The Oz – The Australian’s news platform led by Gen Z – is launching The Influence Index, ranking the top 100 social media creators in Australia according to their impact.
The Influence Index, to be published on theoz.com.au on Thursday 25 August, uses a bespoke measurement tool built in partnership with behavioural science company The Behavioural Architects and social intelligence monitoring agency, Storyful.
The Oz’s editor, Elyse Popplewell, said: “We can calculate an ‘Influence rating’ for each influencer, allowing us to determine how influential they are. Follower count alone doesn’t demonstrate true influence.
“The Index reveals that audience size and cross-platform followings only go so far to truly influence people. For the first time, we are also measuring trustworthiness and relatability to understand what really makes an audience move.”
Popplewell said the proprietary tool assessed each influencer against an array of metrics to determine a final influence score – from centrality to conversation, cross-platform audience size and engagement metrics.
The Influence Index determines effectiveness by analysing six weighted indicators based on behavioural science measures in a way that has not been undertaken before – trustworthiness, attraction, relatability, expertise, content prominence and content frequency, using a proprietary scoring system to arrive at a definitive list.
The Index will reveal three distinct types of influencer: Conversation Starters - those who can instigate conversation and debate; Networkers – highly-connected people who can spread conversations and messages between communities; and, Amplifiers – those who can reach a large audience.
The Behavioural Architects founder Mike Daniels said: "It is exciting to apply behavioural science principles to better understand the new economy of marketing and what makes influencers influential.
“With the creation of the world-first Influence Index we now have a behavioural science-based tool to understand the underlying factors driving what makes some influencers more influential than others.”
Storyful CEO Maria Pacheco said: “Storyful is thrilled to be partnering with both News Corp Australia and The Behavioural Architects, leveraging our social media data access and expertise to identify and analyse Australia's top 100 influencers across key categories.
“This strategic partnership has commercial applications that are incredibly exciting – an opportunity to rethink the importance of glamour metrics like follower count and to focus instead on the influencer metrics that really drive impact.”
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