14 Communication World • January–February 2011 www.iabc.com/cw

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www.iabc.com/cw Communication World • January–February 2011 15

Theguesswork of

determininginfluence

Traffic, followers, likes and subscribers:

All are important, but none are definitive

in determining online influence

by Jason Falls

GETTY IM

AG

ES

Identifying influencers is critical for communicationprofessionals for many reasons. It makes blogger ormedia outreach for your organization or clients moreefficient, helps spread the word about your news or programs to more people faster, and helps you build

relationships with the online voices that have the biggestimpact on the industry in question. Defining which influential voices to target is one of themost complex problems professional communicators face.The digital world offers millions of ways to dissect data and produce lists of influencers and mavens in a givenindustry or field of study, but there remains no easy ordefinitive way to rank bloggers, social network mavens and

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even digital journalists with any consistency. Public relations firms, social media companiesand even advertising agencies have tried theirhand at influencer marketing in the online worldwith mixed success. When Izea, the pay-per-postmarketing firm, launched its Kmart outreachprogram in late 2008, it identified a number ofinfluential bloggers who would accept paymentfor a post about holiday shopping at the retailer.Izea made a smart move in identifying ChrisBrogan as a target, but not because of the hun-dreds of thousands of readers on his marketingand social media blog, ChrisBrogan.com. It wassmart because Brogan had just launched Dad-O-Matic, a blog focused on dads. His Kmart postfeatures a video of him shopping at Kmart withhis two children. But Izea also used Aaron Brazell(a.k.a. Technosailor), another influential market-ing and technology blogger, for the Kmart pro-gram. That choice left some scratching theirheads, since Brazell blogs about marketing andtechnology, not shopping for holiday presents orbeing a dad. Postrank, which measures blogs based on anengagement score determined by an algorithmthat measures bookmarks, comments, inboundlinks and more, allows its users to curate andmanage public lists by topic. But a recent reviewof the top travel blogs in Postrank’s systemshowed that the top entry was Digg.com, not atravel blog at all. Even the influence platform Klout, which billsitself as “The Standard for Influence,” has its flaws.Malcolm Gladwell, arguably one of the mostinfluential minds of our time, has a Klout score of25 (on a scale of 100, with higher scores indicatinga “wider and stronger sphere of influence”). Thescores are tallied using Twitter accounts, andGladwell has stated that he does not use Twitter,although accounts have been established in hisname. If they hadn’t been, he would technicallyhave a Klout score of zero. Ragan Communi -cations CEO Mark Ragan—certainly not some-one to shrug off in the communication world—has a Klout score of 45. With no disrespect toMark, who would you rather have writing aboutyour product or service? But set the services aside for a moment. How doyou determine who is influential in the onlineworld, and why? Is it the writer with the most traf-

fic? If so, then traditional journalists at magazinesand newspapers with large web presences are farmore important than most bloggers. Is it reachthrough social connections? Then Twitter follow-ers and Facebook fans matter. Is it whether or notinfluential people are influenced by them? Andhow on Earth do you measure that? “Influence comes in lots of sizes—small, medium, large, extra-large,” says ChristopherBarger, director of social media for GeneralMotors. “If an online influencer has only 500 reg-ular readers or followers, but to those 500 he orshe has the credibility of a much bigger player,then who are we to ignore that influence? If 50 or70 of those followers will test-drive a car becausehe or she says it’s a good car, that’s just as good tome as getting 50 or 70 from someone with a big-ger audience. And in some cases, those withsmaller audiences have even more sway over theirreaders’ opinions precisely because their commu-nity is smaller and more tightly knit.” The problem with influencer marketing seemsto be that the social media marketing influencersare eye candy. If Darren Rowse of ProBlogger.netlinks to you or mentions you, traffic spikes, yourfollowers go up, and you feel like you’ve done a

When considering

the data, look at both

qualitative and quantita-

tive information, but also

factor in some good

old common sense.

Chris Brogan’s blog Dad-O-Matic reaches out todads, making it a smart choice for Kmart marketers.

16 Communication World • January–February 2011 www.iabc.com/cw

www.iabc.com/cw Communication World • January–February 2011 17

great job of influencer marketing in social media.But Rowse influences other bloggers and mar-keters, not people who buy lawn equipment. Ifyou sell lawn equipment, you just got a big, gift-wrapped box of nothing. The followers areirrelevant to what you’re trying to accomplish. So how do you measure influence, or at leastcompare and contrast potential blogs, web sites ormavens for your communication outreach—andnot drive yourself nuts? First, understand that for now, there isn’t a per-fect system. Consider all the data available, andidentify the pieces that are most important to you,your audience and your product or service. Moreimportant, when considering the data, look atboth qualitative and quantitative information, butalso factor in some good old common sense.

