Twitter was the first social media network that made influencers more reachable. It has never been easier to pitch to someone who can make an impact (and thus become influential as well). Knowing who influences your potential customers and winning their trust is gold… yet it’s not easy.
The first step in influencer marketing is identifying those influential people who are already interacting with you: Those are your most effective targets because you have already managed to get their attention.
Below are 7 free tools I am using to interact with influencers who know me or are familiar with what I do.
Find Twitter Influencers Interacting with Your Content
1. Who Tweeted Me
Influence measure: Number of followers
Who Tweeted Me is a new tool from Hubspot that finds all people who tweeted your pages and sorts them by number of followers. You can thank them with one click as well:
2. Topsy
Influence measure: Topsy influence
Topsy is another good tool to try here especially since its browser bookmarklet has made it so easy to get the data: Topsy Trackbacks (to install, simply drag it to your browser bookmarks toolbar) – simply click it when you are reading the page you want to analyze and you’ll be taken to Topsy results. Now scroll through results until you see “Influential” or “Highly Influential” flags:
Find Twitter Influencers Interacting with You
3. Commun.it
Influence measure: Ratio of followers / following
Commun.it is an absolutely awesome tool for keeping track of Twitter users who have recently interacted with you:
- You will see the list of *recent* interactions with Twitter influencers.
- You will be able to see if you interacted back (track “unreplied status”).
- You will see if you follow that Twitter influencer.
- You will be able to load more information on each Twitter influencer in the next column.
- You can rate results by “Highest rating” to see MOST influential users who have ever interacted with you.
- You will be able to see how much impact each of the influencer’s tweets made (number “interactions” of the tweet = replies + retweets).
That’s one of the most robust influencer-management Twitter tools I have ever used.
4. Klout
Influence measure: Klout score
New Klout “Moments” feature is another interactions manager you need to look into. You can control which “Klout” score users who have recently interacted with you have.
You can interact with your influencer’s interactions (I know that sounds funny, by the way) by replying (e.g. to thank) and retweeting right from the Klout page:
5. Kred
Influence measure: Kred score
Kred is another free tool that will list your recent interactions and sort them by its own score called “Kred.” To thank users you can “Kred” them:
Find Twitter Influencers Following You
6. Friend or Follow
Influence measure: Number of followers
Friend or Follow is an interesting tool that, among other features, grabs all your “fans” (people who follow you but who you are not following back) and sorts by the number of followers. You can follow them back right from that page as well:
I like it that it shows “verified icon” overlaying the Twitter avatar which makes it easier to find “real” influencers following you.
7. Fruji
Influence measure: Number of followers
Fruji is another great option here. What I like most about this tool is that it breaks your followers into groups by the number of followers. Another cool thing is the YAS Factor (You Are Special), indicating a higher chance of that person noticing your tweets.
What other free tools are you using to interact with Twitter influencers in your network?
Thanks Ann for sharing this information with us. I have tried few of this tools but now i will check remaining one as well.
Very useful list, Ann – I’ve been looking into some of these tools lately.
Question: any ideas on tools analyzing Google+ influencers?
Not that I am aware of right now but definitely something to look into! I wish Google+ provided developers with API access to rightfully access that information!
Thanks, Ann! Have you tried Cyfe yet? We currently use it for tracking who our Twitter influencers are.
I clearly need to revisit Cyfe to see what it can now do! Thanks for the head-ups!
This is also a very good tool: http://followerwonk.com/
The main problem here is these tools are primarily basing “influence” on follower count, social amplification and activity. That’s not influence; it’s popularity and share of voice.
Do you know of any tool that measures influence properly?
Good article Ann. I use a handful of these tools myself, but agree with Danny in that these platforms primarily only look at numbers of followers and amplification. A user could have a million followers, but if only 2000 of them are active, then the perceived influence is obviously greatly diminished.
Also, I agree with Peter – Cyfe is fantastic. Well worth the investment to go Pro. Being able to consolidate all of the analytics streams into one dashboard – priceless!
Hi Ann, would you like to give a try to webfluenz? We offer influence score for sources from 7 different channels including blogs, microblogs, networking sites, forums, videos, news and images. One can get influencers from Twitter or from across the social media channels. Do let me know if you would like to explore our tool. I would be happy to give you a demo.
Rachana (Marketing and Communications Lead) Webfluenz
I hope there comes a day when quality matters more than quantity. In the end, I think we are all better off with authenticity than with the flood of low-quality information.
Bottom line, there is no quick and easy way to get traffic to your site other than writing good articles on a consistant basis. If a traffic scheme seems sounds to good to be true it most probably is.
One can get influencers from Twitter or from across the social media channels. Do let me know if you would like to explore our tool. I would be happy to give you a demo.
great list – I’ve used many Twitter tools and Tweriod isn’t one I’ve come across before so I’ll have to check it out. Another free Twitter stats tool worth checking out is socialbearing(dot)com – it has many features found in the tools above but different in the way it displays, filtiers and orders tweets and handles.
I only knew about Klout. Will surely check other tools listed in the post.
This is an interesting list. I’ll definitely look into some of these.However, It seems Klout is most famous among all of them. Thank you Ann 🙂
Used commun, It was good.
Will try the rest very soon when i get time.
Thank you this is helpful tool for my brand and I’m twitter user so i would love to connect with this type of influencers.
Hi buddy,
Great, Seriously This post was damn awesome, One thing that strikes me the most is your style of writing… Whoa, you explain kinds of stuff so elegantly, I could understand the concept behind this very well just by reading it once.
Thanks for sharing this wonderful article, I definitely will share it on social media platforms.
The main problem here is these tools are primarily basing “influence” on follower count, social amplification and activity. That’s not influence; it’s popularity and share of voice.
Great Article. Really Helpful and Informative. Thanks for sharing it with us. Appreciate it
Excellent Post! I used to twitter but after read this post i will sure use these tools …. thanks again.
I’m using Commun.it and it really helpful for me. These tools help to get more insight about your profile and you can easily connect with right audience. The best feature I like is the recommendation this tool provide to unfollow people with less or no followers.