“I am an influencer on Twitter! "What are you basing it on?" "Well…I've passed 2,000 followers !" Let me tell you, in some cases it doesn't mean anything!
The best tool to know if an individual is an influencer is really common sense. However, it is difficult to have an overview of all Twitter accounts to let common sense guide your choice. We are therefore going to look at the criteria that can be used to find an influencer on Twitter!
We will take the example of a company that wants to send a limited number of cups, by post, to influencers. It must therefore choose its influencers correctly to maximize its chances.
TO WATCH FIRST
The evaluation of the performance of a Twitter account goes through its complete analysis. What to watch first:
- Number of subscriptions
- Number of subscribers
- Number of lists the account is a member of
This information, easy to find, is the first criteria on which to rely.
WHAT IS A GOOD NUMBER OF SUBSCRIBERS?
It will depend on the industry. Social media is very popular and will definitely have a lot more followers than other industries, like the travel industry. There is no magic number, but it can often be said that below 400 followers, the person has a relatively small audience that may not be worth targeting.
Now, if we dug a little under the surface, dropped the robot mode and looked at the real purpose of a Twitter account: interactions.
- Number of mentions
- Frequency of RTs, official or manual
- Quality of subscriptions (from robots or from the real world)
- Subscriptions/subscribers ratio
- Mentions to tweets ratio
Assessing all of this, however, can take a long time. Depending on your needs, I might just be looking at average mentions per tweet. This is important if you want to generate interactions on the network.
If your content is highly specialized, looking at the quality of listings can be a way to identify niche experts.
I mentioned the subscriptions-to-followers ratio , because that can be important in some cases. This ratio can ring a bell when it comes to subscriber acquisition. If someone has more followings than followers, they may be following a lot of people hoping to be followed back. The ratio also often expresses a certain celebrity status.
There are also tools that can greatly help you start your lists. However, I would like to urge you to be careful when using these tools . Never rely solely on numbers.
Some useful tools:
- TwitterCounter : Displays the number of followers and subscriptions over time
- Klout : Gives an index of influence on social media according to different topics
- Kred : Gives an overall influence score
- Fake Follower Check : Provides insight into how many fake followers a user has (via Duc )
Never forget to differentiate between an influencer and someone who knows how to use the tools well. There are ways to artificially increase its number of subscribers. If you look at the metrics I talked about earlier, you might be able to better define an influencer, depending on your needs.
Never forget : Twitter isn't everything. There are a lot of influential people who aren't even on Twitter. It's always important to know the areas of influence of your targets.
Twitter opens its Twitter Analytics tool to websites
Update : It looks like some accounts don't have access to this tool. Twitter does not display reasons why the feature is only available to certain accounts.
Social media “influencers”… less important than you think!
With social media taking more and more place in our daily lives, we have come to declare certain people as “influencers” . These so-called influencers dictate the rules and indicate the trends of the moment. They are the ones who are supposed to tell you what is good and what is not, in particular they would even have a certain power over the masses. However, according to eMarketer it's quite the opposite: The type of person who would be the most influential in social media would be the person with few friends, but with very strong ties.
Performance of candidates' Twitter accounts in the 2012 Quebec elections
While last week I wrote a Social Media 101 guide for candidates in the 2012 Quebec elections and yesterday I presented the Twitter accounts of the parties , here is the analysis of the Twitter accounts of the candidates, more than 238 Twitter accounts. Dated August 6, 2012.