Quantitative dataFrom simple measures, such as using Compete.com to know in general what kind of traffic agiven blog or web site attracts, to complex com-binations of metrics like Postrank’s, there aredozens of ways to measure and rank bloggers,journalists and other online personalities. Nonealone are perfect assessments.

Even web site traffic measures are inconsis-tent. Compete.com tells us my web site,SocialMediaExplorer.com, had 63,184 uniquevisitors in September. Quantcast, whose measur-ing code is embedded on the site, says that num-ber was 27,600. Google Analytics (also directlymeasuring visitors to the web site) says it had38,884 unique visitors. So how do we know which numbers to trust? We don’t. What we can do, however, is pick oneor two measures of a blog’s or web site’s impactand track its numbers over time. Then we can usethe same service to compare other blogs. There are also the influence-focused tools.Postrank wants to rank blogs based on the grayarea of engagement, as opposed to Technorati,whose authority score is simply the number of different domains that link to a given blog over asix-month time frame. But Postrank’s topics sec-tion is community manicured, which is to say youhave to prune the results like a weed garden. Klout uses a 100-point scoring method to indi-cate how influential a person is based on his or heronline influence for certain topics. Originally tiedexclusively to Twitter, Klout has always been some-what incomplete in the data it analyzes, but itkeeps adding more features so that it ultimatelywill be able to say, “X person is more influentialthan Y person.” Klout’s goal, according to CEOJoe Fernandez, is to allow you to predict the valueof a person in driving a number of clicks, com-ments, likes or retweets to your content. For now,if someone doesn’t have a huge following onTwitter but is a very influential blogger or journal-ist, Klout won’t show that that person has muchinfluence. The service favors the social-media-savvy as influencers. It’s not that Klout scores are irrelevant. It’s thatthey are one measure in a myriad of metrics youcan (and should potentially) consider when deter-mining who is influential for the audience you’rehoping to reach.

Qualitative dataPerhaps the most overlooked factor in bloggeroutreach or influencer targeting comes fromactually reading the content of the person inquestion. It’s not enough to read the last two orthree posts just to find out that the person blogsfrequently, gets a fair number of comments and

ProBlogger is a good channel for reaching otherbloggers, but not necessarily ideal for your product.

To really find out if

someone is going to be

influential, read his or

her posts dating back

weeks or months.

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can spell. To really find out if someone is goingto be influential, read his or her posts datingback weeks or months. Some things I like to look for are:

● Does this person write or comment aboutbrands or companies like mine?

● Is he or she respectful of brands?● Are the advertisements on the site real sponsor-

ships or affiliate networks and Google ads?● Has he or she ever written about my product,

company or industry specifically?● If so, has he or she been fair?● Would my ideal customers or audience enjoy

reading this blog? Why?● How many comments does the average post

have, and what percentage are from the samethree or four people?

Having a feel for the content’s tone and direc-tion can tell me a lot about whether a person isgoing to have an impact on my potential cus-tomers. It’s not always about the quantity of peo-ple reading the content, but the audience’s level ofengagement and intelligence. You can’t judge howsmart an audience might be through GoogleAnalytics. Sometimes you have to experience thecontent to know. For blogger outreach programs, Barger says thenumbers are important, but not more so than thecreative idea a blogger can deliver to his or heraudience for the GM brand. “In an ideal state, we’re able to find a balance,”Barger explains. “The first consideration is theaudience and what experience they might share orenjoy as a result of an outreach. After that, thehope is that both the brand and the blogger areable to find benefit in the program. But the firstthought is always the audience.” Besides, going after numbers just for numbers’sake leaves out the potential for that smaller-impact blogger to one day become a golden cow.As influential blogger and marketing maven LizStrauss has said, “Everybody has the potential tobecome ‘somebody.’ Don’t ignore them.”

Common sensePardon the personal example, but I love DietPepsi. I’ve told Bonin Bough, PepsiCo’s director ofsocial media, that I love Diet Pepsi. I’ve told himI’m the biggest fan and consumer of that brand

