How to Improve Your Klout Score — and Why You Should Bother

You tweet, you post, you share, you comment and you like, but how much influence do you really have online? If you're one of the 400 million social media users with a Klout score, that question shouldn't be hard to answer.

Klout — a San Francisco-based company founded in 2009 — assesses online influence by using data from Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Instagram and several other social media platforms. Each user is assigned a Klout score between one and 100The higher your score, the more influence you're believed to have within your digital networks.

While Klout has steadily gained in popularity over the past several years, there are many who still question its methods. Detractors say the site's scores — which are based on complicated, well-guarded algorithms — are arbitrary and that, in the grand scheme of social media, Klout shouldn't count for much at all. Read more...