We can define an influencer as a person with a higher potential than average to influence the opinion or behavior of other people.

Influencers in social media

Applied to online communication, influencers in social media are key for brands, for their ability to prescribe their products and brand awareness. Having tools to detect them is a good idea for a company that wants to invest in brand attraction through infuencers.
In the 2013 WOMMA model, it specifies different attributes to characterize an influencer: centrality, reach, credibility, type of content, frequency of publication, engagement, etc.
Instituto de Ingeniería del Conocimiento (IIC) have developed metrics that identifies influencers, their capacity to influence and the attributes of an influencer.

Influencers in organizations

In the same line, it is also very useful to analyze social networks within organizations in search of influencer employees, who occupy central positions in the internal non-hierarchical networks of a company. Identifying and analyzing these influencers is very enriching for the company, since these people are key in the flow of communication and knowledge, and can improve strategies, workflows and internal communication.
Instituto de Ingeniería del Conocimiento has developed methodologies to detect key employees for the company from the digital footprint of the organization (via email, corporate social platform …) and questionnaires. In addition, IIC had defined features of influential employees according to the aspect where they most effect in order to analyze and classify influencers at work social network.
 
IIC had developed metrics for detecting, measuring and analyzing influencers. These metrics involve the use of the latest computational linguistics technologies:

  • Social Network Analysis (SNA), to measure the value of network position and the quality of a user’s contacts.
  • Natural Language Processing (NLP), to analyze what the influencer publishes.

 
Author:
Pablo Haya
Director Social Business Analytics
Instituto de Ingeniería del Conocimiento