “How do I increase my Klout Score?”
These are normal questions and nothing is wrong with them. I am all for discovering great content, sharing it and identifying new leaders or talents.
But what bothers me the most is that the majority of the answers are misleading as to how to improve your score in positive, ethical ways. Many suggest that you need to get as many people as possible to retweet your tweets, share and comment on your posts, like and comment on as many Facebook posts as possible, and to get more followers. I agree with these recommendations to some extent, until moral boundaries are crossed and manipulation sets in.
I saw someone suggest that we find bloggers with high scores, copy their old posts and tweak them slightly so as not to make anyone suspicious of copying the whole content. This makes me sick to my stomach. What are we shooting for? Are we in a race for score alone? Do you think that a high Klout score will change your life for the better? Well guess what, it will not. I don’t know where people are getting the idea that a high Klout score or ‘level of influence’ alone will make them stand out in the crowd.
Leaders in Social Media are identified through their own hard work such as speaking engagements, published books, achievements, industry recognitions, honors received, years of dedication, and so on. A high Klout score simply cannot take the place of real life experience and accomplishments.
Even if a person manages to drastically increase their influence level through manipulation, and are lucky enough to garner themselves a public appearance, the audience will sooner or later discover there is no substance to the person. The stealing of blog posts, artificially gained retweets, shares, likes and comments cannot possibly take the place of genuine and vital knowledge and experience. The label the person really deserves is SCAMMER, and we all know how we feel about scammers.
One thing some people need to understand is that real influence cannot be bought or manipulated. Influence is simply earned throughout your life, work, dedication and achievements.
Influence is not: The number of friends or followers you have, the number of retweets or replies, likes and comments you receive. It is not the number of posts you write, nor the number of blogs and subscribers you’ve gathered. It is not your page rank. It is not the number of Stumbles, or your job title. It is not the number of books you’ve read or written, and it is definitely not the your Klout Score.
Influence is the power or ability to affect someone's beliefs or actions. You influence someone when a person thinks or acts in a way that they otherwise wouldn’t, or do something that they otherwise wouldn’t.
Many people who have achived high Klout Scores complain that their score plateaus and they can not increase it. This is true, and is not a Klout system malfunction. The solution is not simple, alas. Klout is looking at how other influential people above you react to the content you share.
People are also mislead with the selection of content as well. Yes, people like pictures, videos, humor and links. But a funny picture of your granny smoking a giant "joint" doesn’t really make you influential, right? It is simply an artificial way of raising your score. It is the kind of thing people like and share.
The same applies to +K. We all know many people have created multiple fake profiles to be able to give themselves as many as possible +K in order to gain a place on a top +K receivers list. If you’re doing this, I have a newsflash for you: Klout is checking if you really influenced the person who gave you a +K, and if there really is engagement between the users. So maybe it is better to build genuine relationships and thank those who really influence you rather than to try to earn +K "prizes" for yourself.
The days of sending out a thousand #FF and #F4F and so on, are also long over. This technique will not increase your score. What you’ll gain is a loss of followers or even being placed on assorted lists of spammers. Klout doesn’t take these messages into account when determining your level of influence.
Some will suggest you mass follow others, and start retweeting as many users as possible, since the more you retweet others, the more others will retweet you. Please don't fall for something that has no basis to it. First, mass-following is against Twitter’s Terms of Service and second, your twitter stream will get flooded with random tweets that you, and quite possibly your followers, have no interest in.
Start following the people that share common interests with you, people that you might exchange mutual benefits and build a great online relationship with them. The number of followers is not important; what counts is the quality of your followers. It’s far better to have 100 quality followers then 1000 follow-for-follow spammers. As far as retweeting randomly, whomever tells you to retweet as much as you can to get others to retweet you, should definitely read some books on engagement for himself first before selling bad advice on the Internet. Randomly retweeting others doesn’t guarantee that you will be retweeted.
Last but not least, asking your connections on LinkedIn to write you a recommendation and assuring them that that once they do, you will write one in return – this is the most ridiculous thing I have seen yet. People who ask for recommendations from those they barely know are not credible people. They’ve lost their integrity at this point. Yes, recommendations are one aspect that Klout takes into account, but to beg for them from people that you don't know professionally is not the way to go. There is much more to Social Media than a Klout Score. There are many wonderful people out there and you sacrifice your opportunity to network with them when you turn your LinkedIn profile into a graffiti board of clearly "generic," unqualified recommendations. There are scores of people who will teach you, give you knowledge, encouragement and even connections, all of which are worth more than any Klout Score.
Instead of searching for funny pictures, stealing a blog post or even sending DMs begging for a retweet, I would suggest you to start discovering your niche. Start building a community of people with the same interest as yours and start engaging. You will see how soon and easily not only your score increases, but your real life connections make progress. Keep it up and you might even gain some global recognition.
A few things that Klout Score Master Class teachers don't tell you, above all, is that stealing a blog post could very well put you in a legal battle, and recommending random people on LinkedIn might cost you a great business opportunity in the future. Mass following on Twitter will get your account suspended, and over all you just might lose sight of your true personality about the time when you lose the respect of the Social Media Community.
If you really want to learn the best way to increase your Klout Score, I recommend this blog post from Aaron Lee.
The Tao of Twitter is great guide on how to succeed and become influentual on Twitter. The book is written by one of the most respected leaders in Social Media, Mark W. Schaefer
[...] Manipulating Influence Scores Makes No Sense at All | Social Media, Pointedly You influence someone when a person thinks or acts in a way that they otherwise wouldn’t, or do something that they otherwise wouldn’t. Source: jureklepic.com [...]