Millions of consumers each month provide their opinions using OpinionLab’ opt-in, open-ended feedback system originally patented for websites. OpinionLab is launching a new product which enables companies to capture and analyze consumers’ social media conversations using the same methodology as its opt-in web and mobile solutions. Social Media Monitor extends the reach of its core products to allow brands to [...]

Influencers don’t always have mass followings on Twitter or lots of Facebook friends. They are not necessarily celebrities either. They are more often experts. A study in the UK found that “most “influential” users on Twitter were actually people with much lower profiles but who were experts in their own fields rather than celebrities with the most followers,” (see Popular [...]

A post by Sam Rosen in Social Media Examiner. It’s the Holy Grail of interactive marketing: getting “social media influencers” — the ones with the voice and the reach, the ones to whom everyone else listens — to endorse and promote what you’re doing. His company managed to inspire 60 such influencers to participate in an event called The Influencer [...]

This downloadable white paper is a case study submitted eCairn in August 2010 for a Forrester Awared. eCairn’s technology maps virtual social communities (groups of passionate people experts on a topic) and ranks key influencers within a specific community. eCairn Conversation(TM) was designed as a tool for enabling influencer and community marketing. It relies on social network analysis, a technique [...]

Klout has identified 16 classes of influencers: celebrities, taste makers, pundits, thought leaders, broadcasters, curators, feeders, syndicators, networkers, socializers, specialists, activists, conversationalists, dabblers, explorers, observers. For more articles about a related topic, see also Study: In the Battle for Trust Online, Facebook Trumps Twitter and Teen Social Media Influencers Wield Power Online and Offline To access the original material, click [...]

Teen social media influencers—defined in the study as the top 15% most active and most engaged teens in the myYearbook community—are more likely than other teens to engage in various digital activities: 97% spend over two hours a day on social media sites (vs. 79% of other teens). Teen social media influencers also like to talk about what they buy: [...]

A gust post by Jim Krukal, author or “Attention This Book Will Make You Money!” about how to approach  and get noticed by influential bloggers in your community. For more articles about a related topic, see also Why Influence Mining Is The Next Gold Rush and 60 Ways to Increase Your Influence Online To access the original material, click on [...]

This presentation, by Pranesh Mishra from BRandscapes Worldwide, provides a broad overview of marketing concepts and approaches, and has a few pages about identifying influencers and working with them. To read the original article, click here

The author outlines four steps for influencer marketing: focus on the influencer, focus on transactions, focus on the story, not the payoff, and measure what counts. For more articles about a related topic, see also How to Recognize and Reward Your Top Fans and Social Network Insights from Unconventional Graph Metrics. To access the original material, click on “Offsite link” [...]

The era of social commerce will have elements of collaboration, crowd sourcing, and also there will be a big shift to the influencers within a community, they will define more of the product and they will play a more integral role. Now these influencers could come from the community side, but they could also come from the brand side. The [...]