Defining and Measuring Social Media Influence

Copyright © 2011 - Radian6

CHUCK HEMANN, LAUREN VARGAS and TERESA BASICH

Written by

COMMUNITY EBOOK / JANUARY 2011 / www.radian6.com 1 888 6radian

http://www.radian6.com/?utm_source=ebooks&utm_medium=pdf&utm_content=DefMeasureInfl

www.radian6.com 1 888 6RADIAN (1 888 672-3426) [email protected] Copyright © 2010 - Radian6

COMMUNITY EBOOK / JANUARY 2011DEFINING AND MEASURING INFLUENCE

CHAPTER 1:

DEFINING SOCIAL MEDIA INFLUENCE

In the business sector of social media, agencies, vendors, and successful enterprises rail en masse about the benefits of building relationships with brand “influencers” to gain a strong foothold on the social web. “Your influencers are your best brand representatives, “ we say. “Those people have the highest ability to impact the purchasing behavior of your greater brand community, “ we preach. And that’s all true.

But what, exactly, do we mean when we talk about social media influence? How can you, as a company, find the right group of people – large or small – to make that desired impact on your business? In this paper we’ll strive to clearly define influence as it pertains to the social web, identify why social influence matters to businesses, and identify some strong metrics and approaches for selecting and interacting with a group of brand influencers that make sense for your company.

What is Influence?

At the simplest level, influence is the ability to impact a person or thing in ways that inspire action. Influence is very much about cause and effect, and that truth applies across the board, whether we’re talking about online influence

or the influence we have in our day-to-day offline lives.

Brian Solis, principal of FutureWorks, a digital and social media communications agency based in the Silicon Valley, has defined influence as:

…The ability to cause desirable and measurable actions and outcomes.

That definition feels almost a bit calculating, doesn’t it? But when you really think about it, this is a fantastic definition of what influence encompasses. Whether the outcomes we want are inherently good or bad makes no difference – we want them, and to influence is to encourage the actions that drive our desired outcomes.

What is online influence?

On web-based social networks, influence is no different than the definition stated above, although there are nuances of online influence that organizations should consider as they strive to identify their “influencers” and create their own influence strategies.

• Influence moves much quicker through the social web than it does in the offline world. Why? Because of the immediate and vast exposure people and businesses can garner on the Internet.

• Stances and influencer status can change quickly because of a single person’s experience and accompanying online commentary. Influence is truly fluid; much like trust, for businesses at least, influence takes work to develop and can be easily lost.

• The outcomes of online influence can be easier to identify than offline influence because we can easily access a larger pool of reactions than we’d be able to offline.


mailto:community%40radian6.com?subject=

http://www.future-works.com/

http://www.briansolis.com/2010/09/exploring-and-defining-influence-a-new-study/

http://www.briansolis.com/2010/09/exploring-and-defining-influence-a-new-study/



The essence of influence is the same no matter where it’s employed or experienced. The reactions to that influence, though, and the gap between the cause and effect of an act of influence are the things that seem to be most subject to nuance.

Can online influence drive business?

The reason all this clarification is so important is that influence, when clearly understood and well applied, can be a great boon to businesses. Empowering your loyal customers and fans to share the experiences they’ve had with your brand(s) and products with their social networks is the foundation of word-of-mouth marketing. It also builds trust around your brand and bolsters your company reputation.

Influence is a two-way street, of course. There are companies out there also taking the stance of “influencee,” letting their customers and fans impact the direction of their products and services.

For example…

TurboTax’s Inner Circle community. The Inner Circle is a large community of TurboTax users who have been selected as product beta testers. These folks provide feedback on the product, rate and comment on new proposed features, and ultimately contribute to the annual improvement of the TurboTax software suite. At the end of each year, TurboTax incorporates 35 community-suggested features into its product to offer a consistently improved piece of software.

Intuit, parent company of TurboTax, recognized the potential behind incorporating attentive, engaged customers into the fold of their business model, and has done so successfully with its Inner Circle community.

Another example? Graco’s efforts to connect and become involved with the influential online parenting community. In an effort to develop a strong relationship with this community, Graco organized Graco Get-Together events in which they met key influential bloggers to learn about the community itself and slowly integrate their brand into the mix. They then launched the GracoBaby blog to enable two-way communication between the organization and community.

Although the Graco case study is a bit old, the fundamental pieces of it are still highly relevant to today’s influencer relations efforts. And we’ll talk about those fundamental pieces next.

So, what, exactly, makes up influence, and how can we use it?

Influence as a noun is made up of a few different aspects, and openly demonstrating these aspects on- and/or offline is key to making strong connections with the people you want to influence and, ultimately, impact.

• Trust – Trust is the foundation of influence. The only way people connect with each other is by trusting that they’ve been accepted and will be treated fairly. Of course, acceptance and fairness are relative, but we’re trying to break this into simple terms that we can all understand and use. Identify how your community establishes trust and acceptance and work from there.

