Influencer Exchange FAQ

Welcome to the Appinions Influencer Exchange! We made great efforts in turning the Influencer Exchange into an intuitive platform for you to work with and will continue to do so in the future. In this FAQ document we focus on some important points of reference that will help you exploit the full potential of the exchange.

[Click Questions To Expand And Collapse]

1. Understanding Appinions Topics
   Appinions identifies & groups influencers based on topics of influence. Each topic is a collection of keywords that represent a label (topic name) in the form of a Boolean query. Topics are fully customizable and similar topic names (e.g. social media) could provide a different list of influencers for different users based on constructing it with a different query (generic “social media” query vs targeted “social media” AND “facebook” query to identify influencers related to both aspects together).

   To make it easy to access your topics, Appinions created high-level Topics view:

   Tile View: A topic tile represents a centralized topic unit for an immediate peek into your topic stats. It includes the following information:
   

   1. Top Influencers on this topic (clicking the name sends you to the intersection between influencer and topic) along with their:
      • Unified influencer score on that topic (note: this score is normalized and comparable across topics),
      • Opinion volume that contributed to that score,
      • Influencer type (note: icons indicate Influencer types between person, organization, insider, earned, temporal or long-tail). Clicking the influencer type icon send you directly to the influencer profile page in order to learn more about that specific influencer.
   2. Historic trends going 30 days back (by clicking the trend icon) of volume and sentiment (switching in the select box for choice) about your topic. This provides initial insight into major topic trends that should be analyzed (perhaps they occurred in relation to your engagement efforts?

   

   3. Actionable icons:
      1. Topics with the most opinion volume from which the influencer list was created (green label),
      2. How the sentiment on each topic is trending (sentiment icon),
      3. Who are the leading influencers on this topic (icon & name beneath topic – sorted left to right and can be clicked through to go to the influencer pages).
      4. Click the “+” or “-” Icon to easily add/remove a Topic to My Topics.
      5. Clicking the topic name sends you to the full topic page to further analyze it.
      • Click the view more button to proceed to the detailed topic page and see the full list of topic influencers and what they are thinking, saying and feeling (As you will see in the topic page view – related topics even provide a hint of what the influencers are saying as a group)
      • Found an interesting topic created by others; just click the icon to follow it under your topics instead of searching for it again in the future.
      • Share on Facebook & Twitter. You can even email the topic to colleagues in your social network.
      • Want to track the topic in your own domain, blog, or share it through your email alert, you can easily ‘Embed’ the tile with a simple JavaScript code and viewable on any web page.

      

      • We show three tiles per page and you can flip through the pages by using the arrows or the small, green, square pagination icons below the tile view.

   Additional Features

   List View: Provides an easy view into of all the topics (Either Trending topics, which are updated every couple of days on current events, Category specific or My Topics) sorted alphabetically. Here you can easily see:
   

   Movers & Shakers: is an alert mechanism which allows you to see whose currently trending in either influencer scores () or sentiment (). You can click through the topic to see the topic page or click the influencer name to see the cross page between the influencer and the topic. When signed in, you will see movers & shakers from your topics. When logged out you’ll see movers & shakers from trending topics.
   

2. Understanding The Unified Influencer Score
   One of the most important things we do is use our patent-pending technology (developed over the past decade at Cornell University) to extract and aggregate opinions from millions of articles, blog posts, tweets, radio and television transcripts– not just social networks. This gives us a valuable information core that’s unique to Appinions. To generate a unified influencer score we calculate three graphs.

   1. Preference: Measures the influence of an individual by examining the degree to which authors & publishers prefer their opinions over other’s opinions.
   2. Imitation: Examines only repeatedly propagated opinions (re-tweeted, reference, re-quoted, or linked).
   3. Trend Setter: Identifies when opinions about a particular topic or issue first emerged and the opinion holder who started this opinion thread.

   Responding to our user’s needs, we decided not to divide the individual networks’ scores (although it can be provided), but rather focus on a unified influencer score based on the particular topics that users created. This means that we can identify someone who, for example, is an influencer about anything from global climate change or social media to BMW cars or midterm election candidates.

   It is important to note that the scores are normalized and comparable across all topics (e.g. 76 on social media equals to 76 on global climate: ), making it easy to reference if an influencer is more influential about one topic then another or to cross reference related topics in order to understand if my message had an impact across my related topics.

   Finally, you get scores that are targeted, relevant and actionable!

3. Working with Influencer types
   Aside from differentiating between the obvious types of influencers, (people, an organization or an insider, who is a person belonging to an organization when given the influencer status). Appinions also identifies and introduces three types of key influencers that would normally receive different attention as they appear under a topics’ influencer list.

