Social Media Index – A Blunt Instrument, but Better than None

You’re reading the 27th highest ranked blog in Edelman’s Social Media Index, an attempt to add texture to the various rankings of business blogger popularity, "authority", newsmaking heft and influence.

Rating influence isn’t easy, and certainly can’t be very precise with an automated ranking system that skims the surface of which bloggers are using which social media tools most effectively. In fact, I doubt it can be measured precisely by any instrument. Technorati gets blogs into the ballpark of relative popularity and linkability, but I don’t pay much attention to its "authority" measure.

Although the Social Media Index may be a blunt instrument for measuring which bloggers have greater influence across a range of social media tools, it’s interesting to see the various tendrils of my online presence being used to calculate my involvement across platforms.

I post semi-regularly to Twitter, have a network on LinkedIn, am involved in Facebook (search for Eric Eggertson) and some similar sites, and post photos to Flickr. Do I use these tools efficiently for networking, self-promotion and idea sharing? Not really. I just scratch the surface of what’s possible.

So I show up on the radar not because I’m the best example of an uber-networker, but because my eclectic choice of networking venues happens to match the criteria established to identify today’s plugged-in digerati. Common Sense PR and my other online venues feed off of each other as ways of connecting with others, meeting new people, exploring ideas, promoting myself and having some fun.

We’re still stumbling around in terms of measuring the impact of blogs and other publishing platforms. A tool like Techmeme rings truest when I think of ways to measure the influence of a particular blogger. The more posts a blog gets on Techmeme, the more influential the blog is in that sphere of interest. It’s based on a subjective starting point (one person’s view of which blogs are important), but from there it operates on an algorhythm that selects related posts by other bloggers as worth of inclusion. If you write excellent posts that none of the other influencers pay attention to, you don’t show up on Techmeme much. It’s not fair, but it indicates influence among the inner circle of tech bloggers.

How does the Social Media Index stack up as a measure of influence?

Let’s take Robert Scoble and Shel Holtz as examples. The Social Media Index counts them as influential users of social media because they score high in some traffic and link measurement tools, use multiple other social networking tools, and are well regarded by the people who use Digg, del.icio.us, and similar bookmark sharing sites.

It doesn’t seem that the methodology includes factors such as the fact these two bloggers speak widely on social media at conferences attended by general business audiences and social media early adopters alike. Nor does it seem to add any influence points for the fact they have strong followings for their podcasts both within their niches (technology for Scoble, PR for Holtz) and among more general listeners/viewers.

No recognition for the books they’ve written on the subject, or for the number of interviews they do with journalists and bloggers/podcasters to discuss their views on the state of the blogosphere/podosphere.

Despite the shortcomings of the index’s measurement criteria (hey, these things develop iteratively – they don’t emerge perfectly formed from the spittoon of Dave Winer), it still manages to place both these bloggers fairly high on the list. No doubt the attention from speaking engagements, their podcasts and their books help fuel the audience numbers and other factors that push them up in the rankings.

Which shows that you don’t need to measure every possible metric to get a reasonable estimate of who’s got heft and who doesn’t. So I’d argue the index is a close enough approximation of influence to begin the discussion.

Posting the index certainly won’t end the discussion.

Thanks to Allan Jenkins for pointing to the index, and to David Brain for posting the index itself.

Tags: edelman, david brain, social media index, blogs, podcasts, metrics, popularity, authority, facebook, twitter, flickr, shel holtz, robert scoble, communications, business