Let's face it Social Media had become THE way to communicate these days. It doesn't matter if you are an 11 year old shooting the breeze, Senior keeping track of your grand kids or a company trying to increase brand exposure. Social Media has become the way to interact with your current friends, catch up with past friends keep track of family in far away places and to network.
This avenue of communication has grown so much that there is an entire industry of jobs that have to be created to fulfill the growing need for Social Media Interaction. With the creation of jobs there are now metrics of influence that have to be explored when hiring someone to manage your brand, especially for corporations. There is a growing debate about how corporations interested in hiring would go about measuring a potential employee or social media consultants influence.
There is the Klout score which is the industry standard, it measures Influence, True Reach, Amplification just to name a few metrics. Klout score displays metrics based on interactions on Twitter and Facebook.
There is also Empire Avenue , which allows you to purchase stock in other companies, people and friends that you know. The individual or companies stock price fluctuates based on activity within your Social Media channels. What I really like about Empire Avenue is that your influence is directly connected to your social media activity, if you slack you pay the price because your shares will go down. However if you are doing well your stock prices will go up, the dividends that you provide to the purchasers of your stock will increase and people will purchase more. The most important part of this is that with Empire Avenue your social media influence is determined by more than just your Facebook page and Twitter page. The influence is determined by a variety of channels plus your blogs. Those Social Media Channels are YouTube, Facebook Profile, Facebook Page, Twitter, Flickr and now LinkedIn. In addition, my influence also comes from my Tumblr, QR code Blog and Posterous. To me, this gives a better overall score of your influence over many Social Media Channels, which is needed when hiring a social media expert to promote a brand.
Empire Avenue may not be know to many but I say if you want to really know a person and or companies Social Media Influence check out them out as they manuver through the world of social media and see what's reflected in their Empire Avenue Scores.
Overall, I'd say Empire Avenue is the winner in the battle of influence determination. Agree? Disagree? I welcome any opinions, good, bad, ugly or indifferent so feel free to leave a comment or post directly on my Facebook Wall.
