I have the pleasure of lending NateRiggs.com to Cheryl Harrison for this guest post. Cheryl has over 10 years of experience using social media tools, going way back to the days of AIM chat rooms, LiveJournal and GeoCities.
Cheryl is an agency-reared marketer, a member of the Columbus Yelp Elite (where she has written over 2oo reviews of local hotspots). She has been an active blogger at BeingCheryl.com since early 2008, and works as the Tactical Lead at Social Business Strategies.
Would you like to be a guest blogger on NateRiggs.com? If so, go ahead and submit your post idea here. I'll be in touch.
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If you're on Twitter, you've likely got an agenda.
"I want to sell more products or services."
"I want to make people laugh."
"I want to look smart."
"I want to meet new people."
While the motives are very different, accomplishing any of them requires some level of influence - people paying attention to what you're saying.
Here are a few ways you can gauge your current Twitter influence:
1) Number of followers
Yeah, yeah, I know. This number can be spammed, scammed, faked and forged about a million different ways. However, this number still needs to be taken into consideration, because sheer reach does effect how influential your content can become (to some degree).
2) Number of lists
I give this Twitter metric a bit more weight, the reason being that you can safely assume that most of the people who have listed you are actually paying attention to you. Personally, I have 7 lists, 5 public and 2 private, all of which I am significantly more likely to check than the general stream of all tweets. In addition to analyzing the NUMBER of lists you are on, the name and description of the lists you are on can show you how your peers view you and for what you are influential.
3) Klout
Klout is a service that measures a Twitter profile's influence, using an in-depth algorithm. Klout tells you what type of Twitter user you are (based on how often you share, have conversations, etc.), what users you influence the most (and who influences you), which topics you discuss most, how engaged your network is with you, how often your posts are retweeted, and a few other factors.
4) Tweet Level
Another service that analyzes a Twitter profile, Tweet Level gives users a numeric ranking to influence, popularity, engagement and trust (in addition to pretty good explanations of what the numbers mean). It also stacks you next to a few of your followers, both those ranking higher and lower than you, for comparison.
5) Tweet Stats
Tweet Stats allows you to view what day of the week and what time of the day you post the most often. What does that have to do with influence? Let's say most of your posts occur early in the morning (EST). It's safe to say that your influence in other time zones is virtually nonexistent. These are just numbers to give you a starting point from which to benchmark. A low score or list count does not necessarily mean you are not influential.
The best way to increase and maintain your influence on Twitter is to have real conversations with people and create value for them. Even if you only have 10 followers, be influential to those 10 people.
Who are some of the people you think are influential on Twitter?
