Writing under the influence of twitter

January 24, 2011 in marketing with 17 Comments

 

I’m currently working on a project looking at the measurement of online influence. Or is it influence online? Or is that influence of online measurement? The whole concept is hard to grasp. What value do these values and lists have?

First question, what do you measure and what does it mean or imply?

'how to win friends and influence people'
Image by bubbo-tubbo via Flickr

For example, do I have “influence” because I have almost 8700 followers as @thirstforwine on twitter, or do I have 8700 followers because I have influence?

In fact, I only have followers because a few people thought I was interesting and friendly enough that they kindly recommended me to their friends, and then these people did the same. In that case THEY have influence. I now have *some* by extension.

Some influence measurement sites/scores

If you want to look into this area, here are some sites to check out and sign up to, including my current ratings for reference and to demonstrate the variability of scores and their scales:

  • PeerIndex: I have a PeerIndex score of 55 (and an ‘Authority’ score of 45)
  • Klout: My Klout score is 66 and I’m a “Thought Leader”
  • Twitalyzer: I have an impact score of 4.3% (which puts me in the 88.8th percentile) and I’m a “Reporter”
  • PostRank: Not even sure what figures to quote, but I have 411 “Engagement Points” so far for January. Good?

What does influence mean?

I think I can encourage a certain number of people to follow links, but who are they and what are they doing? Is it just robots? Are they curious? Or am I really answering questions they have, and therefore delivering some value?

In the case of wine, should it only be measured by an ability to get bottles into consumers hands?

Influence ought to mean “creates action or change”, but how can we measure that, even just online? What many tools really look at are just a proxy for that – followers, retweets, mentions, etc.

Worst of all, are these ‘influential’ lists just self-referential? For example, the lists of ‘top blogs’ add weightings to links from other ‘top blogs’ that mean that once you are ‘in the club’ you are more likely to stay there until you make the mistake of linking to newer blogs and giving them a boost up the ladder (note; this is intended to be ironic – seems we need to be sure to qualify things these days). Once you are listed as influential, it is more likely you will be followed, retweeted, quoted, measured and interviewed and so you become more influential.

What use is it?

Once I’ve had a look at the actual rankings I will also post some thoughts on how, if at all, these measurements might be useful for anything other than stroking a few egos.

The Plan

I will be working with one of the services listed above to put together a view of Wine Influencers on Twitter, providing them with a reasonably comprehensive list of wine twitterers to review. It should be fun to plug in some names to the algorithms and see what list/order emerges and then get your feedback.

Who would you say is “most influential” in wine (online, on twitter)? How do you even define it? Leave me a note to link me to you favourite list of wine twitterers and I will do my best to get them included.

UPDATE 25 January: In writing this post I realised I had not properly signed up for PostRank analysis. I have now done so and update the line above. Firstly, it is VERY confusing. I have no idea what stats mean, what is public, what is about me, versus the blog, and how it is calculated. However, it SEEMS to be extremely powerful and FREE, so I will keep looking into it. Any recommendations or help? Do you use it?

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

About Robert: Robert McIntosh is a wine blogger and online communicator on WineConversation.com, a prolific twitterer (@thirstforwine) and an occasional contributor to wine magazines as well as speaking at wine events. Robert is co-organiser of the annual European Wine Bloggers Conference and Born Digital Wine Awards, promotes international online wine communication, and advises companies about how to engage through social media. Robert also has some trouble communicating in the third person.

All Posts by  |  Website  |  Twitter  |  Facebook  |  Share By Email
  • http://twitter.com/winewomansong Juel Mahoney

    Hi Rob,
    People I find quite influential and who are on trend (in Italy and US) are @tirebouchon and @susannacrociani (more behind the scenes, she organises twitter events but also branches out to non-trade people on twitter). Cheers, JM @winewomansong

  • Andrew

    No mention of RSS subscribers? I realise you and others now view RSS as ‘dead’ and ‘old school’ but I rely on it (not all I follow via RSS are on twitter, and their link often gets lost in the stream…). Of course not everyone uses Feedburner to get a subscriber number.

    Yep I enjoy a little ego boost when Spittoon appears high in such lists (and the corresponding droop when it doesnt); but it also means I can use that influence to garner samples, info and press trips to further improve my writings (and I guess influence). I also link out to newer blogs and other blogs as much as possible; something I note that not many people in the wine-sphere do…

    • http://thirstforwine.co.uk thirstforwine

      yes, I agree. I try to keep my wine list up to date and tweet about others’ blogs, but I have not been writing about them enough – no-one is really. The lack of wine links is a big reason why wine blogs are dropping like a stone in the rankings compared to our beer brethren.

      I don’t think RSS is dead at all, but it is being repurposed as a tool for other services rather than just as a reader option. Yes, I guess RSS could count too and maybe it is in certain algorithms (pretty sure PostRank will include it)

  • Stuart Robinson

    Hi Robert, check out your ‘whuffie’ and a piece of fiction called Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow, which deals with a future dimension in which social standing is derived from influence (whuffie).

    • http://thirstforwine.co.uk thirstforwine

      yes, forgot about ‘whuffie’ too – not heard it mentioned in a while :)

  • Anna

    I’m currently writing a similar online influence report re the UK wine industry too. I’ll be interested to compare our results! @annastorrs

  • http://twitter.com/Sedimentblog The Sediment blog

    Surely if you “influence” people to visit your blog, by Tweets which imbed a link and inspire a visit from the #wine community, that in itself is a success?

