How do you define social media “influence”?
The best way to define influence is: the ability to get someone to take an action that they might not have otherwise taken without suggestion or persuasion.
Social Media influence can be explained in a number of different ways, from barely understood and commonly used scoring mechanisms like Klout, Kred and Peer Index, to something much more substantial like the ability to attain a meaningful result through the activation of an audience. Rather than look to deeply into the “social influence” ranking sites, it’s probably more useful to understand the latter.
True influence is measured against specific results. If you want to influence people on social media you must:
- have their attention;
- be able to get them to DO something.
If your goal is fundraising, it makes sense to define your influence by how much money you can raise via social media channels.
If you goal is to increase downloads of a particular app, define your influence by the change in app downloads from social media channels.
Social Media influence is the same as any other type of influence; it’s about getting people to take action.