As a result of attending the Social Media RoundTable and Third Tuesday in Toronto earlier this week - it's as if many ideas that weren't actually said at the RoundTable are coming to me - almost as if the RoundTable was a catalyst to stimulate my thinking (Social Media RoundTable Summary and WhitePaper ahead) and it's outcome depends as much on what was said, on tape, at the RoundTable as what comes after - and how the Social Media Measurement paper that is published is edited and added to (we'll see it in a few months, so I was told).

(Above - a video I made while in Toronto this week for the Social Media RoundTable that I attended on behalf of the Web Analytics Association - Social Media Committee that I direct).

It occured to me later, and I didn't say it, that most influence (see below) is measured by online factors (as we proposed) while the real measures of influence is what we can do "offline" with people and institutions. 

We looked at all the things below, and I also wrote about the Flawed Edelman paper - that I think is next to worthless in measuring Social Media - Distributed Influence of Social Media - Edelman White Paper  - where Edelman clearly "overreached" for an answer they didn't have…(that's OK, no one yet has the answer) - but we're getting closer.

We didn't come up with that much new either …perhaps because we didn't include offline or a way to harvest that information.  Eli Singer did play off of my questions and propose "an amplification factor", that Social Media "amplifies" what other media and efforts your already running and we need to measure that "X" factor and that could then be called "influence".

What we considered, below, doesn't account for real influence measurement. 

Inbound Links, Technorati, Google PageRank, Use Google AdWords and monitor AdWords Impressions, Google Trends, Compete / Alexa, Xinureturns (interesting tool), Topic / Focus (volume of conversation) - conversation of comments that are relevant to your topic,# of specific Permalinks that occur around a blog post in the blogosphere, off line influence of a blog post.

Does everyone who talks about your brand an “influencer” or does it apply to specific individuals - but that’s a line that each company has to determine on their own.

 And here's the idea that I saw in my mind:

(Above: my sketch, yet incomplete, of an idea on how to measure influence).

I see "influence" as "topical" - (you can be influential across one or several topics, but it's difficult to envision influence without a topic - though I suppose a historical or well known political figure could be influential on any topic based on their position). 

I envisioned influence as a "vector" (which I actually didn't draw in my sketch) that can "spin" based on the accumulated relationships of online, offline, inherited relationships and what we do going forward (IE; buzz). 

To me real influence is "who I know and what favors I can ask of them" … it has almost nothing to do with digg, PageRank, inbound links, blog posts, comments, citations. 

Influence could be related to Brand Recall (IE: Avinash Kaushik is the most well known Web Analyst and speaker - his influence is clear, as is his brand recall, as is Jim Sterne and Eric T. Peterson) … but what about people who are not so well known? …(sorta like the power behind the throne ..thing) …could not people who are not as "popular" or top of mind, be as influential or even more influential?

I don't know the answer, but, i do know that if we don't include conferences, white papers, meetups, tweetups, people who know you …. who feel comfortable exchanging favors for - I doubt we'll come up with a satisfactory formula for Influencers by looking at online factors, along.

And to be totally honest, many "offline" events and meetings are recorded online (but they are rarely datamined, and could be, very effectively). 

For example, attendance at the last several Emetrics Summits in the US are recorded, as well as, for the most part, the sessions attended and in some cases,  the people spoken to…. who had dinner with who ….most of that information is actually online, in some form, but not as technorati links - and certainly isn't represented in the top 150 power blogs, or whatever ranking one wants to apply.

And yet, I would say "offline" factors, that I maintain, are part of the formula for influence, are actually much more important than the online factors (which can be "gamed" and often are).

Above: Edelman's measaures of Influence, most are online factors (except business cards) that can be gamed.

Besides, as I pointed out in my review of theDistributed Influence of Social Media - Edelman White Paper where all the "channels" of influence were weighted equally, even though many don't use social media the same way. (for example, I don't look at Digg much or at all …. for me that channel has next to no significance - or a negative significance ..) are represented in a table format - (I've done the same thing when I try to come up with a scorecard, but one needs to come up with weighting factors past what was proposed in the paper).

In fact, I doubt you can rank anything before you know the intended vs. actual audience.

And that's it for Sunday, Memorial Day weekend - my mind is tired with the thoughts of all of this,  yet stimulated, at the same time.