FreshNetworks Blog

Social media monitoring tools identify influencers through a series of algorithms. Each tool uses different parameters and metrics to help identify influencers online.

The different tools look at influencer in different ways. Some can help you find an influential person or influential people; some help you find a site of influence.

Not dissimilar to Google, most of the tools don’t openly talk about the algorithms they use to calculate influence, but the majority  do take into a account a number of factors that aren’t just based around popularity.

Most of the tools we tested, including  Sysomos and  Alterian SM2, use metrics that are dictated by social media channel or platform  – eg, the tools use “number of views” to find YouTube influencers, or “number of followers” for Twitter. Rather interestingly, Attensity 360 uses information from another influence identifier,  Klout, to identify Twitter influencers.

Some tools, like Social Radar,  determine influence based on the number of posts about a topic and the number of backlinks (the number of incoming links for external sites that link to a web page or website).

Other tools, like Brandwatch, not only look at the number of inbound links but also take into account the age of the site, the PageRank and traffic to the site.

As well as using some of the more standard metrics seen throughout the tools, some of the tool providers have also developed their own terminology and measurements to help brands find influencers.

Scoutlabs use an algorithm to determine what they call “importance”. This includes their own editorial opinion about a comment or post, as well as its relevance to the topic that is being searched for.

Meanwhile, Attensity 360 uses “impact” to define influencers. Impact is a proprietary metric created by Attensity to provide “a more accurate estimate of the impact/influence of coverage related to a specific topic”. Attensity also offer users the chance to add “user defined metrics” to their search, allowing clients to customize metrics to the needs of their businesses.

It is this ability to sort and customize influencer data for individual business requirements that makes the tools valuable.  Synthesio, Radian6 and Sysomos are the most flexible when it comes to to drilling down into information about influence as users can sort and interact with the data using a variety of metrics.

As the tools all identify influencers and then segment data in different ways, it is important to carry out your own research into the tools before you use them. Research the tools before investing time and money in using them. Talk to the tool providers about your objectives so that you can really find the right fit for your brand and your social media strategy.

The final version of our social media influencers report 2010 will include detailed information about how each tool identifies influencers.

The report will be released online on 3rd December following on from the launch of the report at our breakfast seminar on 2nd December. You can sign up for the event by clicking on the button below:

You can register for the event by clicking on the button below:

It’s all very well knowing what an influencer is; the real value only comes when you can identify them for your brand or business.

Here’s our four step guide to helping you find social media influencers:

1) Set clear goals

The most important step to finding influencers is to have clear goals for why you want to engage with them, and what you want to achieve. Take a step back and really think about this.

Do you want to increase visits to your website or ecommerce site? Or would you prefer your influencers to spread word-of-mouth about a new product you have launched?

Do you want to increase conversion? Or would you rather influence consideration/decision making?

Influencers can play a part in several different points of  interaction with your brand, so it’s important that your goals align with your overall social media strategy.

Whatever you decide, it’s important that you develop a two-way relationship with your influencers; it’s not just about transmitting your own brand messages.

2) Listen to your target audience

Once you have your goals in place, listen to your target audience.

For those brands who are already using social media monitoring, you may already have the insights that will help you find the right influencers for your business.

For those companies that are not monitoring social media: get going NOW.

Unless you know what your audience are saying about your business or market, where they are saying it, where they go to find information, and whose message resonates with them, you will not be able to identify the most appropriate influencers to reach your target audience.

3) Choose your tools carefully

There are an abundance of social media monitoring tools on the market: both free and paid-for. Do your research into the tools – our social media monitoring tools report may help with this.

The tools vary quite considerably and there are many nuances involved in selecting a tool. So when you decide which one is best suited to your goals, keep in mind who your audience is, as well as how and where they communicate in social media (we’ll be covering how the different tools perform in a later blog posts, as well as our final influencers report which will launch on 3rd December).

4) Be realistic about time and resource

Think about what resources you can dedicate to the task of identifying  influencers – don’t underestimate the manpower involved.

While social media monitoring tools certainly reduce the manual work involved, you’ll still need someone who understands your social media strategy and can choose the most appropriate influencers from the results returned by the tool.

Moreover, and perhaps most importantly, that person you choose will also need to know the right way to engage with them online.

Our next blog posts will look at influencer scores.

To find out more about social media influencers look out for our detailed social media influencers report 2010 which tests nine of the leading social media monitoring tools to assess how effective they are at identifying influencers. The full version of the report will then be released via our blog following an exclusive launch at our breakfast seminar on Thursday 2nd December.

