Looking at social media influence can be a tricky subject, not least because of the fact that there are so many services vying to provide this wealth of information. The sheer number of analytics tools available exemplifies how much of an increased role that social media influence plays in modern life. Last week we looked at the heavyweight analytical tool Klout. However, there are several other significant players in this market and a number of Klout’s competitors also use a numerical scoring model to quantify online influence. This week we’ll be looking specifically at some of these competitors and providing an overview of what they offer and how they work.

Kred

Kred or Kred Influence Measurement is a social influence tool started by PeopleBrowsr. It purports to be different to Klout through use of a dual score based on influence and outreach level. Unlike Klout, Kred also claims to offer full transparency in how their process works. They make their measurements based on an openly-published algorithm and have their scoring rules available online.

What they say: “Kred is different to other influence metrics. It’s real-time. It’s transparent. And it’s centred on the community.”

How it works:

Kred utilises user information from Twitter and Facebook to give each user a dual-score. This dual-score separates Influence (how many people your posts reached and how they affected others) and Outreach level (the amount that others would share your content). Furthermore, Kred Story offers a real-time showing of your social media interactions.

In 2012, like Klout, Kred also announced a reward scheme which would offer products and discounts to users based on their scores.

PROskore

PROskore is one of the tools that can be seen as a direct competitor to Klout. They use what they call a “professional scoring system” and they deem this to be “essentially a measurement of your professional reputation.” Proskore aims to provide this information in relation to both your community and industry.

What they say: “PROskore is an online business network that measures professional reputation. We do this by looking at your professional background, social media influence and overall popularity. We then use your score to help YOU generate new business from other members of the PROskore network.”

How it works:

PROskore uses 3 elements to determine your score. These are:

Networks – It looks at your networks on LinkedIn and Google+ and your  followers and activity on Facebook and Twitter.

Experience – Both educational and professional.

Connections – Who you know and how influential they are.

PROskore’s pitch to users to facilitate increased user engagement is the idea that more professionals will want to do business with people with higher scores. If someone is searching for someone to do a particular job or role, the PROskore system actively refers the users with high scores who also meet their specific criteria and are in their area. PROskore now claim to be the leader in measuring professional reputation, boasting 200,000 members worldwide.

PeerIndex

Founded in 2009, UK-based PeerIndex is a social media analytical tool that draws on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Quora to measure social media influence.

What they say: “PeerIndex applies the science of influence to the social web so you can find out who has influence, in context.”

How it works:

PeerIndex claims to measure social influence by way of an algorithm that factors in Audience (how widespread your content reaches), Activity (how often your= post) and Authority (the level of interaction with your content in your community). They claim that their algorithm “recognizes the speed and quantity by which users spot share (and thus endorse) content on any specific topic.” Where Klout uses an overall score to measure influence, PeerIndex ranks particular subjects i.e. the actual content that you post.

Since its launch in 2010, Peer Index claim to have amassed more than 45million users. They now boast an impressive list of clients, including O2, Penguin Books and Atlantic Records. In 2012, the company received a $3 million investment to develop their commercial model, enhance their algorithm and technology infrastructure. Collaborations with Rapportive, Seedcamp, Market Me Suite and Social Bro mean that PeerIndex is equipped with more options to challenge their more widely-known social media analytics competitors.

Tweetlevel

With Twitter being widely regarded as the platform of choice for user engagement, Tweetlevel makes the service the sole focus of its analysis . While on the one hand this makes it more limited than other social media tools, the specificity of the service means that they can focus on providing a comprehensive Twitter-based analysis. Tweetlevel markets itself as a more intelligent offering than Klout by measuring contextualized influence, which they assert makes it more relevant.

What they say: “TweetLevel is a purpose built tool for PR and marketing to help people and brands use Twitter effectively. It will help you navigate the media cloverleaf to make your social media engagement successful.”

How it works:

Tweetlevel provides a numerical score based on a number of algorithms which use Twitter to look at Influence (how many people are paying attention to your posts), but Popularity (how many followers you are), Engagement (who actively you participate in community interaction) and Trust (the amount that people buy-in to what you say) . In addition it claims to specifically highlight influencers rather than just the popularity of users, by contextualisation. They claim to provide “a list of the tweeters who have the largest share of voice on your topic before calculating their influential score” and then demonstrating the levels of interaction.

Twitalyzer

Twitalyzer pitches itself as the most complete Twitter-based social media analytical tool, by drawing on numerous sources to measure impact, influence and engagement. Rather than being a competitor to Klout, it acknowledges and makes use of the Klout Score as a component to create an overall and immediate picture of social influence.

What they say: “ Twitalyzer provides one-click access to the richest body of metrics for Twitter accounts available today. By combining basic Twitter measures with demographic data, widely used metrics like Klout, and our own proprietary scores, Twitalyzer is a “one stop shop” for all of your Twitter analytics needs.”

How it works:

Twitalyzer looks at factors such as the number of people you follow, the number of people following you, the amount you retweet, the amount you get retweeted and replies to measure a user’s level of Generosity (the extent to which you mutually engage with others), Signal (how far your content reaches others), Influence (the number of people you reach out to and how influential they are), Velocity (speed at which your content spreads) and Clout (how much you receive rewards and can turn your influence into financial gain).

Like Kred, Twitalyzer allows users to engage with data and real-time and also aims to offer a higher level of transparency by offering a 50-page handbook detailing how it works.

Next week, in the final segment of posts looking at social influence tools, we’ll be looking at alternatives to the numerical scoring model and how they operate, as well as looking tools which demonstrate the wider effects of social media influence.