After working on some influencer identification product reviews and stories recently, I decided it might be useful to compile a list of influencer discovery tools for your use. If I’m missing any software platforms or services in this list, please drop a comment or send me an email and I will update as needed. Consider this an ever-growing resource and bookmark it or share with your networks. I promise to update it and annotate it as needed. This list is not (yet) comprehensive. Please help me build it.
Influencer Identifcation Tools
The following software platforms and services offer the ability to identify online influencers and voices in the social media space that your company or brand may want to reach out to for your marketing efforts. We’ve tried to note general pricing and qualifications to their services but rely on the companies and readers like you to help us keep the list updated. They are listed alphabetically.
Alianzo – Blog Catalog-like blogging community tool that lists and organizes blogs, Twitter and Facebook accounts by an impact/influence algorithm. Focused on Europe and Latin America/Spanish speaking sites.
Alltop – Blog RSS aggregator organized by topic. Lists feature top blogs in each category edited by Alltop staff. Price: Free.
BackType – Offers cursory influencers from an aggregation of data from various social outposts for company pre-determined topics. Open topic search version in private beta. Price: Cursory company listings free.
BlogDash – Blogger outreach platform searches indexed bloggers and filters by Scribnia rating, Google Page Rank and Klout Score. Provides other metrics and influencer bio and contact information and allows list building. Price: Not yet listed (In Beta)
Commun.it – Twitter-based relationship management platform that indicates impact of users you are connected to. Helps prioritize influence on your Twitter account and identify who you influence.
NinjaOutreach – Prospecting and outreach software, has its own database of bloggers and influencers (Twitter/Instagram). Uses different APIs to show SEO metrics, social media followings and shares to help track how popular a blogger or influencer is. Starts at $49/month.
Empire Avenue – Social networking game structure that allows businesses to connect with individuals on what it calls “value relationships.” Fun, consumer-facing approach allows you to “buy stock” in social profiles. The system then displays relative value of individual influencers.
Fast Company Influence Project – One-time “contest” conducted by Fast Company to rank the most influential person on the web. Visual graph of 32,000+ users with larger images representing larger influence. Price: Free.
Infinigraph – Market research tool focused on defining strength of user connections to brands, affinities and social activities. Uses an algorithm to rank social connections (fans) based in influence and potential impact. Feature set includes an aggregation, curation and distribution model which helps brands find and share content with audiences. Price: $2,500 per month to start.
Klout – Score-producing, public face that measures an individual’s ability to move their networks to action. Company works with brands off-line to deliver more holistic insights about an individual’s influence. Price: Website score generation free. Company engagement requires custom pricing.
Kred – Score-producing, public face much like Klout that offers an influence score and an outreach score. Users can add off-line activities to enhance their score along with online metrics.
Listorious – A Twitter List indexing site that organizes community-produced Twitter lists into categories. Search for lists around your niche or industry and find relevant Twitter users in the subject matter. NOTE: Listorious was purchased by Muck Rack and is now folded into its journalist-PR product offering.
mPact – Dashboard shows top 10 influencers by default, but allows drill downs with no limits on what you can find. Allows competitor tracking as well and contrasts influencers in different categories. Features publicly available data on individual influencers and additional public relations/marketing aggregation information(editorial calendars, speaking opportunities in category, etc.) Price: $42-$250 per month.
Onalytica – Influencer identification and cursory CRM package out of Great Britain that claims to track and categorize conversations on Twitter and beyond. Price: No pricing available on its website.
Peer Index – Twitter influencer tool. Has a business features set to launch in early 2011. Price: Score individual handles for free. Custom business prices: Not listed.
Postrank Topics – Community manicured blog rankings by topic and based on engagement. Price: Free.
ReSearch.ly – Offering from PeopleBrowsr allows array of topics and search-based filters to identify mentions of search terms on Twitter. Allows for Twitter interaction and offers conversation metrics around topic. Price: Free trial extended when you publish a result link. $99 per month for the paid version.
Social Snap – A social media measurement software with a built in influencer identification and prioritization component.
Technorati Authority – The original influence measure, Technorati’s authority score (the green number associated with a given blog on Technorati.com) is a count of the unique sites that link to a given blog in the last six months. So comparing a list of blogs to one another, you can see which has the most unique websites connecting to it. Unfortunately, Technorati does not have an easy way to organize or filter blogs by authority score within categories, so comparisons are manual. Price: Free
Traackr – Custom topic influencer research tool. Produces dynamic (changes weekly) top-25 list in category. Research model that factors reach, resonance and relevance to produce a numeric ranking. Price: $499 per month for one topic.
TweetBig – Twitter-specific management toolset that offers a “red carpet finder” to see who has the biggest and most influential audience among your followers. Also has a follower gathering/recommendation device that suggests followers based on your keywords or topic areas.
TweetLevel – Edelman project that produces overall Twitter population list that can be filtered by influence, popularity, engagement and trust. Intended to measure a person’s importance on Twitter. Price: Free.
Twendz – Waggener Edstrom tool that identifies Twitter influencers around searched-for keywords. Price: Free.
Twinfluence – Twitter analysis offers top 50 lists in reach, velocity and social capital and offers individual Twitter account profile information. Price: Free.
Twitalyzer – Twitter analysis of network, reach and impact. Individual profile page displays a person’s Twitter network and cursory bio information. Deeper dives in paid features show influencers within a person’s network. Price: Individual plan is $4.99 per month. Business plans are $29.99 and an agency offering is there at $99.99 per month.
TwitterGrader – HubSpot’s grader softwares were originally intended to be ego plays. But the refinement of the tool for Twitter and addition of the Twitter Elite lists (which rank the top users by city, women and more) makes it a handy tool for identifying big-impact Tweet-ers.
Change Log
1/17/11 – Added eCairn
1/18/11 – Added more information about InfiniGraph
1/23/11 – Added Alianzo
4/26/11 – Added Technorati
6/15/12 – Added Social Snap, Kred and Commun.it
3/9/13 – Noted Listorious acquisition
2/17/13 – Added Onalytica
SME Paid Under
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