If you haven’t heard of Klout it is a website that ranks a person’s social media influence by using a scale of 1 to 100. The higher your number the higher you rank with influence when it comes to using social sites.

Klout takes information from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Foursquare and Instagram and assigns you a number. All Twitter users are automatically assigned a score and you can improve this score by creating a specific Klout account.

The goal or mission of Klout is to help people maximize their social media influence. Once you have created your account you can also link your YouTube, Blogger and other social media accounts to it. Currently these accounts do not have as much of an influence as the first ones that we mentioned.

When you post to your social sites the more interactivity that you have in your posts the more your Klout score will increase. Even getting your name mentioned or tagged helps increase your Klout score.

While you may be great at attracting hundreds of fans and followers what really counts is when these friends comment, like, share and retweet your content. This is often an aspect that people overlook and concentrate instead on building a huge fan base. While all the fans in the world are great to have it really doesn’t mean a thing if no-one takes the time to even comment on what you have to say.

If you want to have an influence on the main social media sites you need to take the time to actually use these sites. Don’t create an account and then leave it sitting high and dry. When someone does come across your page and sees that you haven’t posted in months they will automatically think that your company is out of business.

In fact by adding new information to your social sites your Klout score will improve. Social media is all about how people react to you as a person and as a business. So it makes plain business sense to use social media actively. While it is great to talk about upcoming promotions and sales, don’t forget to share information from others that is related to what your business offers.

With the increase in popularity of sites such as Klout it seems that who you are online is more important than who you are as a person or company. Your online presence is critical to your business success so don’t take using social sites too lightly.