• Authority – If you know what you’re saying and doing, people will listen and take heed. This isn’t about all expounding expertise, per se – although that’s a big part of it – it’s also about having and demonstrating strong beliefs that resonate within people and steer them in directions they want to go.


http://www.radian6.com/resources/library/an-inside-look-at-intuits-inner-circle-customer-community/?utm_source=ebooks&utm_medium=pdf&utm_content=DefMeasureInfl

http://www.womma.org/casestudy/examples/influence-your-influencers/gracos-relationship-based-appr/





• Value – Again, value is relative here, but it’s an essential piece of influence. To have any impact on a person you need to provide some sort of value to them. By providing value you create a positive benefit for people. That’s it, really.

• Connection – People are willing to act on behalf of others if they feel the benefit of doing so outweighs the cost. While trust, authority, and value are all important pieces of influence, a mutual connectivity or bond between the influencer and influencee is the glue that binds.

To influence anyone, you must build trust, establish authority, deliver value, and form a mutual connection with them. Those who have become influential within specific networks have fostered all these things with all those networks, and all of it is tailored to each network.

Note that, as a business, you will have to develop these things with your selected list of influencers to get them on your side. You must work to connect with them on these levels to gain their cooperation. And before you do any of that, you must identify who the right people are for your business to connect with, what principles and beliefs resonate with them, and how they define value. For the purposes of this paper, we’ll be focusing on that first major piece – identifying your influencers. But before we do that, let’s address this tricky thing called popularity.

What about popularity? Does it matter?

Originally, we were going to dedicate an entire chapter to the difference between influence and popularity, but, after doing some research and some thinking, we realized the discussion around this particular facet of the topic of influence doesn’t need to be nearly as long.

Here’s the short of it:

Popularity: Being widely known.

Influence: Being able to inspire action with or without a large following.

Yes, these definitions are a bit oversimplified, but they’re quick and useful takes on popularity and influence. One is inherently about inspiring action, while the other is not. For the sake of education and eye opening, though, let’s get a little grittier with the differences.

People who are popular are known by name and possibly reputation, but not necessarily by their connections with individuals. In the online world, these people’s networks are comprised largely of weak ties rather than close relationships. Those who perceive this popularity think the popular folk are entertaining, the life of the party, and their attention is often caught by what these people say and do.

When it comes to moving others to act on their behalf for a specific cause or purpose, though, the power of the popular folk diminishes. These popular people, while amusing, haven’t built a mutual trust, proved their authority in any subject, or provided substantial value to their network. Most importantly, they haven’t developed a mutual bond with those who make up their social graph.

Capturing the attention of your network isn’t the same as moving them to do something.

Influential folks, however, can inspire action. We should note here that influence is powerful no matter the size of someone’s network. According to an HP Labs study on influence and passivity in social media, the size of a person’s social graph is weakly linked to this person’s ability to cause an effect. So it makes no



http://www.scribd.com/doc/35401457/Influence-and-Passivity-in-Social-Media-HP-Labs-Research





difference if a person has 100 friends or 1,000 friends linked to them via social networks; if they have done those things that connect people to them in meaningful, moving ways, they will influence the behavior of their network.

Both popularity and influence are useful tools for business, but to make the most of them, you must be clear on what each tool impacts and what general sorts of results each will deliver. Popularity begets awareness, but influence begets action.

Now that we’ve shared the theoretical side of influence, let’s get into the fast and hard conversation of measuring influence. What are the metrics best suited for identifying influence? Is there a hard metric that applies across the board in every influencer identification program? Is influence even measurable in numeric form? Well, we’re getting to that.

CHAPTER 2:

THE BATTLE BETWEEN SOFT AND HARD METRICS

The debate about whether or not we should be using hard or soft metrics is one of the hottest within social media marketing circles. You’ve likely seen plenty of skepticism around the role of soft metrics in measuring the impact of social media. Whether we’re talking about the change in share of voice/conversation, a rise in the number of searches about your brand, or an increase in

traffic to your website, the role these metrics play in defining your business’ performance is under some question.

Within this argument, there’s a camp of people who believe true ROI is really the only performance metric companies care about. In a widely viewed presentation, brand and marketing management consultant Olivier Blanchard outlined several truths about social media ROI, his primary argument being that these softer metrics are not ROI and that ROI is purely a financial calculation.

Blanchard is not wrong, but neither is the camp of people utilizing softer metrics to measure impact. Recently, Amber Naslund, VP of Social Strategy at Radian6, outlined the “13 Truths About Social Media,” arguing that there is more to social media measurement and success than ROI.

Whether you are using hard metrics, like a pure ROI calculation, or are willing to subscribe to softer metrics for measuring success, the reality is that we’re far from solving this riddle. In fact, some of the issues that have plagued traditional media measurement are now starting to show their faces in social media marketing. However, that’s the subject of another eBook.

We believe the answer to the soft and hard metrics question lands somewhere in the middle of these two extremes. We’re guessing that your mother probably taught you the principle of “everything in moderation,” right? Well, much of that holds true for social media marketing. The best approaches are looking at ways to truly capture ROI while using softer metrics to outline behavioral changes.

