According to the definition on Wikipedia, Social Influence is based in “ conformity, socialization, peer pressure, obedience, leadership, persuasion, sales and  marketing”. Alright. It’s possible that was the perfect definition five years ago. Not now though.

The creation and quick spread of online social media have modified that meaning, or, maybe, there’s a totally new definition under the nomenclature “online social influence”. Are we trying to persuade via social media? Yes, we probably are, but not the old way (unidirectional)

OSI (Online/Digital Social Influence) is nowadays a matter of prestige more than persuasion. Once you have reached the desired level, you will influence the online actions of others. It’s the “ability to inspire action”.

However, Andrew Grill considers more important what happens after we get to that level. What can we do with that sway?

So then let’s say Klout has determined -God knows how – your score is 56. Alright. Now what? What fields or areas do you have more influence? The “topics” that Klout uses to consider you an influencer are not very reliable… One of the topics I’m supposed to be an influencer is photography yet I have no idea about photography though.

Andrew Grill gave us some tips to properly boost your online influence via social media:

• First of all, find out where are you an influencer, within your expertise, and focus on that area. Social media, for example, is too wide.
• Define and contact your advocates, those followers that you (or your brand) influence the most and use them to get more awareness.
• Develop an Influence Action Plan

 Your Influence Action Plan

If you are really interested in taking advantage of your social influence score, it’s not enough checking your level every now and then. You’ll have to act.

What follows are the steps to develop a successful action plan according to Brian Solis (new media analyst at The Altimer Group) :

1. Track performances against current benchmarks that capture existing sentiments, behaviours and awareness.
2. Define who is your target audience.
3. Develop the strategy. You’ll find here the difference with the classic social media campaigns: you’ll have to take into account both your community and all your community’s followers. Find out what does matter to them and use that info in your daily content.
4. Determine who are your most influential followers and use them in order to improve your social media campaign. If they are engaged, they will help you with no doubt. This is the time to use the digital social influence tools.
5. Launch the campaign: do not forget these kind of activities take place in real time. Key influencers’ behaviours are totally unexpected. That is the reason the next step is crucial.
6. Measure constantly. Monitor everything every day of the campaign and modify the strategy when needed.

8 alternatives to Klout

Klout is the most used tool… And also the most criticized. It’s very common that we all want to get the highest level, and nobody wants to see the score going down, especially when we think it should be going up.

We’ve been using this tool for long, and we’ve checked both, advantages and disadvantages:

On one hand, it’s a very social tool. You can socialise with your contacts and there’s also the possibility to share your score on social networks. You are also allowed to know what Klout style are your contacts, know who are your influencers and the ones you influence the most.

On the other hand, the algorithm they use to calculate the rate is totally unknown. There’s no transparency. It is mainly focused on two social networks; Twitter and most of all, Facebook.

Social With It shows you other 8 similar tools and we visually compare the principal data amongst them. All OSI tools are organized according to three concepts: reach, relevance and resonance (triple R)

Social Influence – 8 alternatives to Klout

Do you want to know some other details on these and other tools? Check out this amazing study by Brian Solis.

And now it’s your turn! Let us know on comments if you use any of these tools (or some other) to boost your online influence! What do you do once you know your score?

We’ll also be uploading new status updates about this matter in our fanpage, just in case you want to take part in the debate! Hope to see you all there!