Social Media Influence Measurement – Your Brand’s New Best Friend

[ After learning about measuring your social media influence,
DOWNLOAD our FREE Tip Sheet, “5 Tips for Increasing Your Klout Score,”
for actionable tips you can put to work today. ]

Looking to gauge the worth of a user’s tweet promoting your company?

Wondering how detrimental that Facebook post was that bashed your company’s customer service?

Trying to figure out who the top players are in your industry and relevant communities?

Well, you’re in luck. There are people keeping track of just that.

Allow me to introduce you, if you haven’t been already, to the new, highly controversial world of social influence measurement, where marketers, brands, and individuals are scored, ranked, and judged by what they do online. It’s a world full of excitement, skepticism, and hope… and it’s a world where companies like Klout, PeerIndex, and Kred are all competing against one another to add legitimate scalability and measurement to the highly ambiguous world of social media platforms.

To my Internet nerds out there, think Google’s ranking algorithm
on website relevance and authority.

To my college football fans out there, think the BCS ranking system.

To my parents out there, think credit scores.

Klout, PeerIndex, and Kred, more than any other companies in the space, have each developed unique proprietary rating systems, known as influencer scores, that work to measure the influence and authority of people and companies’ overall presences across social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Below you will find a brief breakdown of these companies, and why it’s relevant to your business.

Social Influence Measurement Platforms

Klout: Company Overview

Klout is currently known as the king of social influence.

Founded in 2007, Klout has developed ratings, known as “Klout Scores,” that have fast become the industry standard of social influencer ratings, and are being utilized by companies all over the world.

According to the company, “Klout has analyzed over 85 million people on major social networks, and is used by over 3000 brands and applications.”

How it Works

The Klout Score, ranging from 1 to 100, with higher scores representing a wider and stronger sphere of influence, measures influence based on your ability to drive action online. Your score is mathematically calculated via the combination of three scores, that are formed from 35 different variables:

  • True Reach – The size of your engaged audience
  • Amplification Probability – The likelihood that your content will be acted upon
  • Network Influence – The influence level of your engaged audience

Based on these factors, a person or brand is then given an overall score and categorized into a user type.

Klout even offers companies the ability to grant rewards, known as “perks,” to users with high scores in exchange for a social mention across their respective networks.

PeerIndex: Company Overview

PeerIndex doesn’t consider itself to be measuring social influence… but rather, social capital. According to the company:

“As the social web grows more and more prevalent in the world,
we’ve made it our priority to give individuals the right to
own their data and the social capital that comes from it.”

The company likes to differ itself from others by focusing on their ability to help you discover the authorities and opinion formers on a given topic.

How it Works

Their rating metric, known as a “PeerIndex Score,” scores you on the impact of your online activities, and the extent to which you have built up online reputation. Similar to Klout Scores, these scores are also scored from 1-100 and are based on three main variables:

  • Authority – How much others rely on your recommendations and opinions on various topics.
  • Audience – This variable scores the number of people who are impacted by your actions and are receptive to what you are broadcasting online.
  • Activity – Scores the level of activity relative to your communities of influence. Meaning if you are part of a community that has a large amount of activity, your level of activity and engagement will need to be higher to achieve the same relative score as in a topic that has less activity.

Kred: Company Overview

The Kred Influence Measurement is a score created by PeopleBrowsr to measure online communities and identify their most influential people. While it also factors in Facebook and Google+ to its algorithm, Kred mainly focuses on Twitter.

How it Works

Every Twitter account has a Kred score that is made up of two scores:

  • Influence Score: On a scale of 1-1000, this is the measure of your ability to inspire others. When examining Twitter, its main source of data, it is based on how often your tweets are retweeted, how many new followers you are gaining, and how many @mentions you accrue.
  • Outreach Score: Measured in levels, this score is an indication of how generous you are with retweeting and replying to others.

The Kred Score also figures out which 200 communities you belong to from the information on your Twitter profile.

What This Means for Your Brand

Gauging influence is critical to brands these days, plain and simple. It’s what truly drives word of mouth marketing (the most powerful and cost-effective marketing method available). Properly utilizing these influence scores can be a huge breakthrough for brand managers and businesses of all sizes. And With Klout recently unveiling brand pages and updated perks programs for its users, social influence measurement has never been more important for active brands and businesses across digital marketing platforms to take action.

Whether it is to attract a new client, convince a top influencer to engage with your brand, or figure out what communities you can claim influence to, it is necessary in today’s world for brands and companies to monitor and raise their social influence score.

To help you do just that, download our FREE Tip Sheet, 5 Tips for Increasing Your Klout Score, for practical advice you can get moving on now.

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What do you think about social media influence measurement platforms? Do you keep track of your scores? Let us know in the comments and connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn.

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To learn how MAGNET MEDIA can help with your social media/interactive marketing or video solutions, contact [email protected], 646-486-7109, or visit magnetmediafilms.com/what-we-do

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