Unsurprisingly, there are also questions about using one or the other type of metric exclusively to define influence. Do quantitative



http://www.slideshare.net/thebrandbuilder/olivier-blanchard-basics-of-social-media-roi

http://www.slideshare.net/thebrandbuilder/olivier-blanchard-basics-of-social-media-roi

http://www.brasstackthinking.com/2010/05/13-truths-about-social-media-measurement/



metrics even matter? Do qualitative metrics introduce unnecessary bias? Does the introduction of qualitative metrics make influencer analysis inherently NOT scientific? Is a scientific analysis of influencers within a topical area important for brands? What’s the ideal balance between automation and human intervention?

Let’s take a second to try and answer these questions.

Using strictly quantitative metrics to define influence

How much of a person’s online influence can we determine based entirely by their numbers? Does a person who has 10,000 followers have greater influence than someone who has 5,000? What about a person who writes a blog and has 20,000 inbound links versus someone else who has 10,000? What if we built an algorithm that looks at these strictly quantitative factors for a person’s online presence? Would anyone buy the final output?

In all honesty, numbers have been critical since long before we were even talking about Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and the rest of the online universe. Establishing how many people you could potentially reach with a certain action (more on reach coming up) is something the traditional public relations/communications world has struggled with from the beginning. However, just because you have 10,000 followers on Twitter and I only have 5,000 doesn’t mean you are more influential than I am. In a broader context than just Twitter, just because you have the opportunity to reach more people online doesn’t make you more influential. Its how those numbers come together that explains how influential a person could or couldn’t be to a brand.

This is an important thing for brands to keep in mind: One metric or even one group of metrics cannot tell you the entire influence story. Numbers themselves cannot be viewed in isolation. The example we gave above is a perfect case study. It isn’t enough to look at a blog’s inbound links and consider that blogger influential. In addition to inbound links, we should be thinking about total visitors, unique visitors, inbound links, number of comments per post, number of retweets per post, and that’s just naming a few metrics. You can quickly fall down the metrics rabbit hole if care is not paid to what metrics matter most to you and your brand. This is where qualitative factors must come into play.

The role of automation

How much or little an influencer identification program should be automated is another hotly debated question. There are a number of tools that help you automate the process including Klout, Tweet Level, Twitter Grader and Technorati. These applications give you the numbers you need, and then you can input them into a document to track which people you deem influential.

The “scores” these sites present are well reasoned in their own right, but they present brands with three specific challenges:

• The scores aren’t truly “online” influence measures – Most of these online solutions are providing a score based on one or only a couple of online channels. A person’s online influence is much more than his or her influence on Twitter. What if I have a YouTube channel, as well? Or a blog? Or what if I actively participate within an open LinkedIn community? Shouldn’t I get credit for my entire online presence? The answer is clearly yes, but, until one of these tools develops a score that incorporates a



http://klout.com/kscore

http://tweetlevel.edelman.com/

http://twittergrader.com/

http://technorati.com/



person’s entire online presence, the scores must be considered only for the channel in which they are measuring.

• Relevance – More on this in a second, but these online tools are not determining whether or not a persons’ Twitter presence is relevant for a particular brand. Take social media marketing expert Chris Brogan’s Klout score for example. He has a score of 84 on Klout. If you spend only a little time there you’d realize that’s a very high score. Yes, Chris is probably influential on Twitter, but ask yourself this very important question – has Chris written anything about your brand or about a related topic area that you care about? If the answer is no, then should he be included on your influencer list?

• No insight into the “black box” – There are many influencer “algorithms” out there. Putting aside whether they are good or bad for a second, we tend to have very little insight into what goes into the final output. Now, nobody is asking these companies or firms to disclose the “secret sauce,” but we should be able to piece together how you came up with the score you did. If we can’t, the number has to be taken with a grain of salt.

Whether or not you can use one of these tools to determine influencers for your brand is a separate discussion than the one detailing if the process of pulling metrics for your influencer identification program should be automated or not. The answer to that question is clearly yes, and as much as you can automate you should. The best influencer algorithms combine lots of metrics across lots of different platforms, and pulling those all by hand is labor intensive. It’s been done, but that process is inefficient and it leaves a lot of opportunity for human error. We recommend using

technology right up until the point when you are trying to nail down your final influencer list. Until an online tool incorporates the above, use those sites as more of an “FYI” than anything else and develop your own list of metrics.

The role of qualitative analysis

This discussion could very easily be called “The role of the analyst in influencer identification.” Where does a human come into play when you are defining who is influential for your brand? The answer, quite simply, is everywhere. It’s why a successfully developed approach to influencer identification that combines human intervention with quantitative metrics will always win over something that appears to be totally automated or strictly quantitative.

