Social Media Reputation — Klout and the Power of Social Scoring — 14 Day Strategy

Welcome to the club.

In a recent study, Pew Research found that 47% of us egosurf, or vanity Google ourselves! Social media domination is our next goal, right? The Doctor-Evil side to all of us has to come out sometime.

What would you like out of social media?

• You want three million YouTube views?
• You’d like to have 50,000 followers on Twitter?
• How about 100,000 likes on Facebook?

Unfortunately, you can’t buy your way into social media royalty (I’ll rant about that another time, and talk about the massive damage this will do to your profiles).

So what’s the trick?

Start out by picturing all of your followers, messages, likes, +1s and social media channels as water molecules and waves in an ocean that stretches out toward the horizon. Blue and sparkling, or dark, choppy and menacing, it doesn’t matter. The idea is that all of these networks come together as one solid (wait — liquid, in this case!) community for you. Yes, there are separate water molecules and waves, but they make up one blue ocean.

More than any other tool out there, Klout will help you to see the ocean, not the waves.

Your KLOUT Score (The Big, Blue Ocean)

As you are picturing the crystal blue Caribbean waters of your social media presence, you might start to see the water level falling, realizing that your audience isn’t as big as you imagined. Or, maybe you haven’t started audience building at all, and the ocean looks like a big, empty desert with a little puddle in the center (representing your Facebook friends and family). Or maybe you have a great ocean out in front of you, but you can’t see it because it is masked by the “fog” of not being able to see what you already have.

There is a simple and step-by-step way to build your big, blue ocean of community, no matter what the network.

• If you have 17 followers on Instagram, that’s 17 more than none.
• If you have 500 followers on Twitter, don’t think that’s a small number.
• If you have 42 people on your newsletter list, that’s a nice size crowd.

If you add up all of your social networks, your email lists, and your in-person community, you will start to see that there is some water out there. Don’t be worried about the “waves” — they will ebb and flow — look at the overall “ocean” using your KLOUT Score.

14 Days to Building KLOUT

I didn’t start out at an 80+ Klout score. I started out far below the average score of 40, despite activity on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. However, I’ve been steady at the score of 85 for a long time now, and this is how your score can start down the road towards influence within two short weeks!

1. Start with Twitter
   Create your Klout account via www.Klout.com, by signing in with your Twitter account. It will automatically take your handle as your URL. (Mine is www.Klout.com/drkent, because my Twitter handle is @drkent.)
2. Wait!
   This step might seem odd, and is VERY difficult for 99% of people! Wait for three days. I can tell you all about the secret sauce, but suffice to say, if you don’t wait, your numbers get all mixed up in the Klout algorithm. So, in this case, good things come to those who wait.
3. Add Facebook Profile
   Add your Facebook profile after waiting for three days. Notice that I wrote profile, NOT page. Don’t connect your Facebook page to Klout unless you already have a Wikipedia page about you. (In that case, get in touch and I can give you some tips.) Otherwise, connect your profile!
4. Wait Again!
   Again, have the intention and patience it takes to wait another three days! Don’t add anything else to Klout until three days have passed, and Klout has had a chance to process your Facebook profile.
5. Add Instagram
   Even if you are just starting out on Instagram, go ahead and add it to your Klout after this next waiting period. Start posting a few photos a day, add some friends, and you will see a result in your Klout score that might surprise you.
6. Wait, Wait, Wait!
   I know, by this point, you are sick of waiting! But wait another three days before the next step.
7. Add Google+
   Add your Google+ profile (not page) to Klout after the waiting period. If you aren’t active on Google+ yet, don’t worry (but get active, because there is a great, large audience here — my own following has viewed my posts 50 million times).
8. What Now?
   Go ahead and wait three days before adding any other networks, but add LinkedIn and 4Square at your own risk (they each pull data infrequently, and it’s very hard to have high scores on these networks), and I recommend not to add any of the others, because they have little or no impact. Next, look at the following three big tips, because this is what to look for when scanning the “big blue ocean” of Klout over the coming days and weeks.

Three Tips to Focus on
(Hint, it’s all about the algorithm!)

1. Build Up Your Accounts
   It is a very bad idea to buy fake followers, likes, or use any other subterfuge! Instead, look at each follower and like as if that person is in a room with you.
2. If you have 300 Facebook connections on your profile, picture 300 people in the room with you. If you have 1,000 connections on Twitter, picture 1,000 people in a very large room with you. You aren’t on stage, so you can’t communicate with all of them all the time, but you are building community one connection at a time.
3. Engagement!
   If you are engaged to be married, congratulations! You are planning something very great in your near future. Engagement online is just as exciting.
4. Engagement is the key to everything in social media, and it’s the key to Klout. If people (and especially people of influence) engage with your posts, that is what will increase your score. If 5 people actually comment on a post, it sometimes feels like a miracle, because so often we write or publish material, and no one sees it or reads it, or if they do, they don’t comment on it!
5. If you get 50,000 fake followers from some online service, that won’t increase your engagement, and your Klout score won’t have a long-term increase as a result. There are many tricks to building engagement, but this is something you can start to build one brick at a time, and 18 months from now (if you are doing all of this on your own), you will see huge results of your efforts.
6. See the Ocean, Not the Waves
   So, you might not hit a 99 Klout score anytime soon. That’s only for very elite celebrities and news outlets. But you could get into the 60s, 70s, and 80s in Klout if you work hard, and engage people who know the ins and outs of social media.

The goal is not the Klout score, but the social media interactions, and the real, engaged audience that you will build as a result of seeing the ocean, not the waves.