DIY: How To Find Authoritative Twitter Users Plus 100 To Get You Started

Brian Chappell | April 30, 2009 | View Comments

There are a ton of Twitter sites aiming to attach a Twitter rank to a user profile, and frankly most of them are spotty at best. Follower count in my opinion is one of the worst metrics to go by with Twitter, and unfortunately that is a main cornerstone to many of the Twitter ranking systems out there.

Many of the Twitter grader tools pull in specific information that the API provides, and there is one major count that is not currently being passed through in an easily digestible format.

Favorites As An Indication Of Quality

Favorites is a way for users to bookmark tweets from their Followers. Twitter users who have had a large amount of people favorite their tweets can be a great indication of authoritativeness and quality.

I have attempted to create a DIY way to decide which twitter users in a given sector are beneficial to follow, engage etc. The following 4 steps will show you how to set this up on your own and allow you to target key influencers and twitter users likely to add to the conversation.

Step 1: Develop a Niche TwitterRoll

Start off with your favorite list of Twitterers. Whether you are looking to find new followers or simply looking to identify the top twitter users in your niche, pull together a list of folks you wish to analyze. These sites will give you a great place to start:

• Just Tweet It
• We Follow
• Twellow

Don’t forget about Niche lists like these, there are tons of them that blog owners have created.

• Internet Marketing Experts Twitter
• 50 Designers on Twitter
• 538 Users on Twitter Who Blog
• 25 Top Moms With Blogs Who Twitter

Step 2: Create an Excel File

The excel file should have a list of twitter names in one column, the # of favorites according to the Google operator query I am about to show you, the number of tweets that user has sent to date, and finally a column for the actual Twitter Authority score.

Step 3: Identify the Favourites # and Tweetage Amount

Go to Google search and use this query:

site:twitter.com/*/favourites USERID

Replace USERID with the twitterers name you want to assess. The number of results that is returned is your benchmark score to use. Take this number and plug it into your excel file.

Next, visit the users twitter page and record the number of tweets they have made to date.

Step 4: Calculate The Score

Once you have all your data, calculate your scores. The calculation to determine the authority score is simply Tweetage Column divided by Google Favorites. The closer the number is to 0 the more authoritative that user will potentially be.

100 Influential Marketers on Twitter

Twitter list via Twitter Power 150

Now a few caveats about the calculation. Google’s result set often lists more results than just people who have favorited your tweets. Furthermore, if the person’s twitter name is a common phrase that people use in their tweets, then you will not get an accurate representation, as the Google data set looks for that word anywhere on the page. All that being said, this Favorite Twitter Score is still one of the most accurate indications of authoritativeness and quality I’ve discovered.