The question that a lot of marketers have when they are looking at potential audience members on the new social bookmarking site Pinterest is – do you have influence on this particular site.  I was surprised to see that Klout has basically every other social media platform out there to be included into their calculations, but they have not yet integrated Pinterest into their influence calculation service.  Well, there is one site that has gotten here first, and this is PinClout.

What exactly is PinClout?  Well, it look at discovering who does have the most repines, likes, and comments on their various assigned boards based on topic or issue they are sharing and uploading content to.  It basically looks at the network analysis of when you upload or share new content whether that creates more interest, sharing, or conversations among your followers.

It is interesting to see what your PinClout score and see what are some of the deciding factors for the calculation of this score.  The score that I got for the site was 38 – and the only thing that I would have liked to have seen would have been a breakdown to what is considered to be influential or not.

In addition, I would have liked to have seen a breakdown based on the topics being shared and repined.  For example, Klout does allow you to be able to determine what topics you are influential in (ex. PR, Social Media, Louisville, etc) – why can’t the same features be applied to Pinterest?  There are going to be some users that are going to be influential across the board (ex. brand names like HGTV or Whole Foods) whereas there may be others that are influential based on one topic or feature.

However, this is not the only site that is calculating influence on Pinterest.  Pinpuff is also another site that has done this for Pinterest that was actually started up by a 20 year old. What Pinpuff does differently is that it not only gives you an influential score, but breaks it down to you on how much your pins are worth financially.  They also have a breakdown on the overall score you have on the site based on a 0-40, 40-70, or 70+ range.

There are several ways that both of these sites can improve and continue to grow their presence in this particular influence measurement and evaluation market for new media.  First, I think that the inclusion of influential board calculations within Pinterest would be very insightful.  Second, I think that this also brings up an interesting point about exploring the role of influence on social bookmarking sites – is this similar or different from FB, Twitter, or even YouTube?  What are some of the characteristics and attributes that people look at when they determine who to follow and repin their items that they upload on Pinterest?  Is this due to the content or the user uploading the information? So many questions and research opportunities here. 🙂

Lastly, I think that it would be good to have the ability to track the level of influence and provide some good analytics and data to review.  Insights into main sites people are sharing and repining information from, time and day of the week people are actively posting and sharing information, and network analysis of how one pin has been shared across many followers (similar to some of the applications that have been used on Twitter).  There are many possibilities to do some great research and analysis if we had some of these findings when looking at influence on Pinterest.

In summary, influence will continue to have a strong presence on new media platforms, including Pinterest.  These two start ups are approaching it proactively – but it will be interesting to see when powerhouse Klout comes into this particular arena.

Hope you all are having a great day!

Best Wishes,

Karen