Hack Your Klout Score, And Get Free Stuff

June 4, 2012 - Last Modified: June 4, 2012 by Lavall Chichester 2,859

I just read a post on Mashable.com about how Klout does not really measure influence. I’m now more into local internet marketing and gave up caring about my Klout score a while ago, when I learned how easily the system could be gamed.

Once I figured out how to game it I lost interest and let my Klout Score drop.

If I was evil I would have a closet full of Klout perks, but that’s not my style. So I’m not writing this to encourage you to start gaming Klout so you can get free stuff. I just knew the title would be too irresistible and you would just have to take a peek at this article. I also know that you are reading this article not cause you wanted to learn how to hack your Klout Score to get free stuff, but because you were shocked that your Klout Score could be easily manipulated.

Let’s start at the beginning…

I wrote about how to raise your Klout Score a while back and understanding this is the basis for hacking your Klout Score. All of this is pretty easy to set up once you have the right tools but it can be time consuming especially if you get addicted and slip to the dark side.

How The Klout Score Works

Below is how Klout measures influence and gives you your Klout Score

Here are a few other things that determine your Klout Score:

Follower to follow Twitter ratio
How many people with high Klout scores follow you
How many people with high Klout scores retweet and at mention you

Now That You Know Here Is How You Use It To Hack Your Klout Score

Create 5 Twitter Accounts

I had made a bunch of Twitter accounts for testing things a while back and so when I learned about Klout I was curious to see if using them to retweet, @mention me and spread my Tweets would raise my Klout Score and guess what, it did.

So make a few Twitter accounts and use TweetAdder.com to manage them. Load the accounts up with Tweets and set them to Tweet about four Tweets a day. Then set them up to retweet and @message you every 3 or 4 Tweets (depending on how often you Tweet). This is all I did and it shot my Klout Score up to about 59 opening me up to receive all sorts of cool perks.

There Is More

If you really wanted to go to town there is more that you can do because you can use these Twitter accounts to sign up to many other social media sites and then engage with yourself there. This my friends is deep on the dark side and once you go here I believe subconsciously you unlock a spam badge and this is the beginning of the end for you.

Plus +K

You can even sign these new Twitter accounts up to Klout and give yourself +K for whatever you want to be an influential in. The fact that you can even give people +K is pretty silly to me. This is like giving you the cheat code to the Klout game. We need to simply turn to the Klout Bomb to see how great +K is at determining true influence on a topic.

A perfect example of this is Rick Santorum who is now according to Klout’s +Ks is the foremost expert on “homophobia” and a slew of other topics. Why? People who disagree with his views decided to Klout Bomb him and give him +Ks for a bunch of strange topics.

He might be an expert on “diapers” but who knows, the point is that you can Klout bomb yourself as well. If you built 5 Twitter accounts, it is easy to build 30, once you have a system to organize it. It is a lot of work, but I’ve seen people apply themselves to less nobler causes.

Klout Is Also Always Evolving

Klout’s website say’s:

“The social web is changing every day and the Klout Score will continue to evolve and improve. The best strategy for obtaining a high Klout Score is to simply create great content that your network wants to share and engage with.”

Klout is always upgrading their algorithms to prevent you from gaming the system. My point is that this is very important and I hope this post shows them their need to keep tweaking and upgrading constantly.

I know the team at Klout is working really hard because trying to measure social influence is not an easy task. But they owe it to their advertisers, users, and people who are using them for social media marketing to figure this out.

What I really love about social media is that it gives us the unique ability to actually help companies tweak their products. This helps you play an active role in the evolution of products like Klout that are exploring new territory in social media.

Please only use this information for good and not for a good time at Klout’s expense.

{ 17 Responses }

Samuel Pustea says:

I still haven't worked on Klout yet :)
- Lavall Chichester says:
  
  Hi Samuel, I would not waste your time. It was fun to experiment but you could be way more productive with your time. Thanks for commenting. Spread Love, Lavall
sam says:

I also did a couple of Klout experiments. In the end I figured I was focusing so much on increasing my score that I forgot about what really counts. For me that is networking, connecting with other people interested in the same topics. I must admit, I still check my Klout Score on a regularly basis, but I try to focus more on the real connections in Social Media.
- Lavall Chichester says:
  
  Sam, I could not agree with you more. Relationships are everything not just retweets. It does irk me a little when my Klout score drops. lol. Vanity I tell you, some times you can't shake that ego. Thanks for the great comment. Spread Love, Lavall
Kodjo says:

If you open up new twitter accounts, wouldn't your Klout in those accounts be very low? Thereby trying to use those account to influence your main account's Klout isn't vain in itself? Just wondering
Astro Gremlin says:

This is such a relief, Lavall. My Klout score is lousy and now I know how to fix it. But who has that kind of time? If I did create a bunch of Twitter accounts, I would use them to +K my blogger buddies, because that's the only reason I use Klout. Could not care LESS about my score. Klout is just a fun way to let people know I think they're cool.
- Lavall Chichester says:
  
  Astro, This is not the real way to fix your Klout Score. This is just a way to trick the system that I stumbled upon. It is not worth the time and effort to do it. The real way to raise your Klout Score would be to engage your blogger buddies and Tweet things that they will like and retweet.
Jack says:

This no longer works. I tried it and my score is still just stuck at 10 despite all the stuff I've done to try and change it.
Jack Sander says:

Hi Lavall, I didn't know that it's so easy to improve the Klout score. Taking into account the implications of having a better score, I really think that they should do something about it and repair this issue.
- Lavall Chichester says:
  
  Jack, I could not agree more with you. That's why I wrote the post. Hopefully they are working on this.
DiTesco says:

A very timely post. So timely that I gave this one a link luv on my latest article :) OK, got that tiny promotion out of the way, lol. Seriously, I think that sites that "apparently" measure your influence can be somewhat gamed. I just did not know how efficient can it actually be and if it will work at all. Pretty interesting how Klout can be easily gamed. So much for that.
- Lavall Chichester says:
  
  Measuring online influence correctly is tough. I think most systems can be gamed if you put your mind to figuring it. We had that issue at PHILO which had a leader board. It had nothing to do with online influence but people tried to game the system to get points and be on top of the leader board. So this will always be a problem and fixing it is not easy especially for Klout.
Divas Chitkara says:

i dont think it really works .......but will try this soon .........and get the score
- Lavall Chichester says:
  
  Divas, Just worry about Tweeting great content to your followers, talking with them regarding things you are an expert in and being a good neighbor on Twitter. That will raise your Klout score. Gaming the system was just a test that I did to see if I could do it. It is not worth the time and effort. I just wanted to point out the flaws that I found in Klout.
Jeremy says:

Good thing Klout score doesn't really mean anything since it's so easy to manipulate. I really don't think they are too concerned if people do game the system since it ultimately gets those people back to the site regularly, lowering Klout's alexa ranking and increasing their traffic.
- Lavall Chichester says:
  
  They have to be concerned if people game the system because then they can't claim to truly measure online influence. Their advertisers pay to connect with people who influence others. They pay more or less based on how high your Klout Score is. If I can easily raise my Klout score with tricks but have no real online influence then the advertisers are not getting what they team up with Klout for and Klout has no real value. So they really should pay attention to this.
Lavall Chichester says:

Note:( +K does not affect your Klout Score and Tweet Adder just took a hit from Twitter and might not work any more but you can use Hootsuite.com.)

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