The Currency of Influence

It’s no secret that the latest tool in the marketer’s toolkit is Social Media. The only fly in the ointment so far has been how to prove to the companies that are footing the bill for these initial programs that their money was well spent. They can count “Likes” on a Facebook page or see how often a viral video has been viewed, but until recently no one has been able to really quantify the “Twitter effect.” Now there are scores of tools that are trying to provide all kinds of insight to companies to help them understand what is happening, moment by moment and day by day and how it might be affecting their brand.

This is important for a number of reasons. The first for me being that the more we understand about a medium, the more creatively and effectively we use it. Second, I think it’s imperative that Twitter keep growing and for that they need funds. Using tools to demonstrate its value in ways that corporations understand can only help that continue to happen.

The mainstream media is already beginning to take notice of the two biggest  influence measures out right now, Klout and PeerIndex. Each of these tools looks at your online activity and scores you from 1-100. The higher the score, the more influence you have over others. To put it another way, if your score is high then when you speak  more people listen. Klout and PeerIndex are using slightly different algorithms to measure your activity. I have been using both for a while now and while my numbers are similar, they are not the same. They both keep track of topics that they believe you are influential about. In PeerIndex’s case, this seems to be a longer list and slightly more accurate, though you can only display five on your profile. Klout on the other hand appears to be based on what other people talk to you about. They seem to choose topics based on those topics that are most re-tweeted or liked on Facebook, which means you can suddenly find yourself to be influential about the subject in a joke tweet that has been re-tweeted often rather than say humor, which is what people actually experienced. This is a small problem I hope they will figure out. It handicaps one of the strongest offerings they have, the +K feature.

Similar to the Google +1 feature, this allows you to give out 5 +Klout a day to the people on Twitter who influenced you the most. This is a wonderful feature and the mind leaps ahead to what widespread adoption can and will do to it.  i.e., the first  5 people who RT my x tweet will get +Klout for today. Weeks away at most. There just hasn’t been enough adoption for it to become a currency yet, but soon, very soon. So herein lies the problem. Someone influences you by telling a joke. You go to their Klout page and they are either influential about nothing or influential about something completely unrelated. What do you do? Make a note and hope they get humor as a topic soon, or just give them +K in whatever is available? If nothing is available it defeats the whole purpose, right? So topics definitely need work.

It’s an interesting experience to install the Google Chrome Klout and PeerIndex apps and then venture onto Twitter. This allows you to see each user’s scores simultaneously. It’s early days yet, so PeerIndex uses an estimate for many people. If you hover over the little yellow number, you’ll see more about the PeerIndex score. It will give you the breakdown of Authority, Activity and Audience along with the 5 topics they are displaying. If it only provides zeros, you know that the number you are seeing is an estimate. People actually have to check in to PeerIndex or Klout to get the most accurate read. The Klout app will simply show you the number. If you click on either it will take you to their profiles on either site.

Once you start looking at the numbers it will surprise you how much it helps you decide who to follow, who to forgo. I say this because Klout not only looks at the ratio of follows to followers, it looks at the quality of them. If you only follow 10 people but you are followed by 100,000 super active twitter users who spread every thing you say, you are going to be in the 80ish Celebrity range. Alternately if you follow 10 people and have 100,000 followers who are people who are never active, who ignore you and generally only shill ads, you are not going to get very far.  As in everything in life, it is quality, not quantity you are looking for here.  Numbers are great, but they need to be qualified numbers to get the most out of Twitter. That applies to individuals, small businesses and even large brands and celebrities.  I un-followed a large chunk of people after discovering this, many were inactive or weren’t even people and saw my Klout score rise.

When someone follows me, my follow backs are decisions. I’m now committed to reading what this person puts out there, interacting with them, re-tweeting them and having them “on-staff” at St.Jon’s Super Stylin’ Live Magazine. I’m the editor in chief and I can hire the best writing talent the twitter world has to offer in any field. I get my news before most anyone else with footage that rarely makes mainstream media. I read notes from the cameraman of my favorite show on TV, the bodyguard of one of my favorite celebs and interact with other fans from around the world. One great actor I follow is such a great tweeter he plays games with his followers and tweets frequent candid photos and video clips. His followers re-tweet every tweet. Some of the best writers of comedy, film and television muse, howl and generally vent to my great amusement and sympathy and I read their travails and sympathize as I sit and write alone. Yet I don’t feel that I am.

This is just the beginning of what is possible with Twitter.  Tools like PeerIndex and Klout can help eliminate some of the chaff that already has started to clog the system. The relentless marketing spam and the hunt for greater and greater numbers of followers. As measurement become more widely adopted, my hope is that some of those practices will fall out of favor. They don’t work, and they are incredibly pointless.
Right now @Klout seems to be the clear leader in the field and at the rate of adoption I am seeing it will be the gold standard. So check in, see your score and find out how influential you are.

In an upcoming post I’ll talk about how Twitter can be useful and effective for a brand without relentlessly marketing itself into oblivion.http://www.klout.com