Edelman names most influential comms Twitterers with TweetLevel

Arun Sudhaman, PR Week UK, 12 November 2009, 06:00am

BSkyB online community specialist Maz Nadjm has been named the most influential comms professional on Twitter, according to a tool developed by Edelman.

Most influential comms tweeters: TweetLevel

Nadjm narrowly edges out FutureGov MD and local government comms expert Dominic Campbell and WeissComm Group social media head Neville Hobson for the number one spot.

The findings come from Edelman's TweetLevel product, launched this week. Developed by Edelman UK head of analyst relations Jonny Bentwood, TweetLevel measures a person's importance on Twitter by four metrics: influence, engagement, trust and popularity.

Of these, Edelman used influence to rank its top ten communications executives. 'It's an opportunity to look at influence rather than mere popularity,' said Edelman director of digital strategy Marshall Manson.

'As you look at the results in the PR space, sometimes the influencers are unexpected. It is how often they are relied on for their information that suggests people are looking for quality and real insight.'

The TweetLevel algorithm uses more than 30 statistics that Twitter makes available to reach an eventual score for each of the four metrics.

Rank	Name	Company	Twitter ID	Twitter Influence
1	Maz Nadjm	BSKYB; The Times	Mazi	62
2	Dominic Campbell	FutureGov	dominiccampbell	61
3	Neville Hobson	WeissComm Group	jangles	59
4	Amanda Rose	BrightOne	amanda	57
5	Ciaran Norris	MindShare	ciaranj	56
6=	Drew Benvie	33 Digital	drewb	55
6=	Gemma Went	Red Cube Marketing	GemmaWent	55
8	Stephen Davies	3WPR	stedavies	54
9=	Darren Waters	Monument PR	darrenwaters	53
9=	David Cushman	90:10 Group	davidcushman	53

Source: Edelman TweetLevel

All Comments

Michael O'Connor Clarke - 12 November 2009

Not being funny, but how about fixing the headline to read: "most influential comms Twitterers in the UK". That would be rather more accurate, don't you think?

If this ranking was really supposed to highlight "the most influential comms professional on Twitter" surely you'd have to include @briansolis \(68), the Shels Holtz \(@shel - 66) and Israel \(@shelisrael 64) or even Edelman's own Steve Rubel \(75).

Michael O'Connor Clarke

@michaelocc

Claire Thompson - 23 November 2009

Maz is brilliant, compelling and absolutely understands the social space, deserving his number one spot.

But that aside, it does seem that hardly a week goes by without someone launching an influence measuring tool.

Most are very expensive. None seem to be able yet to define real experts in particular fields. The very specialist folk who truly understand a particular space don't seem to come up well on these searches.

As we all become more 'tribal', more specialist in our fields, we can expect some very niche interests to have comparatively small numbers of apparent followers/viewers/whatever is being measured, and yet to the cognoscenti in that field be the de facto expert.

I have yet to see any tool that can do anything other than large numbers, and they all seem to choose similar places to look for influence, eschewing some obvious things like google searches on key terms. \(Lexis was the highest ranking agency on my Google search on PR this morning)

They all have their uses, and I haven't yet had a look at this particular tool. Influence is an extremely complex thing to try and assess, but there's still some work to be done, I feel.