One of the favorite phrases I grew up with was, “You can’t track what you don’t measure.” It’s something that manufacturing executives and turnaround consultants throw around the way your mother tells you to brush your teeth. So when “influencer” articles and measurement applications started rearing their heads a few years ago, I knew that it would just be a matter of time before we would create yet another measurement to help us prioritize our activities, create more efficient processes and ultimately help us decide who to listen to.
Like it or not, influence indicators matter
Rather than get into a long-winded, intellectual discussion of what “influencer” means, let’s just say that when influencers speak, people do what they say. When Oprah picks a book for her book club, that book’s sales go up. Influencers are individuals in whom others put their trust and their money.
Becoming an influencer is no longer reserved for celebrities and powerful political figures. YOU are currently becoming an influencer, or fading into the background depending on your marketing presence online.
If you own a business, it’s imperative that you become an influencer in your area of expertise if you want your customers to find you, and ultimately buy from you. This means that you have to exist online and your name or company name must be connected to the keywords your customers search for when they are looking for solutions to the problems that you solve.
A quick primer on influencer measuring tools
Whatever you do, don’t discount this movement toward quantifying influence. It’s easy to criticize and find fault with any of these tools. But rest assured: the need to filter and prioritize information is strong. And while no single influence measurement tool is perfect, each tool provides information that your customer will use to decide whether or not to do business with you.
Klout: This is a Twitter influence measurement tool. The premise is that the more people who follow you, tweet and retweet what you say and comment on what you say, the more influential you are. If Twitter is any part of your marketing and communication strategy, this is a super tool to use as a measurement of your effectiveness at engaging your audience.
Mixtent: This is a professional reputation tracker. This means that it falls into the reputation management portion of your marketing program. It’s important because if your customers or contacts are using LinkedIn (and many of them are), they may run into this site and you want to be sure that you are managing how your profile is represented. If LinkedIn is a critical part of your business-building, referral or networking strategy, you need to pay attention to Mixtent. If you log in via your LinkedIn profile, it will pull from your database and analyze your connections. Mixtent monitors an individual user’s online reputation by calculating a SkillRank for both the user and their peers. The calculation uses weighted, anonymous endorsements and algorithmically-derived metrics. As you go through the process, you will probably notice many flaws in the logic of the system. But don’t let that keep you from going through the process. The jury is still out on how successful Mixtent will be, but reputation and influence rankings are here to stay regardless of what the measuring app or tool is called.
PostRank: How influential is your blog content? This is the question PostRank asks. PostRank analyzes your content on any topic, trend, or interest relevant to you or your business. Once you register your blog “PostRank gathers where and when stories generate comments, bookmarks, tweets, and other forms of interaction from a host of social hubs.” If you are using blog and other Internet content to drive your marketing communications, then this is a terrific tool for you. You can benchmark your content against others in your industry or even learn best practices from experts in other industries.
Grader: HubSpot has a terrific website grading tool that will help you design a website that is optimized for converting visitors to customers. All you have to do is enter your website address, a competing website address that you want to compare yourself to and your e-mail address. You’ll receive an online report almost immediately and a report will be e-mailed to you so that you can start making improvements. You will also receive regular reports so that you can track your improvement over time.
PeerIndex: Like most influence measurement tools, PeerIndex uses your Twitter handle and then analyzes your authority, activity and audience based on your Twitter activity. In addition to giving you a profile analysis, PeerIndex allows you to search on terms and industries to identify the “influencers” that you should be following and with whom you could build relationships.
How to prepare for the influencer trend
Measuring a person or a brand’s influence isn’t a passing fad. Measuring influence is a way to help consumers filter through the many experts filling the Web. Rather than criticize the trend, embrace it and do your best to fully complete your online profiles and participate in those social networks that best help you reach your business and marketing goals.
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