    • http://thirstforwine.co.uk thirstforwine

      true, but not in a way that matters to anyone else. There must be something better to aspire to?

  • http://www.pauljkiernan.wordpress.com Paul

    Regarding influence, I think it’s a classic case of “To him that hath, shall be given”.

    • http://thirstforwine.co.uk thirstforwine

      yes, good phrase!

  • http://postrank.com PostRank

    Hi Robert – I can help with explaining PostRank a bit more (and if questions linger you and anyone else are welcome to give me a holler – melanie@postrank.com).

    Firstly, so people don’t get further confused, there are two ways to get a PostRank Analytics account: one of those is free. You can sign up just for Analytics (http://analytics.postrank.com), which, for individuals, is $15/month. Or you can sign up for our Connect service (which helps brands and agencies develop relationships and work with bloggers), which comes with a free Analytics account. (More info here: https://analytics.postrank.com/pricing). Robert is a Connect member, so his Analytics account is free.

    Ok, so, how does PostRank work? What the system does is process all of posts for all of the sites in our system, and checks the social web for interactions with all those posts. By social web, I mean these sites and networks: http://apidocs.postrank.com/w/page/28318261/Engagement-Sources

    So you write a blog post, for example, and publish it. People read it and, ideally, are interested enough to respond or act on it. They comment, tweet, digg it, etc. All the ways people reply to, share, or organize your content online – that’s engagement.

    Now, not all types of engagement are equal. Some are more “work” and indicate rather more interest than others. For example, if I read your post and leave a thoughtful and interesting comment, that shows more engagement than simply clicking a button to vote. So we assign a number of points to each type of engagement activity, weighting them to reflect the amount of engagement. Those are engagement points.

    We tally up all the assigned points for each engagement activity, which results in an engagement score for each blog post. In Analytics, posts are displayed in list format, so you can see at a glance which among your recent posts got a lot of engagement, which didn’t do so well, etc. You can also see where posts got a lot of engagement, and whether you’re really popular on Delicious, Twitter, etc.

    Now, I’m not sure what Robert was referring to re. having “411 engagement points so far for January”. His posts in January have had a range of engagement points each, but none have that score at this point. On the Overview tab it also shows how many engagement points all your posts’ engagement activities got the day before.

    We also offer Google Analytics and FeedBurner integration, so you can see your on-site metrics (Google) and RSS-related metrics (FeedBurner) within the same dashboard, and get a 360-degree view of your content’s performance (given PostRank Analytics shows your off-site metrics).

    Now, the stats are about your site’s content and its performance with your audience, not about you, per se. That said, you can see how your site’s performance ranks against others in the space, e.g. in our topic lists (http://www.postrank.com/topic/wine — if you’ve been added) or if you add competitors to your Analytics sites. And seeing who gets the most engagement is a way of ranking influence.

    The Activity Stream and the Optimize tab in Analytics are also good ways to see who your top influencers are, i.e. who does the most to evangelize your content, and facilitates connecting with them to build those relationships as well.

    Hope that helps. Any questions – holler.

    Melanie Baker
    Community Manager, PostRank

    • http://thirstforwine.co.uk thirstforwine

      thanks – very comprehensive. I think the problem is that there are a multitude of pages, ratings, public/private areas, etc. I was referring to this figure on Connect:
      https://skitch.com/thirstforwine/rmdpr/postrank-connect

      But there are so many other figures I am rather lost, but it LOOKS impressive :)

      • http://postrank.com PostRank

        Ahh, ok. I was looking from the Analytics side. :)

        So that number (411) is the total number of engagement points your posts have accumulated in the last month (30 days). In Analytics it shows the total engagement points each post has ever gotten (which can, of course, extend well beyond a month).

  • http://vinosambiz.blogspot.com Fabio (Vinos Ambiz)

    Interesting topic! I’ve often asked myself what all this ‘influence’, ‘ranking’ etc really means, and have no clue really! So looking forward to reading your findings. I’ve used some of the sites you mention above, but I don’t know what real, practical purpose it serves! Except as a feel-good factor session, as Andrew says :)
    It would be interesting if a blogger could get some REAL measure of the ‘usefulness’ (or ‘influence’ or whatever) of his blog, ie bottles sold, contracts signed, jobs found, € $ or Pounds earned, or some other practical indicator! What I mean is, some kind of ‘quality’ measurement of your followers or friends and not just a ‘quantity’ measurement. One might have thousands of both, but what if they’re mostly robots, spammers, and/or unrelated to wine?

  • http://azeemazhar.com/ azeemazhar

    Hi Robert

    GReat post – and let’s tackle the first question do you have 8,700 followers because your are a top guy or vice versa?
    It depends what you are measuring – our take would be that the overall PeerIndex reflects a combination, but as you dig deeper into our analytics of you, you can find the underlying things that demonstrate and predict you have relevance.
    As you know, we build dozens of resonance scores for you – and I can tell that you have a resonance score of 65 on the subject of Wine (scored out of 100; and it puts you in the top 50 of the 6m profiles we hold); but a resonance score of 31 on Blogging (top 10k).
    Our sense is that resonance scores on a topic are a good indicator of where someone is likely to end up – in terms of their audience. And resonance scores are calculated in such a way that doesn’t explicitly take into account audience – good on you!

    What does that say about you? The overall score tells us you have substantial authority; the topic scores tell us that your passion is wine and people really care for what you have to say on the subject.

  • Pingback: wineconversation.com » Blog Archive » Born Digital for the best online wine content

  • Pingback: Measuring influence or communication skills | wineconversation.com