The Skinny on Brand Buzz

Posted by Adam on January 30, 2011

Influencers are exactly the kinds of people brands want on their side, since even a few of these clued-up comms types can prove a boon – or a thorn in the side – for brands mixing it with social media.

A bunch of outfits have released monitoring tools for tracking down these influencers across the blogosphere, which brands can use as part of their social media strategies. But which product really cuts it? SM agency Fresh Networks decided to find out, testing a raft of these implements to determine their success at identifying influencers and publishing the results in a new report, Social Media Influencers 2010.

Cunningly disguised as baby food brand managers, Fresh Networks’ researchers set up a trial for each tool in which they tried to ID so-called ‘mummy bloggers’, who’d crop up across social networks giving recommendations about organic baby food. The monitoring tools tested were found to excel in different areas. For example, some of the tools did best when finding influencers hanging out in certain locations. These included Brandwatch, which uses web crawlers to track the big-hitters on forums, and Radian6, which came up with a large percentage of Twitter-based results and ranked them on a number of metrics according to the client’s needs.

Other tools focused instead on delivering results to users in a visually useful manner. Social Radar from Infegy mines a huge array of posts to give the lowdown on social media via a ‘Visualizer’ tool. This feature allows users to compare sources, analyse their relationships on-screen using graphics and then assign them to a list for checking later. Scout Labs meanwhile, comes up trumps in the video and image sector, turning up plenty of top-quality YouTube results, for example.

Other tools specialised in delivering a service no others provided. For instance, Canadian-based Sysomos and its Media Analysis Platform allow users to get the full picture about an influencer, with the tool’s results displaying the influencer’s number and kind of followers, as well as giving users access to blog comments.

So, when it comes to influencer monitoring tools, then, it isn’t as simple as who’s best, since monitoring tools can be put to different objectives. Some are best simply at finding key websites rather than individuals, for instance. If there’s a conclusion to be taken from the trail, it’s that while plenty of these tools are powerful enough, most need a human on hand to partake in the search, or to validate results for maximum effectiveness.

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