   1. Earned Social Broadcasters
      Key influencers with voice, expertise & trust (usually 10-50 people with an influencer score above 50). When they speak, everybody listens to their opinions and keep it in the back of their mind. These are influencers that over time proved to be highly opinionated and influential about the topic. They are no longer the well-defined group that we used to know from TV/Radio or news making them harder to identify by just quantitative methods.
      • Engaging in one-to-one relations with earned influencers may help get people talking about your interests as well as help promote their personal social stature and influencer ego.
   2. Temporal Social Broadcasters
      Receiving a high influencer score about a topic does not necessarily mean that your opinion is truly influential about it. You may have joined the influencers list because of currently related events and your influence will drop as the discussion diverts from this current issue. As an example, Anthony Weiner may have a high influencer score about social media because of the current occurrences. However, looking at the opinions volume reveals the temporal nature of that influence. You’ll notice that there is a spike around the period when he was the talk of the day, which drops significantly (along with his down trading influencer score) as time goes by.
      • Would you really want to engage in long term one to one relationship with him? Perhaps. Another option would be to understand the discussion around his affair and perhaps incorporate it into the messages that you craft for your other influencers.

   

   3. Long Tail of influencers:The long-tail of influencers that indirectly make others think or do something & have more influence as a group (usually 100+ people with an influencer score below 50). These influencers tend to have specific interests, which they discuss in their closed circles and people would come to them for actionable advice (e.g. should I buy this product?)
      • You want to buy their attention, not their words! Do so by offering them product information, or samples, or invitations to events that will get them talking about your brand or product inside their closed circles without you putting the words in their mouth.
4. Browsing for topics or influencers can be done in a variety of ways
   1. Search bar on the top left of the screen:
      1. Start typing your topic or influencer name to find all related results from the Appinions exchange database (public or your private topics are shown)
      2. If what you are looking is missing from the search results, ‘create a topic’ line will appear to re-direct you to creating a new topic.
   2. Browse topics by category
      1. Every topic fits into one of ten high level categories.
      2. Expanding the browse category and choosing the category of interest provides a list view of all topics under this category
      3. The list of the ten categories is always available at the bottom of the homepage page

   

   3. Trending Topics: We provide you with 12 Trending Topics, which are updated daily or bi-daily. Consider the trending topics your portal to understanding current events highlighted from all categories.
      1. Find out what’s being said in the news & analyze what’s happening in the world
      2. Use current events in personal engagement efforts

      

   4. My Topics: Track the topics that you care about the most:
      1. Creating customized topics (process described below) is one of the most important features of the Influencer Exchange.
      2. The Exchange provides a personalized tile or list view of your topics that you either created or follow/added to your topics

      

   5. Movers & Shakers alerts allow you to directly link to trending topics and their influencers.
      
5. Topic Creation
   1. A Topic is a combination or keywords represented as a query. Appinions uses Boolean query structure that includes three main operands written in uppercase format: OR, AND, AND NOT
   2. Topic could simply be a query with keywords describing or representing it along with keywords that will choose to exclude from the description. E.g.:
      • One keyword: “Toyota” – is a one keyword query that will surface influencers opining about Toyota.
      • Two or more keywords: (“Toyota” OR “Prius”) – is a query that will look for all influencer opining on either Toyota OR Prius
      • Complex keyword combination: (“Toyota” OR “Prius”) AND (“Recall”) AND NOT (“school”) – is a query that will look for either Toyota OR Prius only if one of them appears with the keyword Recall and will exclude any opinion that includes the keyword “school”
   3. It is usually convenient to align your topic with your overall engagement goals and let that drive how you structure the query. You should probably give the topic a name which is relevant to your goal as well (e.g. Toyota reputation)

      Creating a topic for promoting your brand (e.g. Toyota) may differ from creating a topic for analyzing your place among the competition (Toyota vs. Honda) or exploring a current issue that the brand is facing (Toyota and the recall of their cars).

   4. Appinions makes it easy to create simple keywords queries (keywords separated by OR). So tracking the Toyota brand may only require creating a list of all the keywords to be included (e.g. “Toyota”, “Prius”, “corolla”, “Rav4”) and include them in your query separated by OR. You can add excluded terms (e.g. “school”) as well, which will add them into the AND NOT part of the query.
      Creating simple queries is simple on the create topic page:
      • To include a keyword: write it in the include text box and press “include”
      • To exclude a keyword: write it in the exclude text box and press “exclude”
      • Easily remove keywords from the list by clicking the “x” next to the keyword
      • Your keywords will AUTOMATICALLY be populated into a proper query format in the query value textbox below.
   5. Testing your query results:
      By clicking the “test query” button, Appinions will do two things:
      1. Provide an estimate on the volume of the relevant opinions that will be used in order to calculate the influencer scores (insufficient, weak, ok, or strong).
      2. Having insufficient results does not necessarily mean that you will not identify influencers. However, it would hint to the fact that the list of influencers may be in the tens rather than in the hundreds (if this is aligned with your goal, you might even prefer it).
      3. Bring back a representing corpus of these opinions.