So where does the analyst, or brand manager, or anyone trying to develop an influencer list come into play? There are three very important roles of the analyst:

• Normalizing the data – We mentioned above that there is not one single metric, regardless of channel, that can be used to define influence. We cannot look at just total visits and consider a blog influential. Similarly with Twitter followers. After a person or team gathers the appropriate metrics, a process of normalizing the data must occur, otherwise comparing inbound links to, say, number of comments on a blog post would not make sense. The scales are wildly different. Similarly, for your brand, it might make more sense to place more weight on total visits than inbound links. That’s a call only a human can make.

• Determining relevance – We’ll be spending more time talking about relevance in the influencer equation later on, but this is likely the most critical part of influencer



http://www.chrisbrogan.com/

http://klout.com/chrisbrogan



identification. Technorati publishes a list of the Top 100 blogs based on the Technorati Authority score. The search conducted to find that site took literally one minute to complete. You could do that also, but take a look at the list of sites. If you are a brand manager working for a midsize business-to-business brand in Topeka, Kansas, or someone representing said brand, does Gizmodo really matter to you? Probably not. Now, if you were a large technology brand then Gizmodo would matter a great deal. We haven’t yet encountered a computer smart enough to determine brand relevancy completely. A human must be involved to evaluate a site’s influence.

• Segmenting your influencer list – Here is what most consultants won’t tell you – not everyone on your influencer list would be categorized as an “outreach” target. You could work in an industry that’s heavily dominated by forum conversations. Anyone who’s tried to reach forum participants before can tell you that it is very difficult to even enter the forum as a brand. However, just because you can’t engage with them, doesn’t mean you can’t listen to conversations. Use a tool like Radian6 to monitor conversations in that forum. You’d be surprised at the market intelligence you’ll acquire by just listening. No amount of automation is going to segment the list for you.

Do brands want totally automated influencer identification?

Do brands want targeted influencer lists? The answer is absolutely yes! Do they want something that’s purely automated? Our experience to date has been absolutely not. This gets to the root of the influencer identification question – why do brands try and do it in the first place? At the risk of being

overly simplistic, getting started with social media is hard.

Anyone who tells you it’s easy to create a blog, Twitter, or YouTube presence is misleading you. Creating the site or account is easy, yes, but drawing in and engaging with the right people is very hard. Heck listening to, let alone engaging in, the right conversations is hard enough. A strong influencer identification program helps partially solve the “boil the ocean” conundrum of social media engagement.

Compete estimates that there were approximately 175 million people who visited Twitter.com in November. Taking a number like 175 million and turning it into 50 easily allows a brand to get its head around who could be a potential outreach target and who’d make it onto the “Listen to These Folks” list.

So, let’s get back to the question at hand: Do brands want something that’s totally automated? Our answer to this question would have to be no. Brands are comforted by the role of a human in the analysis. They generally trust that a person understands the brand and the brand’s goals more so than a computer ever could. Not only that, but an influencer list only becomes useful when it’s relevant and properly segmented to meet brand goals. These are two things that a computer cannot readily achieve. Will we reach a stage where the Klouts of the world are more a trusted resource for brands? Absolutely, but we aren’t there yet.

Bringing qualitative and quantitative metrics together

You’ve no doubt already figured out that our approach to influencer identification incorporates both quantitative and qualitative analysis. We want to develop our list of


mailto:sales%40radian6.com?subject=

http://technorati.com/blogs/top100

http://gizmodo.com/

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/twitter.com/



metrics, outline our goals for the list, create the list, segment by relevance, and then segment by potential use (e.g., listening only, engagement, outreach, etc.). We want to automate everything we can automate then use a human to ferret out the final list.

If your methodology is sound and the person conducting the analysis for you has enough brand knowledge, then the final list will be a true representation of who is influential for your brand online. If not, the list created could bear fruit, but will it create “buzz” in the markets that care most about your product? Well, maybe. But do you want to create a list of influencers, reach out to them, and have little to show for it? In other words, what’s the ROI of your influencer identification program? Create the rigor, develop the list, use the list, and drive ROI. That’s what everybody should be striving to do.

CHAPTER 3:

THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN BRAND RELEVANCE, REACH, AND SYNDICATION

Of everything we’re talking about in this paper, we hope you take away the fact that influence in social media is comprised of more than just reach. Similarly, influence is mapped out by using more than just one metric. Or even five metrics. Or even 10 metrics. Ideally, that map is constructed by bringing together the best set of metrics

to help you explain someone’s total online footprint.

The approach to mapping and defining online influence must take into account metrics that can be bucketed under the following categories: reach, relevance, and syndication. It’s important to note here that we aren’t just talking about the reach, relevance, and syndication of the outlet. Rather, our focus is on those three buckets as applied to the outlet and the individual doing the talking. That’s ultimately what we care most about, right?

Social media marketing is about engaging with people, is it not? We’re not going to be engaging with The Huffington Post, or New York Times, or USA Today, right? We’re going to be engaging with bloggers or reporters at those outlets, first and foremost. We’ll be talking at length in this section about the characteristics of each of these buckets and how you bring them together.

