You don’t have to spend much time in the realm of social media measurement and metrics, before you hear the term ‘Influence’ bandied about. Various methods have been devised to measure the artifacts of influence, each with their unique formulas, and each useful in their own way. Typically these influencers are presented to you as some form of leader-board or Top100 list.
But, are these lists answering the questions you have today? In the realm of PR and marketing, there are a lot of reasons to need such lists. Are you looking for those who you have to watch the closest for crisis management? Or, are you looking for those who drive the most sustainable conversations about your brand or industry? With campaign management you may want to track the response you are getting, and find the top conversations around it. Who are the individuals you should get your message to, if you want to see it spread? You might want to know what the most important pieces of social media content are today… what fires need to be put out?
The point is, a single algorithm or point of view into the dynamic world of social media is going to answer a small subset of those questions, but certainly not all of them.
And since we’re talking about social media, it is important to note that every current discussion around ranking influence and generating a list is considering only a slice of social media… blogs. Social media is much more than just blogs.
What if your question needed Twitter in the answer? Has a client asked you about Facebook and Myspace? Google bought Jaiku last week. Clearly Google thinks Jaiku is important, despite the fact that I doubt you’ve seen a Jaiku (or Twitter) microblog influencer list.
Are you wondering how video is affecting your brand? How does a list of the most influential blogs help you find the YouTube video about your brand that is currently exploding with viewers?
The great folly is thinking that any one single measure can or should answer all the questions we have. If your clients’ needs are diverse, then your requirements for measurement are diverse as well. You need the ability to observe the situation from multiple angles to truly understand the landscape. That is what we believe at Radian6.
We have built a flexible platform for surfacing important content, where you as the PR expert can impart your unique expertise and have the system automatically generate a landscape model that will help you answer the question you have today. Be it blog posts, influencers, tweets, videos, images, or whatever comes tomorrow (Lifestreams are cool, it could be whats next!), we are enabling you to get to the information you need.
Be the Social Media Expert.