      These provide you with immediate feedback into the type of results you should be expecting and allows you to modify your query accordingly.

      • Not enough results -> include additional related keywords or keyword synonyms.
      • Some results are not relevant -> add related keywords to the exclusion list.
      • Results are too broad -> add constraints by using advanced query editing (typing AND constraints into the query value).
   6. Identifying influencers that are opining on specific issues of interest (e.g. Toyota or its competitor, Honda, as they refer to the recall cars) may require some more advanced query creation capabilities (combining several operands in various structures). We found that the following steps can help make that process easier:
      1. Topic label aligned with your goal: “Toyota-Honda recall”
         
         
      2. Instead of creating a long list of all keywords (E.g. Toyota, Prius, Honda, Civic, Recall, “car recall”), you can segment the keywords according to high level categories as in the following tables, which will help the thought process of creating the topic query itself.

      Company/product	Competitor	Current Issue	Excluded Keywords
      “Toyota”	“Honda”	“recall”	“school”
      “Prius”	“Civic”	“car recall”

      3. Adding/changing what categories you create is of course a matter of personal preference and alignment with your own goals.
      4. So now according to your original goal for creating the topic, you’d want to create a topic in the form of:

      (Company OR Competitor) AND (Current Issue) AND NOT (Excluded Keywords)

      The brackets allow you to make sure that your logic remains intact (order of query formation in fetching the query results. Think of mathematical operands to compare OR with a plus sign vs. AND with a multiplication sign). So your final query would look like:

      (“Toyota” OR “Prius” OR “Honda” OR “Civic”) AND (“recall” OR “car recall”) AND NOT (“school”)
      

      5. Testing the query shows that there are insufficient results. This means that there were not many influencer opinions that included all keywords about Toyota along with recall from which to create a substantial list of influencers (you’ll get them in the tens rather than in the hundreds).
         
      6. To expand the query results we could either add relevant keyword to represent each keyword category (e.g. add more car types to the Toyota related keywords like “corolla”). By examining the sample opinion results to the right we realized that the keyword “safety” directly reflects the recall issue and we add it to the current issue list of keywords

      Company/product	Competitor	Current Issue	Excluded Keywords
      “Toyota”	“Honda”	“recall”	“school”
      “Prius”	“Civic”	“car recall”
      		“Safety”

      And test the following query:
      (“Toyota” OR “Prius” OR “Honda” OR “Civic”) AND (“recall” OR “car recall” OR “Safety”) AND NOT (“school”)

      7. Now the results come back weak, which is better than insufficient.
         
      8. We could of course continue analyzing the results to the right and adding relevant keywords to each keyword category (e.g. “car manufacturer”) or exclude non relevant keywords (e.g. “police”), or…
      9. We can broaden the entire query logic by changing the query structure to the following (Green for the changes), which will now bring back strong results with company OR competitor OR any mention about recall.

      (Company OR Competitor) OR (Current Issue) AND NOT (Excluded Keywords)

      And the query is:
      (“Toyota” OR “Prius” OR “Honda” OR “Civic”) OR (“recall” OR “car recall” OR “Safety”) AND NOT (“school”)

      10. What we should always ask ourselves is whether or not the results to the query are aligned with my original goal.
      11. It might make sense to create two or more separate topics for one goal:
      1. One reflecting exactly my target goal (AND combination above).
      2. Broader topic, which would be my point of reference to analyzing how I can engage these influencers towards my targeted topic (OR combination above). As the engagement campaign progresses, we’d see influencers added to the targeted topic and more influencers from the broader topic discussing our targeted topic (measure these changes as part of your success criteria).
   7. Once you are satisfied with the query and its corpus of results, add an image (preferred size: 300x180px), select a category for the topic (from 10 high level topics available) and choose to designate this topic as public or private (coming enhancement will include group sharing for topics).
      
   8. When you submit the topic it will be added to “My Topics”, but remember that this is not an instant calculation. The exchange engine is now gathering all the relevant opinions from its opinions index of the entire web and calculates the influencers’ score for your topic. This first iteration may take up to two hours, but once completed it is updated on a regular basis allowing you to Identify and Anlayze the relevant influencers on your topic.
      
      
   9. Additional points to Query formation:
      1. Dealing with Ambiguous key terms (e.g. Sharp the company vs Sharp decline):
         Consider not placing the keyword Sharp by itself. Prefer writing the full company name “Sharp USA” or adding names of company executives, factory names and the like.
         Also consider excluding non-relevant keywords as excluded terms (e.g “sharp decline” OR “sharp vision”)

      2. Remember to surround multi work phrases with quotes (e.g “car recall” vs. car recall)
      3. Add “OR” to the query value to see results for either the 1st OR the 2nd key terms (e.g. “Toyota” OR “Prius”)
      4. Add “AND” to the query value to see results for when both key terms are mentioned together (e.g. “Toyota” AND “Honda”)
      5. Add (parenthesis) around values that you’d like to group together (e.g. (“toyota” OR “Honda”) AND (“recall”))
6. Insights from Analyzing Topics and Influencers

   To analyze your topic consider three important pages on the influencer exchange: Topic page, Influencer on Topic page, and Influencer Profile page. Each page provides additional insights that will help you to better target you relevant influencers with the proper engagement message.

