Web Business by Ken Burbary

3 Tips to Improve Your Online Influencer Analysis

Identifying influencers is an important part of social marketing, and becoming big business for some companies like Klout . Yet, influencer identification and analysis isn’t well understood, or easy to optimize. That’s because no two influence analysis efforts are the same. Like fingerprints or snowflakes, an influence analysis program is unique, specific to the goals and priorities of the organization executing it.

To date, automating influence analysis has relied heavily on quantitative measures (example: like followers/friends, RTs, mentions/replies). While these metrics can be valuable inputs into determining whether or not someone is influential, they aren’t worth much at all without their counterpart, qualitative metrics. If influence is a coin, then the 2 sides are quantitative and qualitative. Focusing purely on quantitative metrics tells you if someone is popular, not influential.

A recent and fitting example of this is the news of celebrity Charlie Sheen joining Twitter. Sheen amassed 1 million followers in approximately 24 hours. An impressive feat, no? Is he popular? Definitely. Is he influential? Well, according to Klout he is. Sheen currently has a Klout score of 88 (higher than most people, including industry thought leaders like Chris Brogan (81), Jason Falls (72), and Brian Clark a.k.a Copy Blogger (73). Does this mean Sheen is more influential than any of those 3? It depends on the topic.

Enter relative influence. Relevance brings the qualitative perspective necessary to complete the influence picture. Without it, you cannot be sure that you have an actionable list of influencers. The 3 individuals mentioned above are respected, trusted voices on topics such as marketing, social media and blogging. If you were to take a simple quantitative approach, and rely on Klout’s score, you could make the argument that Sheen is the more valuable influencer to focus on. Would you take his advice on any of those topics over Brogan, Falls, Clark? Absolutely not! Relative influence should be the focus on influencer analysis. You’re looking for individuals with deep, strong ties to the community on specific topics, not individuals with weak ties to many communities. Don’t confuse popularity with influence, they aren’t the same.

In addition to using automated tools to improve the effectiveness of your quantitative influencer analysis, here are some tips to gain a more robust qualitative view and gain a balanced perspective.

Finally, if you’re interested in a rich, in-depth perspective on influencer analysis, take the time to read this eBook, authored by @chuckhemann and @radian6. It will enlighten you on the finer points of influencer analysis, including specific methods and metrics to consider in yours.

Radian6_JAN2011_Book

What the F**K is a Tweetup?

Since I joined Twitter, I have particpated in and organized numerous Tweetups. As the size of the Twitter population has grown, I’ve been asked by countless numbers of people, what is a Tweetup?

So, I decided to put this little set of slides together to answer that question. Enjoy!

Five in the Morning

For those who aren’t regular readers of StickyFigure (if you’re not, you should be. Check it out), Steve Woodruff has been consistently churning out great discoveies with his Five in the Morning series. Five in the Morning is basically a blog post that highlights 5 of the most interesting and well written posts throughout the blogosphere.

Lately Steve has been inviting guests to add some new perspective and fresh content to the mix. When he approached me about being a guest author, I immediately said yes! So without any further ado, here is your daily dose of Five in the Morning:

Digital media continues to blur our online and offline lives. Spruce up your presentations and educate your colleagues with this fantastic list of 49 Amazing Social Media, Web 2.0 and Internet Stats, compiled by Adam Singer on the FutureBuzz blog.

Learn how to use a often overlooked feature of Twitter, “favorites”. Darren Rowse and Ari Herzog put together an excellent post on the Twitip blog that reveals how to use favorites, why you should use favorites, and illustrates how other people are using them.

It’s early, but one of the themes of 2009 seems to be “stop talking. start doing”. Shiv Singh, of Avenue A Razorfish, reminds brands of this and says Brands Must Do! Start doing by listening to consumers. It’s not done enough.

The ultimate do-it-yourselfer Marshall Kirkpatrick has outlined how to Build the Ultimate Social Media Cheat Sheet. Use it to get you up to speed on the social media activity in your market.

And finally, take these tips from The Difficult Art of Cold Pitching by Jon Burg, and apply them to avoid any mistakes when reaching out with a request to a community of people you have a weak relationship with. Chris Brogan even chimes in with his take.

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