Analytics Is King

Is the discussion around/practice of online influence actually regressing? Identifying and then activating influencers is an important topic that deserves informed debate and the implementation of only the best tools. I actually think we have quite a bit of the former, and the latter is the gigantic black hole that we're all getting sucked into.

David Armano wrote an excellent post examining Klout, followed by Rebecca Dennison writing her own review of some of Klout's new features. Rebecca also wrote a great post looking at mPACT that you should check out. I'm not being critical of Rebecca or David because both of their reviews are great, and obviously very helpful to the person that is coming to this space for the first time.

Before we launch into the meat of the post, lets debunk a few influencer misconceptions

1. The process can be automated - The extent of the possibilities around automation begin and end with identifying outlets and writers. The actual number crunching/qualitative analysis should not be eliminated. In my experience, clients feel better about the final output when it has been scrubbed by a human.
2. Influencers are bloggers - I can't tell you how many times I see examples of "influencer lists" that are comprised entirely of bloggers. As if the entire social web centered around blogs? Have we forgotten YouTube? Forum users? Twitter users? Mainstream press? Your influencer list needs to be all encompassing otherwise you have an incomplete list.
3. Because someone has written negatively about my brand they shouldn't be in my list - This one causes a bit of a headache for me. You can learn just as much from the negative comments as the positive ones. In fact, probably more. Why eliminate these people?
4. I have to reach out to everyone on my list - One of the things I advocate all of the time is trying to come up with a list that includes people you might only listen too. Another segment that you'd be reaching out to directly, and still another that might be receiving a mass pitch. A mass pitch?! In social media?! The horror! It can work. Trust me.

There are others, but I don't want to get bogged down in the misconceptions. Rather, I'd prefer to tell you what tools I'd use if I were starting to build an influencer list from scratch. And no, just to get it out of the way, the process would not involve Klout, PeerIndex, mPACT or any tool like it. So where do I begin?

1. Google - No duh, right? This is where the process usually begins and ends. I'll develop some sort of query (that involves my client's name, some industry keywords and competitors) to start identifying outlets. Ideally, I'll start with at least 6 months worth of results (though I'd prefer 12) and just start clicking through. Yeah, it's a manual process. Yeah, it's time consuming. Yeah, trust me, it'll be worth it in the end. Oh, don't forget running similar searches in Google Groups, and Blogs
2. Listorious/Twitter Search - Both of these are invaluable resources for Twitter users. Check them both out.
3. YouTube/Flickr searches - Self-explanatory, right? But you'd be surprised how few influencer lists actually involve video bloggers. There are ton of them out there with broad reach
4. Compete/Quantcast/Alexa - Several people, including my friend Dave Fleet, have written posts identifying issues with compete data. It's true. However, obtaining traffic data for sites you don't own is generally problematic. All you can do is attempt to verify the data on multiple platforms.
5. Yahoo! Site Explorer - An excellent tool for looking at a site's indexed pages and inbound links. Both excellent barometers of overall reach
6. Microsoft Excel - I'm assuming you have this on your computer, right? Ok, moving on...
7. Blogrolls - Pretty invaluable in identifying other bloggers stemming from your initial Google searches. Use them and use them well.

Anyway, those are the tools I use to start building my lists. Does this take more time? Sure. Are my results likely to be more accurate/relevant to the client? You bet your ass. Don't give in to easy. Conduct your due dilligence.

I get asked all of the time about what analytics tools I use to do my job every day from folks who know this stuff inside and out, as well as folks just starting out in the business. My answer is usually that it really depends on the project. Sometimes I rely heavily on monitoring solutions, while other times it's mixing and matching from a bunch of different tools. However, there are a set of tools I go back to time and again. Here are some that work for me and I hope, in turn, work for you.

1. Radian6 - The people who know me best would probably call me a Radian6 fanboy. I guess there are worse things in the world, right? I've known those guys for a few years now and firmly believe they are producing the best monitoring solution on the market. There is significant debate in "listening" circles about that point, however, so if you'd prefer to use someone like Alterian I won't think less of you. They are both good tools, it's just my feeling that Radian6's is more comprehensive (maybe too comprehensive sometimes, but that's the subject of a different post). The listening tool is the building block for all other tools. It gives me a sense for who's talking about my brand, where they are talking, what are the main themes, etc... Without it, we're flying blind
2. Backtype - Backtype provides some baseline metrics on the "reach" of a particular URL. Granted, one of the metrics they provide is impressions (ugh), but the other data on tweets, clicks, Facebook shares, comments and likes more than makes up for that. Depending on how popular the link is, they'll also give you metrics on digg's and number of reddit's
3. Compete/Alexa/Quantcast - If you don't have constant access to Omniture or Google Analytics, you'll need at least one Web metrics tool. I'm kind of indifferent on which I'd use amongst these three because they are all giving me (essentially) the same metrics. I'm most interested in total visits, unique visits, time on site, percent change in site traffic, bounce rate, etc...
4. Yahoo! Site Explorer - If you are ever wondering who is linking back to your site, this is the place. Not only that, but it gives you the total number of indexed pages for a particular site. Oh, and one other thing... it allows you to download the inbound links for future use. Really cool tool.
5. Google Adwords - As I mentioned in my first post here, the intersection between social, brand.com and search is very real. Adwords gives me the most popular search terms relevant to a particular phrase that I've entered. Not only that, but it gives me information on the competition for that word, global volume, local volume and a direct link to Google Insights.
6. Google Insights - Most people have been exposed to this tool already, but Insights gives you the ability to break down search trends by category, seasonality, geography, as well as get a handle on what terms are the most popular now
7. Wordle - You may not see this as an analytics tool, but I do. We often need visual representation of the data we are collecting, and Wordle gives us a great free tool to do that.

Those are just the seven I use all of the time. What are some tools you utilize to gather data about your brand?