Okay, so your brand has 7 to 8,000 Twitter followers and 3,000+ fans on Facebook. That doesn’t mean your social media marketing efforts are paying off since as the saying goes, “It’s quality, not quantity that counts.”
Engaging with online influencers allows an opportunity to find someone who can share news about your blog and promote your events with a larger audience than ever. These are people who have the eyes and ears of niche online audiences. Their loyal audiences listen to what they say and share their content.
So how can you locate an online influencer? Finding your key influencers and ranking your own influence online isn’t as difficult as you may think. With the right website and online influencer tools, you’ll be able to track them down. Several are listed below to get you started.
Klout: Its purpose is to measure an individual’s influence through observing content these individuals create online (online content ranges everywhere from a tweet to a Facebook post, and a LinkedIn status update to a video on YouTube) Specifically, Klout measures the amount of influence a person has on others, whom a person influences, and the topics that person is considered influential on.
Keep in mind though, the Klout scoring algorithm has been tweaked in an attempt to keep people from artificially inflating their Klout scores; however, it’s still far from a perfect scoring system. Use Klout scores as a guide, not as fact.
TweetLevel: Believed to be as highly effective tool for measuring and ranking influence on Twitter, though it is still in Beta. TweetLevel’s algorithm is comprised of a variety of variables (variables are then combined to create an overall Twitter score.):
> Following: the amount of people you follow.
> Followers: the amount of people following you.
> Updates: how frequently you post on your Twitter page.
> Name Pointing: numbers of people use the “@YourTwitterName” to refer to you.
> Retweets: numbers of people have retweeted your post.
> Twinfluence Rank: Separate from TweetLevel and uses APIs for measuring influence.
> Twitter Grader: Adds additional input into TweetLevel’s indexing of your Twitter account.
> Involvement Index: A score that is calculated to illustrate how you interact among your Twitter community.
> Velocity Index: Keeps track of your participation on Twitter to ensure that you’re active.
ProSkore: Uses a combination of online activities via social sites like Twitter and Facebook along with activities and recommendations received within the ProSkore community to rank professionals in terms of online influence.
PeerIndex: Similar to Klout, PeerIndex focuses primarily on social activities via Twitter, Facebook, and so on to calculate individual PeerIndex scores. You can enter specific Twitter profile addresses to determine the PeerIndex score for yourself or another person. Once you create your own PeerIndex account to manage your profile, you can search PeerIndex to find influencers in specific topic areas.
