Why Influence is Bliss but Not Popularity

Both Brian Solis‘ statements are very true but what is this rarity really? ‘Influence’ is one of, if not THE holy grail of social media. In plain English, social influence: it is the ability for a brand to make people do things they want them to do through using social tools.

It is defined in the same way as in real life; i.e. the ability to effect a change in behavior in another person, intentionally or unintentionally, as a result of the way the changed person perceives themselves in relationship to the influencer. Except that this influence exerts itself online.

Thus the higher level of social influence a brand has, the more ROI it will extract from its social activities; i.e.not only have people act upon what’s asked of them but have them further spread the request or even happily ‘work’ on that brand’s behalf.This is why it’s not only important to have a large audience and provide it with value but also to engage it, to be viewed as approachable and personable so that the audience can relate back, be influenced as well as have influential people on its side.

A level of social influence is calculated by factoring in different elements which vary depending on who you talk to. Klout is one of the forerunners in the field of Twitter influence measurement (they recently raised $5 million), defines it as a score over 100 that combines the following 3 factors:

1. “True Reach” which is the size of the “engaged audience” size: total audience minus spamming and inactive accounts, overlaps of friends between accounts, among others
2. “Amplification probability” which is the likelihood the brand’s content will be spread and acted upon: consists mainly of retweets and @ mentions
3. “Network Influence” Klout uses this to basically reinject its own sauce into the equation and measures how influential are the people who follow, retweet, mention, list, … the brand.

You can see more details about your current Klout score. For context you can check FasTake’s Klout score details, which I’ve been nursing over the past year. Good news is that Klout provides very helpful hints to improve and don’t forget to refer back to this excellent article from @EFulwiler, I previously shared.

You can also see more details about the KScore calculation. There are others that dabble in this field but this one is the most prominent.

So next time you hear “Klout Score”, think: size + reach + entourage. Keep this equation in mind as you go about your daily activities as well as they do encompass the elements that drive your social activities if you are looking to generate actual ROI from it.

But is Klout the ultimate way to measure influence? What’s been your experience ? Have you used other scoring systems?