How do you measure up in Social Media?

Influence, engagement and reach are words often tossed around in social media, but how are these elements measured and assigned value? The average social media user definitely influences and engages with their followers, and although the audience might be small, your reach can extend beyond your social network.

Measuring influence, engagement and reach can be difficult, but these criteria all factor in to a user’s overall social media value score.

So how do you measure up? There are many quick ways to see how your social media use compares to others on the general index:

Follower counts:

You can get a quick read on your social impact simply by looking at the number of followers you have on any of your accounts. Assuming you are practicing white hat audience building (ie: not paying for followers or using follow-back apps that tend to falsely inflate your numbers) your follower count is an excellent indication of just how many people value your input on social media. This is also a rough gauge of your reach, as your followers constitute your direct audience and often your most easily influenced contacts.

Total RTs, @ mentions or posts:

Another quick gauge of your audience impact is the number of times your information is shared, or someone shares information with you. A glance at your Twitter RTs and @ mentions will tell you how influential you are among your network, Similarly, your Facebook wall will often give you a good sense of how engaged your network is with your posts or your profile. Most social networks are net up to provide notifications to help you monitor your pokes, messages, comments, likes and mentions. Check out your notification settings to see what information might help you measure your engagement.

Third Party ‘Scores’:

Your daily social media activity and data can also be summarized by companies like Klout and Peerindex, who calculate and assign you a score which reflects your social capital. The upside of these services is that they are free (at least at a basic level) and they collect data from multiple social media profiles automatically. On Klout, for example you can connect not only Twitter and Facebook, but now YouTube, LinkedIn, foursquare, Instagram, Flickr, Tumblr, Blogger and Last.fm accounts to factor in to your score. Peerindex is more limited, but offers Quora integration.

Another popular ‘tool’ is EmpireAve, which works like a stock index of social media users. The site works like a large monopoly game, and makes it fun to invest in and support others. Your value on the index is both a factor of your social media activity and your use of Empire Avenue; not a true social score, but an excellent means of comparison. If you are an avid social media user, these tools are the easiest way to gauge your overall influence; however you can also glean insight on your topics of influence, the users you influence most, and the users who influence you!

Good old Google:

Last but definitely not least, is the good old Google gauge. Google has set the bar for tracking data on the web, with rich analytics and evolving algorithms that try to fairly sort, rank and categorize information. Social data is no different, and a quick Google search can give you an idea of how prominent your social presence really is. When Google reintegrates real-time searches (temporarily turned off, at the moment) you’ll also be able to see your reach, impact and influence in real-time; not to mention the Google+ project which aims to eventually index and assign rankings to all social data on the web.

Whichever means your choose to apply when measuring your social influence, engagement and reach, remember that the value is subjective; don’t be discouraged by what you perceive as a low score. Set goals around increasing your scores and monitor them carefully to discover how your social influence, engagement and reach truly measure up.