A. Cotweet
What’s awesome: Web-based social media engagement, management and reporting solution that helps companies of all sizes engage, track and analyze conversations about their brands across the most popular and influential social communities today, Twitter and Facebook.
Not so awesome: There can be issues with lag time in Tweets being posted and there is a lack of autofill of Twitter names for tagging in tweets and hashtags.
Companies that use it: Whole foods
Price: Standard for $600 or $1500/month for the Enterprise Edition (unlimited users, unlimited accounts). This is what I’ve read through other sources. The website does not tell exact prices unless you consult a sales agent.
B. Radian6
C. Tweetdeck
D. Seesmic
E. Klout
Twitter influence of an individual is not just about the number of followers that he or she has. Is it ever that simple? Klout has a cool set of algorithms they use to calculate the influence someone has on Twitter, which includes the ability of a Twitter user to “make people act.” Can someone with 500,000 followers make you retweet and mention more? You’d think so, right? Not necessarily.
For example, actor Ashton Kutcher has over 6 million followers, but it doesn’t mean he has high Twitter influence. More likely than not, people who just Tweet and do not mention or retweet others, will not be retweeted or mentioned either. In addition, their topics discussed on Twitter are more likely to become trends. So how do you figure out if you have amazing and astounding Twitter Influence (other than checking your “Klout” — because you know you already have)? Keep reading…!
Twitalyzer: A great analyzing tool to help you determine the influence you have in the Twitterverse. It measures a person’s (or brand’s) influence via their followers, references by others, retweets and others retweeting their posts. Thus, it’s not just about the number of followers but a bunch of metrics which together allow Twitalyzer to come to your “influence” percentage. Don’t be disheartened if it’s not as high as you had hoped. It doesn’t mean you aren’t “influential’ in your twitter circle. However, it is awesome to see who you can influence, who influences you, and other great analysis that comes along with this tool. If I am promoting my brand via my personal Twitter account, it’s important for me to know what my influence is on the Twitter community, and why my percentage is that high or low. Then I can analyze who I am able to influence and use that to my advantage when building awareness and/or working on a social media strategy for a product/service/brand. Twitalyzer has 3 pricing plans ranging from $4.99 to 99.99/month.
TweetLevel: A tool that gives your “tweet level” based on your “importance” which gives you 4 result metrics including your influence, popularity, engagement and trust. In order to determine one’s “influence” with this tool,TweetLevel looks at a “combination of the number and authority of someone’s followers together with the frequency of people name pointing an individual (via @username) and the how many times an individuals posts are re-tweeted. Other attributes were included in the final score but were given a lower weighting.” I know I couldn’t figure this out on my own, and its helpful to have a tool which will do the analysis, algorithms and funky stats for you. Once you have the “level” you or your brand is at, then you can use that to focus further on where you have more influence, and/or try to expand the influence you already have. One tip that TweetLevel (and other strategists) emphasize is that you shouldn’t “protect your Tweets” (despite privacy concerns) — it will lower your influence and make others less “trustworthy” of who you are and what you have to say. TweetLevel is currently in Beta and Free.
Twitter Grader: A cool tool that measures the “power, reach and authority of a twitter account. In other words, when you tweet, what kind of an impact does it have?” The factors that go into this tool’s algorithm include # of followers, power of followers, updates, update recency, follower/following ratio, and engagement. However, Twitter Grader won’t tell us the specifics on how they “calculate” — there’s a “special sauce” and I’d be killed if I were to find out and blog about it! So… when you get your “grade” – awesome – but what does it mean? This tool analyzes all parts of your grade for you and gives you a detailed response to help you realize how “influential” you are. “The grade is calculated as the approximate percentage of other users that have an equal or lower score.” For example, if I received a Twitter Grade of 96.6, it means that about 96.6% of the other users got a lower score than I did. Didn’t get A’s in high school, maybe you can with your Twitter Grade. Best part: it’s Free.
And for all you fellow social geeks out there, here’s a BONUS 4th tool:
Terametric: Has a new function called Optimizer for Twitter which allows for a great deal of Twitter analysis on your brand. But what I thought was really cool was the industry tracking feature. It helps brands get real-time tracking on Twitter handles, brand mentions, competition, influencers, themes, hashtags, and more. Thus, it is ideal for identifying influencers who are Tweeting about your brand/industry that you should engage with.
So instead of finding your own influence, you are focusing on others who are influencing the community within with your brand/product is targeting. Terametric starts at $500/month for Enterprise Product Marketing and agencies with a 1-month, no-risk, free trial. SMB’s should contact them directly for pricing.
