I read a post on ConversationAgent about mPACT influencer platform, much the same stuff that Gary Lee wrote for my book and that I used for my presentation in London at #socialpr last week, but she adds a point at the bottom which is interesting to me.
".. Agencies and consultancies have a couple of options: they can either go down the road of proprietary tool development, or they will need to partner/adopt a software robust enough out of the box to allow for an additional layer of intelligence delivered with their strategy."
I think proprietary tool development is going to be a tough road - but if I'd put money into this at all, it would be in the author research/media database. As I mentioned in my last post, online influence and offline influence are entirely different, in most cases, and the list that Klout shows, or even mPACT (though it is far better than Klout) is still a reflection of online influence while most PR/Comms people are more familiar with offline influencers - people they already think are influential on a subject - the two lists are usually going to be different - and someone has to reconcile them (assemble a master database).
Interestingly enough, there's a new influencer platform launching at SWSX called SocMetrics, according to ReadWriteWeb:
SocMetrics, a startup that ranks influencers according to topic, has come up with an "Influencers Guide" to the top 25 parties at this year's SXSW that could help guarantee you run into the folks you're looking for.
"...SocMetrics ranks individuals according to their influence in a particular niche, using three factors - peers, topicality and content. (Read more about SocMetrics particular blend of analytics on its site.)"
So, it sounds like if you want to find influencers at SouthBy who like EggCreams, SocMetrics might be the way to go ... too bad I'm not going. Maybe next year, once my book is out.
HootSuite just launched it's own Social Analytics Platform - a lot to like here though I am not a user of HootSuite - so the question for me is ... if your not a user of the product, does the platform still make sense for you? On the other hand, if you are a user - this is more of a reason to use HootSuite instead of a social media monitoring platform such as Radian6 or Sysomos .. hmmm. I wonder how this all will play out of the next year - guess you'll need to read my book to find out, coming out in August.
HootSuite Social Analytics from HootSuite on Vimeo.
Oh, there's a new FourSquare - Version 3.0 that came out yesterday - have to play with it.
And The BrandBuilder has a nice post about humanizing business and Gary Vee - need to read it - guess I'm going to have to buy both books - Gary's and Oliver's on Social Media ROI - I hope they get mine when it come out in August.
No more time for any links today - will store them up for my next journal post.