Marketing on Twitter is largely about influence, unless you simply want to use it as a customer service channel. You either want to co-opt people who are influential on the platform, or become influential yourself.
Some people think that influence on Twitter can be determined simply by looking at the number of followers a person has, but this is crude – you have no idea how that person grew their follower base, to what extent people actually pay attention to what they are tweeting about, or how many of their followers are active. Another approach is to survey other Twitter users in your target segment about how you or others influence them, but this will be subjective and time-consuming. So the most viable approach I’ve found is to use analytics tools.
One of the best Twitter analytics tools I’ve yet used is called Klout. It measures your influence, or “Klout” on Twitter. I found the output, the KloutScore fascinating and insightful, so I wanted to know what variables they use to get their results.
Influence on Twitter, according to Klout, can be derived from the following variables:
Engagement
o How diverse is the group that @ messages you?
o Are you broadcasting or participating in conversation?
Reach
o Are your tweets interesting and informative enough to build an audience?
o How far has your content been spread across Twitter?
Velocity
o How likely are you to be retweeted?
o Do a lot of people retweet you or is it always the same few followers?
Demand
o How many people did you have to follow to build your count of followers?
o Are your follows often reciprocated?
Network Strength
o How influential are the people who @ message you?
o How influential are the people that retweet you?
Activity
o Are you tweeting too little or too much for your audience?
o Are your tweets effective in generating new followers, retweets and @ replies?
So, you may be wondering how you can raise your level of influence. Well, according to Klout, it’s simple:
Just use Twitter on a regular basis, say interesting things and engage with people and your score will inevitably start to go up.
To that I’d also add: use Twitter analysis tools to help you understand where you could perform better!
