Leagues of Influence: Is this the new Klout?

Webfluential is hoping to become a leader at connecting advertisers with "influencers" by helping brands identify influential users that are best matched for the requirements of a particular campaign. Once selected and invited to participate in a campaign, influencers have the opportunity to earn money by blogging, tweeting and promoting the brand on their blogs and social media profiles.

The algorithms used by Webfluential are able to distinguish real followers from fake ones, factoring in web statistics and other metrics to identify each influencer's true influence per network; this is then compared to the results of others on the platform in order to classify users into dynamic "leagues of influence" which advertisers can then select from based on their budgets and campaign goals. Influencers are measured by the reach, resonance and relevance that each has on the networks and then placed in leagues with similar influencers and ranked accordingly.

Reach measures the size of an influencer's audience (following) per social media network and is relative to the most influential person listed on Webfluential for that particular network.

Resonance is a measure of how widely the content that an influencer shares reaches outside of their own community; again, this is relative to others on the platform.

Relevance is a measure of the response from the influencer's community in the form of likes, comments, retweets, etc. and is used to calculate a score for each network.

Influencers can create multiple profiles in their account; each profile consists of a blog and several social profiles (currently YouTube, Twitter and Instagram) and data is gathered for each (see below) which is then run through the algorithm to place them into leagues.

As an influencer's score approaches 100, it implies that they are nearing the top of their league. Higher leagues contain fewer but more influential people; influencers move into higher leagues by increasing their reach, resonance and relevance of their networks.

Influencers must meet Webfluential's minimum requirements to join, which includes a minimum of 1,000 legitimate Twitter followers. Webfluential offers suggested prices per blog post, tweet, photo upload, etc. based on what others with similar influence are charging; however, the ultimate price is set by the influencer.

Invite a #socialmedia #influencer to join @webfluenti_al: https://t.co/cWl7v4W4DP
— Christine DeGraff (@ChrisDeGraff) November 5, 2013

Advertisers and PR agencies are provided with access to listings of social influencers and can search by location, audience, platform, and topics to find influencers for their campaign.

Webfluential anticipates job offers going live on November 16th and opportunities for influencers in the US will be launched in the coming months. Visit http://webfluenti.al to learn more about Webfluential.

Data Gathered by Webfluential

Statistics for blogs include the number of visits, new visits, page views and time on site each month as well as averages for the prior month and a graph to track average visits, page views and time spent on the blog during the previous 6 months.

Twitter statistics show the number of followers/following, the number of tweets and account age, the number of people who retweeted and favorited and the rates for each. For example, "1 tweet gets retweeted for every 3.387 tweets posted." Month to month statistics are also tracked.

Instagram statistics include the number of followers, and an aggregate of the number of photos posted, likes and comments each month.

YouTube statistics include the number of videos uploaded, the number of subscribers, total views, total likes/dislikes, comments and favorites for the channel as well as the number of views, likes/dislikes, favorites and comments per video.