Ready, Set, “Influence!” And here’s the Toolkit you need to get started…
Tags: Klout, terametric, Tweetlevel, Twitalyzer, Twitter Grader, twitter influence
NOTE : I started freelance blogging recently for oneforty and this was originally a post I did for their blog. This was my first for oneforty so please check it out here or on their blog and please feel free to share comments! 
Whether you are a B2B or a B2C, connecting with your current customer is crucial. Those current customers are needed for consistent business and through word of mouth may lead to future customers as well. One loyal consumer who boasts about a company’s customer service reputation, can lead to their friends — whether on Facebook, Twitter, or in person — becoming aware of your company and possibly converting to customers as well (for more details on converting people to customers see: The Zen of Social Media Marketing by Shama Kabani).
So how do you connect with these current customers on the social platforms on which they reside, play, comment, tweet, and post? I created this Toolkit to guide your efforts.
Here’s the run-down:
Rapleaf: Want to know the most relevant criteria about your consumer? Rapleaf does this by providing your business with the Who (demographics, location), What (interests, lifestyles, brands they love), Where (online platforms), With Whom (friends), and Weight (their online influence). A tool to help your business improve its customer outreach accurately, easily and in real-time! As quoted by Stephanie Olsen from CNET: “Rapleaf is among a new generation of people search engines that take advantage of the troves of public data on the Net–much of which consumers happily post for public perusal on social-networking sites and personal blogs. The search engines trace a person’s digital tracks across these social networks, blogs, photo collections, news and e-commerce sites, to create a composite profile. Unlike Google, which might link to the same material over pages of search results or after trying different combinations of keywords, these sites attempt to “normalize” personal data so that it’s easily digested by the searcher on one page.”
Flowtown: Although under-going renovations, currently, Flowtown has received much praise for its “goldmine” of consumer information they are able to provide to business owners. Have emails of your current customers? Flowtown takes those emails and helps your business engage with each consumer. As in real life, engagement online is about the personal touch, and building each relationship as you would in real life, is key. Kelly Robertson from 6S Marketing raves on how Flowtown gave her the personal insight needed to reach out to specific users: “By targeting specific users with relevant content to one of the social networks we knew our readers were on, we obtained our highest ever open rate (67.1%) and click rate (31.5%). Both of which, were well over the industry averages (17.9% and 4.1% respectively).” Awesome!
NetProspex: Claim to be the key tool for B2Bs that want to communicate on a more personal level with their customers. This tool gives companies the ability to find the social profiles of their consumers and then leverage that information for their sales team to find the influencers among those customers. In addition, NetProspex lets companies buy or trade contacts to earn credits to find what the company needs from a vast user-contributed directory. According to KillerStartUps.com, “Netpropex would appear to have come up with a dynamic and workable model that should ensure that its database continues to grow and improve over time.”
Klout: This app has 750 partners utilizing the data it is able to retrieve. Want to know the “reach” a customer has in their twitter network? Klout is the go-to app to determine how valuable each customer is and how they can impact your brand with what they say, tweet, etc. Note: an initial score is given when you go to the site, but an actual score is emailed later after you sign up and further calculations have been done. Thus, this is a great tool that helps companies identify their most influential customers in the social space in order to engage effectively.
Zuberance: A “word of mouth marketing platform” that allows you to find the perfect brand advocates for your company. Then you are able to utilize those advocates as brand ambassadors and hopefully to the benefit of your company and brand. Although there have been some reviewers who do not believe in Zuberance, others seem more objective and give consumers/brands the chance to judge for themselves.
Tweetdeck: Want a tool to stay in great touch with your consumers? Tweetdeck allows you to connect with consumers on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other platforms via one simple application. Tweetdeck also lets you organize your consumers in a simplistic way in order to reach out to people in a consistent, relevant, and easy-to-use format. Worried about missing a chance to be connected? You can access this on your desktop, browser, smartphone, and iPad! Engage away!
Hootsuite: A great social media dashboard for multiple accounts, which allows you to engage, monitor, and track the effectiveness of messages. In addition it has WordPress integration, ability to schedule tweets, and manage followers with ease. Shoutmeloud calls it the “ultimate twitter web client.” A great tool, which allows companies to reach their customers from anywhere such as via smartphone or iPad, which is important for a small business owner who is constantly on “the-go” as well as those who travel often.
How do you know which app is best to utilize? Watch a demo. Try it out. Experience it for yourself and tell us what you think. Like it? Love it? Hate it? Share!
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