that he could possibly find on the planet. But hedoesn’t target me for Pepsi outreach. Why not? Ihave a fair number of blog readers and Twitter fol-lowers, contribute to quality publications likeCommunication World and speak at conferencesaround the world. Why doesn’t he target me? Because I don’t write about soft drinks. For that matter, I don’t typically write aboutconsumer product goods or the silly promotionsthat go along with them. I write about socialmedia marketing, public relations and digitalcommunications. Fan or not, it doesn’t makesense for Diet Pepsi to target me. But common sense needs to be applied to thevarious measures of influence available as well.Fast Company magazine conducted a grand influ-ence experiment recently, challenging people tosign up and pimp themselves to measure who hadthe most impact in the online world. Web trafficmanipulator extraordinaire and ShoeMoneyMedia founder Jeremy Shoemaker “won” theproj ect’s competition, proving that those whoknow how to “game the system” still win. Is heinfluential? You bet he is. But how accurate is acontest when the participants actively campaignto win? It’s the difference in who wins the compe-tition for America’s Got Talent and who is themost talented person in America. The two people,with all due respect to the talent show winners,are seldom one and the same. Fast Company senior editor Mark Borden, theengineer behind the Influence Project, says defin-ing online influence is simple, but agrees thatmeasuring it is not so. “The key to measuring [online] influence isidentifying the people who can activate their fol-lowers,” Borden says. “To take a passive group ofpeople and make them do something, not justclick on a site—that’s influence.” Borden’s article introducing Shoemaker andrecapping the Influence Project, though, summedup the problem with measuring that influence:“Measuring influence precisely,” he wrote,“remains elusive. Anything can happen online.And everything will.” And that’s just the online piece of it all. If I hada choice between Shoemaker (online influencer)and Gladwell (off-line influencer) talking aboutmy brand, I’d pick Gladwell almost every time.Would you? ●

You can’t judge

how smart an audience

might be through Google

Analytics. Sometimes

you have to experience

the content to know.

about the authorJason Falls is a digital marketing

and communication strategist,consultant and speaker. His blog,SocialMediaExplorer.com, is con-sistently ranked in the top 20 ofthe prestigious Advertising Age

Power 150. He welcomes yourfeedback, comments and ques-tions via Twitter (@JasonFalls).

“Sometimes your

biggest voices are the

ones next to you.”

www.iabc.com/cw Communication World • January–February 2011 19

When targeting influencers, consider existing relationships

At the National Center for Family Literacy ( NCFL), anonprofit organization focused on multigenerationalliteracy programs, identifying influencers is old habit.Identifying online influencers adds a new dimensionto the 21-year-old organization, but it doesn’tchange two fundamental facts, according to NCFLVice President EmilyKirkpatrick. “Reaching out topromote our missionand programs hasalways been about rela-tionships and hasalways been biggerthan just media,” shesays. “When we iden -tify influencers to helpget the word out aboutwhat we’re doing, westart with our internalaudiences and moveoutward. Sometimesyour biggest voices are the ones next to you.” With the organization’s recent launch ofWonderopolis (http://wonderopolis.org), a destinationweb site intended for parents and children to ignitelearning in the home through daily “Wonders” writ-ten by the NCFL or contributed by users, Kirkpatrickused a three-pronged influencer approach. First came those closest to NCFL. Funding partnerBetter World Books featured Wonderopolis on itsweb site and highlighted the effort in its widely reade-mail newsletter. Best-selling author MonicaHolloway, who spoke at NCFL’s 2010 national confer-ence, got a personal pitch from Kirkpatrick thatresulted in the author devoting a page on her website to the effort. She also posts links on herFacebook and Twitter pages weekly. Next was some good old-fashioned online legwork. “I was scouring the Internet, looking for parent-ing web sites and networks of parenting web sitesaround the country, and came upon Macaroni Kid,”Kirkpatrick says. “It’s a network of parenting sitesthat has local chapters. I reached out to one andthey loved Wonderopolis. We’re working with them now to help spread the word through theirnetwork of sites.”

Then there was the third piece: reaching out toinfluential bloggers with some wonder-capturing collateral. “We put together ‘Wonder Jars’ full of toys and fungadgets based on a given influencer’s children’s gen-der and age,” Kirkpatrick says. “It was important to

identify the right influ-encers simply becausewe didn’t have a hugebudget to send one toevery blogger wethought was influen-tial.”

Kirkpatrick and herstaff established crite-ria and prioritized theiroutreach based on anumber of factors,including frequency ofcontent, polish andprofessionalism of theblog, and whether the

author had multiple channels through which to reachhis or her audience. “We looked at numbers like fans and followers, but also for factors like whether or not they had ane-newsletter and what kind of content was on theirFacebook Fan Page,” Kirkpatrick says. “We also keep aclose eye on parenting magazines, which are startingto feature parenting blogs. If the traditional mediaare identifying them as worth a read, then eyeballsare going to follow.” NCFL knows, however, that existing relationshipsare often more powerful than new ones, regardlessof how big a new contact’s audience is. “In the end,”Kirkpatrick says, “it’s always about the relationshipyou have with the influencer. We certainly want toidentify and build more, but sometimes you do wellby starting with the ones you already have.” While the Wonderopolis effort and outreach isrecent and ongoing, NCFL has a clear set of measuresin mind beyond just web site traffic or online men-tions. “We want to build a legion of friends ofWonderopolis who are continually serving as infor-mal ambassadors for us,” says Kirkpatrick.

—J.F.

Disclosure: Jason Falls serves on NCFL’s board of directors.