Reach

It’s likely easiest to start here because this is where most of our focus tends to be. We want to know how many eyeballs a channel could potentially reach. We tend to focus our attention on the New York Times because its online presence is very large – 65 million total visits in November according to Compete. It’s a similar story with USA Today, or The Huffington Post, or Washington Post. They reach a lot of people.

However, if we’re living by the theory that we’re focused on reaching an individual at one of these outlets, how does taking into account only that site’s Web traffic really help us? The answer is, it doesn’t. It’s important to take that into account, yes, but we also need to know how much traffic for that site can be attributed to a single author. This is where everybody’s



http://siteanalytics.compete.com/nytimes.com/

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/nytimes.com/



favorite subject, math, comes into play. Obviously there is more to the reach part of the equation than total visits, so what are some other metrics you could consider?

On the outlet side: On the author side:

Total visits Total posts authored (or tweets, blog posts, articles)

Unique visits

Inbound links Inbound links to the author’s posts

Inbound links Unique people reached

Organic keywords Total people reached

Now, it’s important to note two things when you’re evaluating which reach metrics you want to use:

• The relative weight of each metric will change for each brand. There’s a lot of science that can be applied to the online influencer process, but nothing can replace a human looking at the data and thinking about what matters most for the brand. How you weight each of these things will change based on those goals.

• How much weight you give to the author metrics versus the outlet metrics will also change. There’s no secret sauce here. This is another place where your analyst will come in handy. How much weight you give to the author versus the outlet is obviously critical to the final output. As a general rule of thumb, remember that we’re most focused on reaching individuals, not outlets.

Syndication

In the spirit of reaching as many people as we can, syndication plays a critical role in the online influencer equation. Creating content is great, but creating it on a site that is

viewed (or has the potential to be viewed) by many people is even better. But, how widely dispersed that content is could be considered the Holy Grail.

Not to continue on too long with Chris Brogan but his blog is a good gauge for demonstrating this idea of syndication. His blog receives hundreds of thousands of views according to Compete, and his site has been linked more than 400,000 times according to Yahoo! Site Explorer. Those are amazing numbers, but they’re only one part of the equation. Take a look at how often his content is shared on Twitter. If you look at his recent posts, they’ve been retweeted a significant number of times. Those hundreds of thousands of views just grew exponentially simply by someone picking up his content and syndicating it.

So, what other metrics can you use to define syndication? Again, this is similar to reach in that we’re focused on outlet and author syndication.


Google results for the Average number of outlet name times a headline is retweeted/headline Google blog results for indexed, etc…the outlet name Largest number of times a headline is Google news results for retweeted/headline the outlet name indexed, etc… Number of times the author’s name appears in Google

Number of times the author’s name appears in Google plus the outlet

Number of times the author’s name appears in Google plus the brand



http://siteanalytics.compete.com/chrisbrogan.com/

http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/search?p=www.chrisbrogan.com/&bwm=i&bwmo=d&bwmf=u

http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/search?p=www.chrisbrogan.com/&bwm=i&bwmo=d&bwmf=u



This isn’t meant to be an exhaustive list but a place where you can get started. We’re sure you can come up with your own syndication metrics. You may realize that only a couple of these are relevant for your brand. Whichever method you choose, the same key points we mentioned above for reach apply here: The relative weight of each metric and how much weight you put on the author’s score versus the outlet’s score will vary. That’s not something we can provide you. Know, however, that everybody has their individual methods for bringing these things together.

Relevance

This is probably the most important factor in the online influence equation. As we discussed in the previous section, knowing reach and syndication metrics are nice but if a person is not creating relevant content for the brand, how could he or she be considered an influencer? Honestly, he or she just can’t be. Without relevance what you likely have is the same kind of traditional media list you’ve been working from for years. We think we can safely say that everyone would like to come up with something more targeted, right? As with the other metrics we outlined, with relevance we’re also focused on author and outlet relevance. What are some metrics you could use?


Total mentions of a topic Total mentions of a topic

Percentage of posts that Percentage of posts that mention a topic mention a topic

Continuing on the broken record theme, it’s important to note that the relative weights of these metrics and the outlet-versus-author side will vary by brand. Relevancy, however, is the key component of how this all comes

together. Skip relevancy and you’ll have come up with an interesting list that may or may not be actionable for your brand.

Bringing this all together

You don’t need to spend much time reading this to understand that there are a significant amount of data points here. With a large number of data points comes a lot of data capture, and with a lot of data capture comes the need for additional resources to gather, crunch, and then develop the output. This is further evidence that a dedicated analyst or team of analysts is critical to completing an influencer identification program. So what are some other things you need to keep in mind?

• Date range for analysis – This should go without saying, but capturing the appropriate amount of data across these data points (or others you might discover/create) is critical. You don’t want to grab only the last month’s worth of content, because that introduces a few different issues including whether or not one event is unduly influencing the final output. The ideal scenario has you capturing 12 months’ worth of data and extending your range from there. Whatever your date range may be, it is important to be consistent. Don’t grab six months worth of data for Twitter and then only 3 months for blogs.