   

   Topic Page provides:

   • Trends for opinion volume or sentiment provide insight into major changes reflected by the influencers of your topic. Understanding a sudden rise in the discussion about Toyota could mean that you should immediately engage with the opining influencers in order to make sure that your message comes across in the discussion or it could mean that it is time to monitor this topic more closely.
   • Filter by influencer location or influencer type allows you to segment your current target audience (e.g. temporal influencers may be involved in the conversation about my topic. Should I engage them in conversation or perhaps just monitor what they are opining on in order to incorporate their sayings and feelings into my message to other influencers)

   Note: icons represent influencer type (person, insider, organization, earned, temporal, or long-tail):
   

   • Sorting the list of influencers provides an easy mechanism to group together trending influencers and identify who is leading the trends on the topic.
   • Related Topics are a powerful way of understanding what the all the influencers are opining on as a group.
   • Is the discussion around your topic, brand or issue?
   • Perhaps use this related topics inside your message when engaging the influencers in order to create more sympathy towards it.
   • Perhaps you realize that there are other topics that could be created and will help you identify influencers from another vertical with potential influence on your original topic and goal.
   • See influencers that you’d like to engage, add them to your engagement list of influencers that you are looking to craft a message for and engage in conversation with them immediately or later.

   Drill down to see individual influencer opinions (click the influencer name) or see influencer profile (click the influencer type icon next to name).

   Influencer on a topic page provides:

   • Trends in opinion and sentiment of the individual influencer provide insight into drastic changes in his involvement and sentiment about my topic. Combined with the opinions they reflect, it provides insight into their thoughts and feelings about my topic and can help determine the decision to engage that influencer or not or to further monitor that influencer in the future.
     
   • If the given opinion summary is not enough, a link to the source of the opinion is provided to the right and will open the webpage in a separate window.
     
   • Where, When & Who expressed the opinions
   • Does the influencer seems knowledgeable or needs to be ‘educated’ towards my goal?
   • Is this author an influencer, as well?
   • If we need more information about who that influencer is, we can always drill down to their profile by clicking on their highlighted name or the ‘learn more’ link.
     
   • List of Influencers on the bottom left can be sorted by trending in influence score or sentiment, which directs us immediately to other influencers of interest about the topic (perhaps those with a similar score, or who are the same influencer type).
   • After analyzing the influencer opinions on my topic, I could add him/her to my coming engagement list with a certain message in mind through a specified engagement channel that will be available through the influencer profile.

   Influencer Profile page provides:
   IX scrapes profiles from the web in order to establish a centralized influencer profile for each of its identified influencers. Profile pages show biography, social profiles, scores, various engagement channels, other topics of influence and related influencers.

   Important aspects about the influencer profile are as follows:

   • Influencers may claim their profiles and opt in to being contacted by agencies or brands.
   • Influencers may suggest their preferred method of engagement.
   • Other topics of influence and their relative influence score suggest additional topics to discuss with these influencers.

   Related Influencers provide a short list of influencers that have similar interests and could potentially be engaged as well in related conversations or be added to my coming engagement list.

   Thoughts about engagement:
   
   As general steps consider the following:

   • Create a list
   • Craft message (what kind of message do I want to convey to this influencer?)
   • Save base line
   • Engage
   • Monitor change

   Exporting the Influencer List:

   As you walk through and analyze your influencers, you can add them to the list of influencers that you’d like to engage with a specific message. You can export the full list along with their personal information and preferred channel of engagement.

   Crafting a message:

   • Make sure that the message you are trying to engage with is relevant to the audience that you are engaging.
   • Always remember that each message is done in order to reach your overall goal.
   • Prior to engaging anyone remember to form and monitor your baseline of current status at a present point in time in order to measure the change that will occur because of your efforts.

   Note: Always remember to save baselines for future monitoring! (both topic & query value)

   Monitoring my outreach:
   In order to evaluate the effect I had on my topic (e.g. Toyota) awareness; I MUST monitor and analyze the opinion & topic changes pre & post engagement. This will help me to answer the questions:

   1. Did my message positively affect the opinion volume or sentiment?
   2. Did I create awareness for my topic (e.g. Toyota)?
   3. What effect did I have on the landscape of influencers?
   4. How can I edit my message to achieve better results?
   5. What baselines should I add/edit in the future?

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