What is an
influencer, and how do you measure the level of
influence?
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Identifying Influencers
So what is an
influencer? I define it as someone that can drive action in others. The simplest example is a celebrity testimonial. If Brad Pitt endorses a new product, it's likely more people are going to buy it than if I endorsed it (guys want to be like him and girls want to be with him. Shaft. John Shaft.).
This is a good read on
How To Get An Influencer's Attention, and also shows you who a few of the current
influencers on the internet are.
We've determined identifying celebrities as
influencers is easy, but what about the typical folks in your peer group, at your office, or on social media? How do you identify the
influencers there?
For example, if you own a website (e.g., blog, e-Commerce, services, etc) and send out a promotional link to your site via email, Facebook, or Twitter, how do you identify specific individuals who visit? Or, imagine one of your customers, brand ambassadors, super fans, or advocates talks about your brand and recommends it to others by sharing it via the same mediums, how do you identify these important people?
Google Analytics is worthless, as are social sentiment trackers. While URL shorteners like bit.ly show you who is talking about your brand, it doesn't order or rank these people, nor do they show the inter-connectedness of these
influencers to other
influencers or to other folks.
Measuring Influence
This is exactly the question that we are in the process of answering, and the functionality we're building. The technical terminology (and a remnant of Google's Search Algorithm) is the
Hub & Authority or HITs Algorithm of social networks.
We are combining our own version of this connecting and ranking algorithm, URL shorteners, social scraping, and social sharing to provide the most comprehensive measurement of your brand's
influencers.
You can then use this information for targeted marketing and selling, online advertising (PPC campaigns), and even to measure Social Media ROI.
If you'd like to stay up-to-date and get on the free trial, beta testing list, feel free to sign up at
Evolyte Analytics.
Finally, we're building this to provide the most value to you as users, so ANY and ALL feedback is welcome. What questions are you struggling to answer about how to leverage your current customers and promote further awareness of your brand?
You should follow @seanMeverett on Twitter here.