Tools to Help Measure Social Media Influence

Social media is a new and vibrant space which many people are often skeptical about. And this is natural because even people in the industry have a lot of questions. Some of these Frequently Asked Questions include:

• Is it actually working? How do we know?
• What kind of people should we be reaching out to?
• What is the basis of social influence?  Do we have any social influence?
• Are there tools to figure this stuff out?

Yes, there are tools and none of them are perfect. But you still have several options to help you calculate your social influence and help you understand what’s effective and what isn’t. Some of them even recommend and advice you on how to improve your strategy.

Klout

Love it or hate it but you cannot ignore it. Klout is one of better known tools in the market. Its mission, it says, is to identify those who have influence in the web space, calculate how much influence they weild and the topics over which their influence is extended. To accomplish this, Klout tracks activity on different social networks including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, FourSquare, YouTube, Blogger, Tumblr, etc.

To get a snapshot of your own or anyone’s Klout influence, just sync your accounts or enter in a username. Once done, Klout will display a graphical representation of the influence and cull out key data points, including:

• Klout Score: Measures your overall online influencer.
• Network Influence: The level of influence of your audience.
• Amplification Probability: The probability that your web content will be acted upon.

An area where Klout stands out is in its ability to compare not only scores of the Influencer but to unearth the profiles of the Influencers and give a picture of their activity. For example, Anita Campbell is a Curator and we’re able to see how and even why that activity is different from the rest.

Klout is one of the better tools in the market to chart influence and how it ranks against their peers and to determine the topics over which this influence is extended.

Twylah

Twylah stands out as it adds context to your tweets and thereby creates a completely new experience around them. Along with telling you what you and others influence, it also shows you why you are influential. It does this by placing your ‘trending topics’ (topics you tweet most about) into topical buckets that are clickable.

One can click each bucket and see tweets from the said person about that particular bucket. For example, Dan Schwabel is influential about brands:

You’re able to see which tweets built this influence. Twylah, after a while, sends alerts to let you know the topics that your followers are reading most. This comes in real handy as you can target your content as you know what your circle is reading and wants to read. Other than being a great tool that displays your influence on various topics, Twylah is also a great way to promote your tweets.

Twenty Feet

TwentyFeet gives a graphical overview of the performance of your influence across social media platforms. It allows you to track one Twitter and one Facebook account for free. You need to pay for additional accounts.

TwentyFeet monitors your account and tracks certain key indicators such as Following Analysis, Reputation, Influence, Lists, and Conversations. You can change the time period and look the data quarterly, monthly or weekly. This service lets you track only your influence and nothing else. It sends alerts if there have been a significant movement in influence, be it positive or negative.

Peer Index

Peer Index is not as flamboyant as the other tools but it does a great job in helping you realize the topics you and others have influence over. An interesting feature is that selecting a topic bucket throws up a list of people who are influential about that same topic, their PeerIndex score, Twitter handle and other data. This makes it a great tool if you are looking for like minded people to reach out to and engage with.

Another great feature of PeerIndex is that it gives you a list of the top place from where you or others source content from. This is really great in helping you decide and select communities that are worth the time. It delivers good data for people looking to get an overview of peoples influence and the topics over which they extend this influence.

SproutSocial

SproutSocial is a comprehensive social media monitoring tool. This single dashboard is mainly aimed for people to manage multiple accounts. However it doubles up and does a decent job as a ranking tool. You track Mentions, New followers, Engagement Levels and Message Volume via a weekly scorecard along with data the links that generate the most number of clicks.

 If you want a tool only to measure and track influence then Sprout social is not recommended mainly because that’s not its primary use.

Do let us know about the tools you use to measure influence.