Making Better Decision finding Influencers – Fresh Networks Social Media Influencer Report

A tip from Charlie Osmand over at Fresh Networks (who I believe spoke in London at #msm10 last week, where I was at and also spoke) caught my attention this morning and I took a look at their (his) review of Social Media Influencers.   The link to download the PDF  is contained in Charlie’s DM  below.

curious to hear what you’ll make of this one: 9 Social media monitoring tools compared for ability to find influencers: http://t.co/pANb2h

Direct message sent by charlie osmond (@cosmond) to you (@webmetricsguru) on Dec 04, 10:10 AM.

The report is excellent in that it goes into some depth of influencer identification because it confines itself to actually focusing on a particular aspect/application of each of the 9 platforms (I was not familiar with PeerIndex, but have worked on all the other platforms listed and have active accounts on most of them).

But the closer you get to the truth, the more you realize there is no “one truth” or infact, one tool good for everything.  According the FreshNetworks paper  BrandWatch is best for finding Forum and Message Board Influeners while Radian6 was better finding Twitter followers (I’d put my money any day on finding Forum followers over Twitter followers as there are so many free tools like Klout and PeerIndex that handle Twitter followers – but identifying  Forum Influencers by topic – that’s rare and potentially much more valuable).  Scout Labs/Lithium was best at finding YouTube and Image influence while Synthesio was better than the rest at finding Facebook Influencers (again, much more valuable because it’s harder to get into Facebook and really find a consolidated influence score there).

The rest of the platforms really stood out for other features but not  for influence identification such as Alterian/Techrigy/SM2 for segmentation, Sysomos for best overall tool (USP) and Social Radar for the best data visualization platform.    The subject of the influence study was “organic baby food” – something every platform should be able to do a good report on.

There is so much “fragmentation” between vendors and what outputs they produce and buyers (and what inputs they need) that each platform tends to be good at certain things but not as good at others – you pick the platform you need for the relationships and capabilities you need on one project, then find it’s unsuitable for others, and you get into the datasoup mess most agencies are in, with a hybrid set of tools that are not interoperable and do not support the workflow or analyst, never mind the stakeholders.

But still, this is the best overall influencer study of a comparative set of social listening platforms I’ve seen so far and does a good job at defining influence in a workable way that is useful for most people reading this blog.

FreshNetworks quotes Dave Sifry, founder of Technorati as …

targeting the Magic Middle of online influencers, sandwiched between Chris Anderson?s Long Tail and well-known A-list influencers.

Makes sense to me as it’s unlikely your going to get Lady Gaga to advocate much of anything (if you can even get through to her handlers) but you may have some luck getting through to people just ahead of the Long Tail (who have groups of niche followers and aren’t so inundated with requests that they are putting up barriers to being contacted).

It’s also interesting the FreshNetworks study talks about 4 types of Influencers yet only shows the three (above), where is the forth type hiding?

Another great thing about the FreshNetworks paper is how of it defines 5 levels Engagement – I don’t know if this is the best definition, but it’s certainly workable and even possible to manually rank influence based on it.

Inactive – aware of the relevant sector or topic but not actively engaging.

Brand Conscious – aware of your brand. Generates some buzz but not fully engaged and mostly fleeting references online.

Word-of-Mouth Amplifiers– spreads key messages and updates that relate directly to your brand, products or services.

Brand Advocates/Evangelists – support and champion your brand online.

Brand Ambassadors – key advocates who have a strong involvement with the your brand online. Could be a commercial relationship.

I doubt you could automate the classification of influence (but it’s worth a try).

There’s also a section on “what’s in it for me” in approaching influencers,  how to do it and how to select the right tool/platform.   I honestly could not have done a better job if I had written the report myself, though I might have tried to pick clear winners and losers instead of giving every platform kudos for something they do better than anyone else, as FreshNetworks did.

On the hand, to be fair and honest, as I am known to be – the real issue here isn’t influencer identification capabilities, it’s rather, the right tool/platform you need for your particular situation – that’s a custom consulting case scenario, not something that a paper like this can fully address.

My book will attempt to set the case and rationale for more strategic investment in tools and processes than any of these types of studies has produced (the basis for the FreshNetworks study is to build more clientele – nothing wrong with that ) but doesn’t really address that fact, nor can it, that every business and situation is different and the precision needed in influencer identification continues to evolve past where any of these tools, profiled, goes.

Also notable, is that this study covers 9 platforms and leaves out others that could have also been interesting such as Traakr (not to mention that just about every PR, Advertising and Marketing firm now is either creating influencer lists of their own or buying them and white labeling it from firms like Traackr or other similar type services).

Prices vary for such lists and are widely dissimilar, often for the similar lists to tell the truth, but having done some of this myself, in various capacities, I am of the belief we should not invent the wheel  unless we can show a much better cut of influence than what the existing tools and platforms produce now, nuff said.

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