• This is just a snapshot in time – Even though you’ve captured a critical mass of data (ideally 12 months of it), the final output still is a snapshot in time. Whatever list you develop will need to be consistently refreshed. The online space changes in a blink, and today’s number 10 influencer may be number 50 three months from now. Decide how often you want to refresh your list when you are coming up with your plan of action for the project.





• Ranking only matters so much – To the point of this data being a snapshot in time, just because someone is a top influencer now doesn’t mean they will be three months from now. Similarly, just because someone is number 10 today doesn’t mean they can’t become number one three months from now. Remember, after you’ve completed your list you’ll want to segment it by how you’re going to “use” that person. Are they “listening only?” Are they “direct engagement?” Are they “outreach in the form of a release?” The more you reach out to a person, the greater the likelihood that their influencer “score” will change over a period of time.

• A person can show up in multiple categories – It’s critical to take into account a person’s entire online footprint. Capturing a person’s blog is great, but what about their Twitter footprint? What if they are blogging in multiple places with relevant content? What if they are participating in a forum? You see the point here. A person can have scores across multiple channels, and that should impact their overall online influence in your list.

• Relative weight of reach, syndication, and relevance will vary – In this eBook we talk about how each metric could possibly be weighed. The reality, though, is that how you weight each of the broader buckets will change by brand. If you’re running a campaign centered mostly on traditional media, then maybe reach is most important to you. Either way, you’ll need to determine that after you’ve gathered all of the relevant (there’s that word again) data.

Like we mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, we want you to understand that measuring and ranking influence online is done by a combining reach, syndication, and

relevance. Without one of these pieces of the equation, you run the risk of creating an influencer list that’s not necessarily reflective of your brand or the topic area at large.

CHAPTER 4:

INFLUENCE BY CHANNEL VS. INFLUENCE ACROSS THE SOCIAL WEB

Television isn’t the same as radio, which isn’t the same as the newspaper. So, why would you think social media channels should be treated any differently? Twitter is not the same as Facebook, which is not the same as YouTube. Each social media channel has its own identity, community, content, and influencers. And there are countless social media channels outside the big three (Twitter, Facebook and YouTube). In fact, in this age, every person could be viewed as his or her own network. Just like in traditional media, there will always be some crossover of channels, but it’s dangerous to treat each community and set of influencers the same.

Building trust (and influence) with knowledge

According to a 2010 report by Forrester analysts Augie Ray and Josh Bernoff, some 500 billion impressions about products and services are created in social media each year. This is a massive pool of conversations over a multitude of social channels for people to



http://forrester.typepad.com/groundswell/2010/04/introducing-peer-influence-analysis.html




derive influence. According to Ray and Bernoff, these impressions are split into two types of influence: (1) influence from people within social networks, and (2) influence created by posts across blogs, forums, and review sites.

From this data, Ray and Bernoff concluded that the online impressions people make on each other regarding product and services are about one fourth of the online advertising impression, and that a small percentage of people generate 80% of the impressions. We encourage you to download the Forrester report if you’re interested in learning more about the Forrester method of influencer analysis.

All this research is to say that influence, no matter how you look at it, is built on credibility of knowledge. The Edelman Trust Barometer 2010 found “informed publics place the most trust in expert spokespeople and information sources.” This past year has been one of economic uncertainty, and, while we’re still influenced by average folks like us, this type of influence has lost ground. Influence runs much deeper than how many followers a person or company may have, and lives in the knowledge transferred and received.

Content consumption and chatter varies by channel

According to a study from online advertising network, Chitka, users’ interests and expectations vary sharply depending on the platform they’re using. The insights gleaned from over 287,000 impressions depict nearly half (47%) of the traffic Twitter generates goes to news sites and that the only genre appearing in all five sites studied was celebrity and entertainment.

There’s no doubt we’re in the middle of a Social Media Revolution, but the data is changing rapidly as new channels appear, disappear, unite, and reshape, as is the way people are consuming media. It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the amount of social media statistics floating around. It’s important that you look beyond the masses of data to discover where your community is consuming content and engaging in conversations that are relevant to your organization’s goals and objectives. Be your own case study. Monitor and discover valuable insights from your primary data to start building relationships in





http://forrester.com/rb/Research/peer_influence_analysis/q/id/56766/t/2

http://www.edelman.co.uk/trustbarometer/files/edelman-trust-barometer-2010.pdf

http://www.edelman.co.uk/trustbarometer/files/edelman-trust-barometer-2010.pdf

http://www.pamorama.net/2010/03/19/social-media-users-interests-and-expectations-vary-by-network-stats/



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8&feature=youtu.be



channels that will help you build and identify trust through shared knowledge.

Share of Conversation

When folks start to dive into social media they tend to put all their effort into those channels with the potential for a lot of eyeballs. The problem with this tactic is that just gathering lots of eyeballs isn’t what actually matters, but rather gathering the right eyeballs and then driving them to perform a desired action.

