Influence is a word thrown around like confetti these days. Yet just as there is no homogeneous audience in a social media world, there is no homogeneous influencer.
So those launching social PR or marketing initiatives need to know more – precisely who is influential about what, to whom, and in what context?
However, faced with shiny new topic, a place to start is needed.
To find and prioritize who, of millions of bloggers, to begin to engaging with, follow these steps:
- Find relevant bloggers (Try Google Blog Search, Blog lists in the category, these social media tools, Followerwonk to search Twitter and then check the blog rolls of good ones)
- Record for each blogger: Awards / List membership, Google Page Rank, Twitter Followers, Klout and PeerIndex (Bear in mind there is ongoing debate about how reliable a measure Klout and PeerIndex are, but they can at least serve as a comparative indicator)
- Prioritize based on the overall picture (Make notes and don’t rely on one measure alone. If there is time and the blog is very active, you could make more in-depth ethnographic observations on participation occuring)
- After launching the campaign measure referrals back to your target URL – to ascertain which blogs are bringing most traffic /are most goal-achieving
More on brand engagement with bloggers from Eric Schwartzman, including stats from the 2011 Technorati bloggers survey:
Digital confetti image by Frankief
Item cross-posted from Mariam’s blog
