When I was at University back in....well, let's just say I didn't have an email address!...if you had a cause to promote or if there was a brand or politician in your sights you had to deal with it the old fashioned way. You know, petitions, protests, letter writing, that kind of stuff.
A recurring message I (and I am sure most of you) deliver to clients is that with social media a few people can now achieve a great deal and without setting foot outside their front door.
No need to leave the comfort of your living room. You can even have one eye on the telly while you wreck the search reputation of someone who for whatever reason rubbed you up the wrong way, put up something unflattering about a company that will be searchable for years to come, or enlist 100 of your mates to join an advocacy group on Facebook.
Something that I'd been looking for, for a while and that makes that point really well is Twinfluence. Basically it takes your Twitter followers and looks at how many people in turn follow them - so your 1st and 2nd circles of influence.
It's worth showing any client who is still scratching his/her head about Twitter, Twinfluence as it gets across the same sort of idea as David Armano's ripples of influence diagram (which shows that a small time blogger like myself on circle 4 can in theory influence those in circle 1) - but it does so using live, real time cases. You can take any Twitter account, not only your own, and put it through the filter.
For example, my fellow Cow Bridey has 108 followers, but through them her reach is actually to 98,778 people. Sure, many of those people won't be on whenever she posts anything and might not relay it on, but then again, a lot of those followers are bloggers and so that 98k number could be on the low side.
At the top of the Twinfluence list you have individuals who reach five million people through their followers' followers, higher than any printed newspaper circulation. And that almost certainly is an underestimate as at that end of the scale you are talking about bloggers who in turn have an audience, in some cases in the tens or hundreds of thousands.
A very useful tool and one that's definitely worth showing to anyone sceptical about getting involved.
Postscript - As an aside, I'm writing this while watching John McCain and Barack Obama in the final US Presidential debate. McCain cited "Joe the Plumber" several times and during the debate - a 'Joe the Plumber' Twitter ID was suddenly up and running and posting away!
Another example from Australia, Conservative Leader Malcolm Turnbull set himself up on Twitter under the ID 'turnbullmalcom.' Too bad that someone else had already registered'Malcolmturnbull' with the biography "I is teh leaderz."
Link to original postLink to original post
Link to original post