When you talk in these terms be aware that you’re looking at potential reach, not actual reach, unless you can ensure that all of your friends or followers are logged in and viewing your content on a given day (which is nearly impossible). There are some loose ideas about peak usage times and percentages for varying social networks, but getting actual reach numbers is going to be tough.

For example, 50% of active users log on to Facebook on any given day, meaning only half your fans are even likely to see your status updates, and that among the rest of the posts they view. So, you might only be able to account for a 20%-30% view rate from your total following.

The web simply cannot be condensed to a single mass strategy, so it’s best to identify relevant conversations to ensure you are participating in those channels with the right eyeballs (you should be able to get started with that process after reviewing the previous chapter).

Now, this topic might seem better suited for the measurement-focused sections of this eBook, but trust us that Share of Conversation and overall influence on the social web go hand in hand. One directly represents the other, actually, and we’ll show you how.

Share of Conversation is a combination of a few metrics that we happen to think give you some strong insight into how your online activities are directly impacting your goals and objectives. This metric helps you understand not just the volume of buzz about you, but how present and recognized you are among the conversations you want to be associated with. In other words, how much you’re in front of the right eyeballs. In the case of this metric, the hypothesis is that if you’re mentioned in relevant conversations, you’ll gain mindshare and therefore increase the likelihood of someone choosing you over a competitor in the same market.

Radian6’s CEO, Marcel Lebrun, blogged in heavy detail the methodology for establishing your Share of Conversation metric, but the high-level process looks like this:

• Set up a monitoring post for a topic, subject, or market within which you want to be talked about. For example, if you’re a non-profit working in diabetes research, you might want to look at conversations around “diabetes research,” “diabetes support,” or any number of subjects you’d like to be known/found for.

• Within that topic, track and count the posts that mention the topic(s) you’re interested during a specific time period. 30 days is generally a good window. (Metric 1: Total Conversation Posts per 30 days.)

• Then, track the posts that mention that topic and mention you together during that same timeframe. (Metric 2: Total Brand/Conversation Posts per 30 days.)

• Divide Metric 1 by Metric 2. The resulting percentage is your Share of Conversation.





Take a look at Marcel’s post for more information about why this measurement really matters and has deeper value than just “how many people are talking about us”.

Figuring out where you should be engaging starts with looking at where your audience currently exists. Your community will appear in a few places to start, or perhaps many if your organization is inherently social. You’ll be able to identify exactly where that audience is through your listening strategy.

Keep in mind that you shouldn’t put effort or resources into interacting on big social networks if that’s not where your audience happens to be. Software companies, for example, are often mentioned on support forums or communities, thus showing a much larger portion of customer activity than, say, Facebook. Just because certain social channels are more popular than others – or even more popular than other types of media – that doesn’t mean your market is there. Do your research before you commit to engaging on a particular network.

We know engagement can be a stick subject, especially when it comes to scaling those efforts. How do you converse with hundreds or even thousands of folks on a regular basis and make sure the conversations you’re having are relevant and useful to your business? Can any of that interaction be automated? And how does this all play into interacting with your influencers? That’s the next piece of the puzzle.

CHAPTER 4:

HUMAN INTERVENTION VS. TOTALLY AUTOMATED TOOLS

The age-old debate of man versus machine is becoming more prevalent as the science fiction of yesterday becomes today’s reality. Maybe the Artificial Intelligence we’re talking about now is not what we expected, but it’s definitely what we are working with and towards.

It’s unwise to think in extremes because there’s no clear winner, or in this case, magic button or algorithm. While social channels have brought to light conversations that brands just can’t afford to overlook, the expectations of sustainable listening and engagement have become a serious issue for organizations to tackle and solve. It’s essential that organizations carefully think through their plans for automation when creating social media outreach strategies, especially when approaching influencer outreach.

Interaction/automation as a mindset

Influence is really quite personal, right? And we can all agree that influence is based in finding a connection that permeates the surface of general awareness and engagement. The intent to develop deeper relationships between organizations and communities is at the heart of today’s business shift.





Social media is now the conduit for valuable conversations that were once limited to private group discussion or shared through siloed feedback mechanisms. To establish what aspects of their social media interactions can be automated, organizations must first craft an influencer identification program and define what is considered influential content within their marketplace.

The goal of automation is not to fully replace people with a computerized system, e.g., an unpaid employee, but allow people to have more time engaging in relevant and meaningful conversations rather than sift through endless channels, mountains of data, and noise. Automated processes help remove those inefficient and redundant functions and allow us to do what we do best: be human. Influence should be built and guarded with care, and it can only be created by humans, not computer algorithms.

Take, for example, the earthquake in Haiti in January 2010. Automation allowed governments, non-profits, and ordinary citizens to band together and streamline their activities, allowing one and all to focus on giving back to their fellow human beings. Brent Leary sums up how humans and machines worked together in this instance for the greater good:

“It’s important for us not to hide behind technology, but use it to better understand each other’s needs. It can be tempting to substitute technology for a personal connection. Being human can be tough, and time consuming, and gut-wrenching, and taxing, and many other things. And there are times and instances where we do need to utilize technology to make better decisions, and to get things done quickly and less expensively. We even need it to figure

out which relationships to concentrate our limited resources on. But our focus should always be on people, not technology. This has never been more evident than at times like these.”

