Recently, AdAge’s Media Guy Simon Dumenco wrote a great article on social influence, highlighting valid points for us to reflect upon as the industry is creating and shaping social media metrics. Specifically, are we - as marketers - under the influence of “influence scores”?

Across the industry, “influence-grading” is shaping the course of social media ROI. We’re more and more interested in the value influencers provide to identify ways in which we can reward our biggest advocates. In doing so, we’re redefining what it means to be an “influencer” and acting as educators on how “influence” is calculated.

Influencers can be defined in many ways, such as:

1. Having a high number of followers
2. Having a high number of mentions (discussing a topic the most frequently)
3. Actively influencing an audience (to take some action)
4. Having the ability to influence audiences when engaged with the brand

At PeopleBrowsr, we define influencers as people who have the potential to help a brand spread their message and engage audiences.

We help brands leverage their Champion audiences by identifying potential influencers.

For example, @_DonDraper is an influencer for Mad Men because his followers are discussing Mad Men. If Mad Men wants to influence an active audience, they can engage @_DonDraper as a brand advocate for Mad Men and leverage his hyper-targeted well-receptive audience.

In reference to the article and the relevancy of certain identified influencers:

@audi_a1 has an influential blog, with a large percentage of followers discussing Audi. We rely on relevancy, connectedness and number of friends who are discussing the brand to determine influencer scores.

@JBiebsBoy has a large amount of friends who talk about American Idol. Effectively engaged, he’s extremely influential to his followers, who are also discussing American Idol right now.

@JimBeamFans has a lot of engaged followers talking about Maker's Mark - and has the ability to influence on behalf of the brand. In this case, there is potential for making him an advocate of the brand.

For us at PeopleBrowsr, “influencers” are those with relevance, who have the highest number of followers discussing the same interest, brand or topic. We focus on connectedness along the interest graph to find influencers and champions.

We invite AdAge, and the industry, to join us in the discussion surrounding social influence and welcome your comments here or tweet us @PeopleBrowsr.

Are marketers under the influence of influence?