This week, the social media world is a buzzing about a metric known as Klout:
Klout Score measures influence based on your ability to drive action. Every time you create content or engage you influence others. The Klout Score uses data from social networks in order to measure:
- True Reach: How many people you influence
- Amplification: How much you influence them
- Network Impact: The influence of your network
In a nutshell, Klout is the standard for measuring social media influence. For many folks involved in marketing, PR and journalism this is an important metric. Your Klout score is how influential you are across the 12 different social networks that Klout measures:
- Google +
- Foursquare
- YouTube
- Tumblr
- Blogger
- WordPress
- Last.fm
- Flickr
Linking most of those networks to your profile is fairly straight forward… click the network icon on Klout, sign into the network and link your account. However, in order to capture metrics from your blog, you will have to link your blog to a WordPress.com account. Below I will outline how to do this.
How to link your self-hosted blog to WordPress.com:
- Log into your wordpress powered, self-hosted blog’s admin panel and scroll to: Plugins => Add new and search for the term “JetPack”.
- Install the JetPack plugin, then click on “Connect to WordPress.com”:
- You will then be prompted to either enter your WordPress.com account info, or create a new account:
Connect an existing account, or create a new one
- Visit your Klout profile, find the WordPress icon, click on it and connect your wordpress.com account to Klout.
Now your blog, and your WordPress.com account are linked to Klout. As to how Klout evaluates this and which metrics for your influence remains to be seen.
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Twitter: bcmoney
says:
This was incredibly helpful, thanks!!!
The only step which was missing for those who had both a free hosted WordPress blog and their own self-hosted blog that they are linking is that you need to go to the WordPress hosted dashboard and go to the Settings area:
http://wordpress.com/#!/my-settings/
Then make your self-hosted account the “primary blog”. That way it can be picked up in the drop-down list when integrating with Klout.
bcmoney recently posted..Timeless – A National Parks Odyssey
Thanks! I’ll add that to the post with a credit to you – many people had emailed me & told me this didn’t work for them, that may be the reason why.
I think that Klout only supports the hosted wordpress blogs for now. The communication at their website does not indicate a work in progress to support self hosted blogs… Too bad though since I think that people taking the trouble to self-host their blogs are generally more into blogging and this is not reflected in their online stats as it should…
Agreed! And Klout admits that linking your wordpress.com blog doesn’t impact your klout score either. Only Twitter, Facebook and Google+ are used to determine Klout score, all the other social profiles are just linked, not for score.
This doesn’t work for me, either. I already had Jetpack installed and connected to WordPress.com, but Klout didn’t show my self-hosted blog – only the WordPress.com hosted one. I tried disconnecting and reconnecting, and even tried setting up a new WordPress.com account and linking Jetpack to that. With that latest attempt, Klout simply shows a drop-down listbox with nothing in it. Perhaps this was a feature they started with, but it doesn’t work anymore.
I’m also having trouble finding connection to Klout with a self-hosted WordPress. What’s described in your post is for WordPress.com connection.
Jamie Maing recently posted..Wild Frog
Hi Jamie,
Yes, you’re correct – that’s why you need to link your blog to WordPress.com via the JetPack plugin first, then you can link it to Klout. That said, Klout does not currently wordpress in their algorithm for determining influence, so at this time all you are able to do is link your wordpress ID to your Klout account.
Hi, I’m having exactly the same problem as Christi,
I’ve got many blogs with thousands of users but can’t get it to link with klout 
That solution does not seem to work for me. When I try to connect to WordPress.com, my blog is not listed in the drop down. As a matter of fact, nothing is listed in the drop down and I have several sites using JetPack. From what I understand, Klout is not supporting self-hosted WordPress websites. Sad…
Have you noticed a difference in your Klout score since connecting your blog?
Twitter: TaraBurner
says:
normally it’d have backed up the widgets and it’d have been fine but something MAJOR went wrong and lost all info in widgets…so had to try to get it all back by memory! not fun!!!! and well, least its done and fixed…was having major ‘cannot connect to database’ errors on site last night and companies I review for were emailing and it wasn’t pretty! lol
but its done and i’m back!
Tara Burner recently posted..Ways exercise helps relieve stress
Twitter: TaraBurner
says:
well after a hecka night of upgrading, losing widgets, etc. I got upgraded, installed jetpack and apparently have my blog connected to WP and in Klout now… now lets see what happens! LOL
Tara Burner recently posted..Sneak Peek into the last week of October
Eeeeek! Sounds like a rough night! I hate losing widgets, I’ve had that happen to me before and I’m not sure which table wordpress stores that data in. Glad to hear you got it all sorted out!
Twitter: TaraBurner
says:
Thanks, just emailed this info to my techie girl since ummmm I dont even know my WP log in info…. lol
Tara Burner recently posted..Sneak Peek into the last week of October
Twitter: RunningRachel
says:
Thank you! I am trying it out as I type! Curious to see how this will effect my klout score (help or not).
Rachel recently posted..Shawn is my FITspiration
I have no idea how Klout uses the data, or if it helps or not. Let me know if you see an increase.
Thanks for sharing. I have Jetpack but hadn’t connected with Klout.
Denise recently posted..What Scared Me As A Kid
No problem – let me know if it has an impact on your Klout score or not.