You can register for the event by clicking on the button below:

Our readers can also get 10% discount on the ticket price for Monitoring Social Media 2010, taking place in London on 22^nd November – please use the discount code “fresh”.

Twitter knows the influence of all of its users. But it isn’t yet telling us. This was what we discovered this week at the Web 2.0 summit in San Francisco. When asked a question about how Twitter is able to recommend users so accurately, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams said that they derive the suggestions from a reputation score they calculate for every user. A reputation score Twitter isn’t disclosing yet, but that could be a great tool for finding social media influencers.

This kind of tool would be valuable to everybody who is trying to analyse, understand and work with people on Twitter that they perceive to be more influential than others. From brands who want to know how influential somebody is through to people wanting to work out who to follow and why. Getting real data and statistics direct from Twitter would be very useful – real data on mentions and discussions that go back further than the current search and third-party tools; real data on links and click-thrus and real data on how users use the service.

This is data that Twitter has, it logs everything that everybody does. And data that third-party providers are currently trying to access or just to model and estimate to provide services from Klout (which claims to measure influence) to the search and social media monitoring tools that track mentions and conversations. As Twitter grows and develops they should release more applications and tools that use this – providing us with official views on influence and on the other analysis people are looking for from Twitter. The response from Williams this week suggests that they are using such data internally, and that they could develop external tools to expose this data as a service to others. Although he admits that any such tools would “need to evolve quite a bit more”.

There is a real need for more data from Twitter. As a tool it is changing the way we interact with content, and with others, and often existing analytics and measurement tools just don’t do the job. Take a simple measure such as page views or clicks through from links in Tweets. Many of us grappling with data such as this are uncertain as to whether links, or for that matter photos, that are viewed in a Twitter App (such as Twitter for iPhone), or indeed on the new Twitter website, are recorded in a consistent way along side views of that link through a browser on the original site. The data is not clear and the discussions are confusing.

Twitter has a lot of data as every action we do is recorded. Using data like this can be comlicated but the signs are that they are developing tools that help them internally. It would be great to see these developed and then used externally so we can all be confident that we are getting the most accurate, and the most insightful, analytics we can.

As a follow on to the success of our social media monitoring tools review earlier this year,  we’ve been carrying out detailed tests on nine of the leading social media monitoring tools in order to assess how effective they are at identifying influencers.

We’ve tested Attensity 360, Brandwatch, Radian6, Alterian, Scoutlabs, Sysomos, Synthesio, PeerIndex and Social Radar in detail, as well as looking at Visible Technologies‘ tools.

Over the next few weeks we’ll be blogging about some of the key insights from the report  including:

• What is an influencer?
• How to identify influencers
• Influencer scores
• Tool performance comparisons
• Targeting influencers online

The full version of the report will then be released via our blog following on from an exclusive launch at our breakfast seminar on Thursday 2nd December.

You can register for the event by clicking on the button below:

Guest blog post by Luke Brynley-Jones who is hosting Monitoring Social Media 2010 in London on 22nd November.

I’ve written about social media influence a few times in the past year – including a somewhat plaintive post asking whether flawed influence measurement is better than no influence measurement.

I’ve also hosted a Bootcamp where I questioned the “influence” calculations of certain leading free monitoring tools. Then earlier this month, I participated in a discussion in which the overwhelming mood was that influence could and should be measured – if only because it’s so  important to marketers that we simply have to try to calculate it.

While I’m not keen on bogus science or flawed assumptions- having read Peter Shankman’s “Road-to-Damascus” post that describes the moment that he realised how valuable it would be to know how influential your customers were the moment they walked in the door – I have to say, I’m getting there. However, the question of how influencer rating is calculated – whether it’s based on Twitter re-tweets, inbound links, number of comments on a blog or shoe-size – is simply going to run and run. But all that really matters is that it works for your business.

If your customers are online and into social media, an influence analysis service like Klout, which uses freely available data, might work fine. In his post, Peter describes how businesses can use Klout to get a short, snappy rating against which they can decide how much “engagement” time a customer really deserves – or whether they should simply be sent packing. 

Most of us haven’t yet knowingly suffered as a result of a company knowing our “influence” rating (in other words, our commercial value) – but imagine when every shop, garage, restaurant and bar knows exactly how influential (or not) you really are. I predict that’s a 2-3 years away yet…but can you imagine the situation:

“Do you know who I am?!”
“Well, Sir. Actually, yes – we do”.

Luke has kindly offered our readers 10% discount on the ticket price for Monitoring Social Media 2010, taking place in London on 22^nd November – please use the discount code “fresh”. Charlie (Osmond) will  be speaking about How to Identify Influencers, including details from our up and coming report on using tools to identify social media influencers.