How To Measure Your Online Influence

A lot of us like numbers.  We like to measure progress.  It’s smart to do so in business. And sometimes in life.

So it makes sense that our online influence should be measured.  To help us know when we are doing something right.

You’ve heard me talk about the importance of becoming a person of influence.  It adds value to your online or in-person brand whether you are looking for work, a better job or a promotion in your current company.  As you add influence you also begin to create something that’s also important.  Something called social credibility.  Which allows people to open up to you in advance of a first meeting.

Kind of important.

The most basic measurements in social media are not hard to find:

• The number of friends you have on Facebook
• Your followers on Twitter
• Your connections on LinkedIn

But you can “game” these numbers if you want.  Invite everyone, accept everyone and soon enough you are a rising superstar in social media, right?

Not so fast.

There are a ton of new tools being introduced for social media measurement.

Most famous of these is Klout – a site that uses its own algorithm to determine your influence.  Beyond the basic numbers.

Being active on Twitter is a must but your Klout score is also affected by your participation and perceived impact on other social media platforms.  Your Klout score is now updated daily – if you are paying attention. And those who become highly influential online can be rewarded via their @KloutPerks program.  Something to shoot for, right?

To get your score, go to Klout and sign up today.

The second one you should sign up for is PeerIndex.  Similar to Klout, PeerIndex uses a proprietary method to determine what they call your social capital.  Suggesting, of course, that all your hard work online actually is building value for you.  Value that you can “spend” someday.  Perhaps to more easily network with that CEO in your company.

If you sign up for both of these, you will pick up some valuable information.  Not about the basic numbers.  But rather about how you use the following you’ve amassed.  And, more importantly, what your followers do or don’t do with your thoughts and ideas.  Once you’ve tossed them out there.

For a deeper dive on these tools, more tools to review and some other thoughts on building your social media influence, please see these great posts:

Social Media Explorer

Jason Falls of Social Media Explorer offers a broad list of tools you can use to measure your social media influence.  Many of these can be used for tracking your personal brand but many more are targeted at companies that are trying to figure what everyone is saying about their brands. The tools are used “to identify online influencers and voices in the social media space that your company or brand may want to reach out to for your marketing efforts”. Does your company use them?

TweetSmarter

Dave Larson of TweetSmarter asks the right question: “Which do you want? Twitter Followers? Or Twitter Influence?”.  He asks some other great questions about why you are really using Twitter.  And what you are expecting back after all this work.

Social Media B2B

Jeffrey L. Cohen shares five recent posts on the topic of influence.  Some questioning the real value of influence like this one by Lauren Fisher “When Bieber tops the list, is influence dead?“.  I also liked this one by MarketingProfs which suggests: “Content Quality (Not Quantity) Builds Social Media Influence“.

In the end, you can certainly just enjoy your time online.  Whether you are influencing people, entertaining friends or just listening to what’s happening.

Or you can pay closer attention.  And watch your progress.  On your own personal road to influence.

Are you building influence online? Is that important to you?

Written by: Tim Tyrell-Smith
Tags: how to measure | influence | influencer marketing | measured progress | measurement tools | measuring | online | online social networking | social | social capital | social information processing | social media | tools | Twitter | value | web 2.0 | world wide web
Categories: Learning And Using Social Media