Klout recently changed its algorithm for calculating scores and scores have since started dropping by 10 points or more across the board.  According to Klout, the new algorithm makes scores more accurate and easy to track changes in scores to specific days.

While previous Klout scores were heavily influenced by the number of posts and followers, now scores include data about WHO is retweeting, mentioning, and reading your tweets every day.  Your score is now dependent on how influential your followers and their friends are on Twitter.  If your friend @JohnDoe retweets your post and he has 50 followers, it will not count as much as if your friend @QueenBee with 500k followers retweets your post.

New Metrics:

1)      You can see how your score has changed by day, week, and month.  On the opening screen, you immediately see how your score has changed over these three time periods and which new users you are influencing.

2)      The three components of Klout, True Reach, Amplification, and Your Network are listed individually so you can see which days your score rose and fell to examine which types of activity works the best (posts, retweets, chats, etc.)

Given these changes, here’s what you can do to increase your Klout score:

• Engage more with influential users.  Retweet and mention users you are following that have a ton of friends and that tweet regularly.
• Post open ended questions.  Engaging conversations are great for raising your score.  The more people who reply, the more exposure you get across their networks too.
• Befriend the popular kids.  While Twitter might not seem like a popularity contest, it helps to be followed by people who have a lot of followers.  With Klout’s new algorithm, the quality of your followers is much more important.
• Track your influence on other networks.  Klout now allows you to connect with Facebook, Google Plus, LinkedIn, FourSquare, YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr, Blogger, WordPress, Last.fm and Flickr.  Add as many of these accounts as you can and your score should increase.  Unfortunately Facebook is limited to profile pages and does not connect with Fan Pages yet.
• Don’t take Klout too seriously.  Even if your score dropped 15 points don’t stop posting funny photos, random observations, and interesting articles.  Twitter is about having fun sharing content and opinions.  It’s an open conversation!

Klout guards the exact details of their scoring system so we may never fully understand how the score is calculated.  Try out some of the steps above to increase your score but don’t lose hope if you never reach that 100 point score–only Justin Bieber has ever achieved a 100!