The processes and tools supporting our interaction should remain where they belong, in the background. In the case of the Haiti tragedy, the function of donation and information gathering was not in the limelight, it was the global response that shined. The human connection came first and remains the foundation on which organizations need to build their automated efforts.

Interaction/automation as a mechanism

There is no all-encompassing mechanism or method to identify influence, influencers, or easily map your organization’s interactions with these people and communities. When you start exploring that need to automate parts of your organization’s social strategy, it’s best to first identify the most time-consuming, non-interaction-oriented tasks and separate them from those requiring real human interaction. As we said earlier, automation is meant to improve efficiency by assisting with repetitive functions, not replace all external interaction.

As the social media space evolves we’re all crafting the necessary rules of etiquette and adapting them to changing community expectations and knowledge. Unfortunately, even though we are adapting, there are several tasks people and organizations are automating that need to be personalized instead.

For instance, it’s best to avoid automating tasks in channels where your community is expecting direct and real human interaction or you risk taking away from other areas of successful human-to-human reciprocity. But if you can effectively mechanize some of





those tasks you need completed, you’ll have more time and bandwidth to engage on a more personal level in those spaces where interaction is expected.

Rather than focus on what not to automate, let’s talk about the more productive uses for automation when engaging with influencers and building your own influential content.

• Engage Actively: People won’t subscribe to your content or “listen” to what you have to say if they believe the information or conversation is being generated from the faceless avatar of Artificial Intelligence. There’s an expectation for real-time engagement in the social sphere that just can’t be ignored or falsified, so meet that expectation head-on and get actual people within your company talking with your external community.

• Personalize Sharing: As we explored in the previous chapter, people consume and communicate differently across all social media channels. There are many tools out there that give you the ability to post your content once and have it be distributed across multiple channels. While this kind of automation might increase efficiency and productivity, it will come at the expense of being able to more personally connect with your influencers, or even be considered influential within a specific community and/or channel.

• Know Your Brand: There’s enough “Enough about me, now let’s talk about me” noise on social networks, and you don’t need to add to that. See, feel, and live your brand through the eyes of your community. Avoid using automation to unleash a barrage of canned responses or self-promotion. Use these channels to discover what others find meaningful and influential and learn what

you can do to build on those expectations.

• Manage Your Accounts: Not your relationships. There is a time and a place for scheduling tweets and posts, like if you’re releasing breaking news or you’ve identified a need for an FAQ-type response. However, online social networks don’t thrive on one-off blasts of info but rather a two-way dialogue. Participating in these channels immediately sets up the expectation that you are listening and engaging. Establish proper expectations with your community if you plan on automating your social media coverage.

• Unify Your Communication Funnel: Integrate social media interactions into your company’s existing communication and feedback platforms. Spread the word and keep track of those online conversations from A-Z in one platform. These platforms already house a wealth of data from various channels. Harness the power of that integrated data to discover insights and gain an holistic view of your influencers and the impact of your influence.

By nature, social media channels foster open and authentic engagement. Influence is subjective and built up through how others view your interactions with those in the same circle. If you were to start automating your responses, you’d lose credibility and work directly against that widespread expectation of real engagement. Artificial Intelligence will never fully replicate a human reply or properly address a need for human engagement, and, no matter how well built, an algorithm just can’t deliver an authentic and appropriate response to the various nuances of the human language.





CHAPTER 6:

THE WRAP-UP

We realize there are a lot of information and ideas in this eBook to absorb, and we highly recommend you give yourself the time and mental space to do so, because creating a truly valuable influencer program that includes the right metrics for your efforts and the right outreach tactics for your goals takes great understanding of what influence is and how it works within your immediate community and greater market.

Here are some tips to help make this all a bit more digestible:

• Make sure that you read this eBook at least once without clicking any of the links. Links offer invaluable reference points, but they will inevitably break your focus and train of thought, making understanding all this a bit tougher.

• Consider mapping and weighting your own influencer metrics as you read through Chapters 2 and 3. Just as practice. This doesn’t have to be something you submit to your team for review, but it’s worth getting into the practice.

• Think about how you, as an individual, influence and are influenced by the people and brands you’ve brought into your life.

What makes those people or brands so influential to you? What turns you off of a person or company?

• Give us a shout if any of this doesn’t make sense. No, really. Email us at [email protected] and we’ll make sure to answer your questions as best as we can.

Influence is relative to your company and marketplace, but we hope what’s been outlined here will help you get a firmer grip on how to approach using your ability to influence and that of your biggest fans to create positive results for your company. Please be in touch and let us know what’s worked for you. We always appreciate the feedback.

Find us on the web: http://www.radian6.com

Follow us on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/radian6

Read the Blog: http://www.radian6.com/blog






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Defining and Measuring Social Media Influence

Technology

Transcript of Defining and Measuring Social Media Influence