If you’re a blogger serious about Twitter, the new PeerIndex FireFox Plugin is something you’ll want to check out. It adds a yellow box with the Twitter user’s PeerIndex rating right in the blog post, search result or Twitter page. PeerIndex is similar to Klout with some additional details on what topics someone Tweets about most.
I’ve done some screen captures so you can see at a glance what the PeerIndex plugin does. Extreme John, an entrepreneurial blogger into indoor tanning salons and creator of his own indoor tanning products, did a post yesterday on Socially Savvy Twitter Connections that makes a perfect example to show you.
Note the yellow boxes with black numbers after the Twitter user names in this portion of his post:
Warning: if you visit John’s Social Media Marketing blog or Facebook Fan Page Giveaway or tanning products sites you are likely to see lots of photos of women in bikinis.
You can see the PeerIndex ratings on Twitter profile pages like the screen capture I did of Blog Marketing Expert Kriti Hine’s @Kikolani Twitter page below:
Notice the PeerIndex numbers for @toprank @leeodden @ShannonPaul @MariSmith and @Problogger. You can see at a glance that most of these are serious Twitter users. Peerindex numbers can be none, or 0 or any number up to about 99.
You may also see PeerIndex ranks in Google search results as you see in the screen capture below:
The bad news is PeerIndex numbers do not currently appear on blog searches or Twitter lists – two actions that I do more often than any. I’m hoping they might in the future.
UPDATE: As of Jun 15, 2011 I started seeing PeerIndex numbers when I click on the canned @GrowMap search Twitter provides as shown in this screen capture:
Notice how many of the people I regularly interact with on Twitter have high PeerIndex numbers? The best way for you to increase your influence is to interact with and emulate what they do.
Speaking of lists, PeerIndex lists are far better than Klout lists because Klout currently only allows ten per list while PeerIndex can handle 5500+ (but fewer might be more useful). [UPDATE: Klout no longer limits lists BUT they unceremoniously delete them at will. I had this list on Klout, too, but it disappeared. I will give them the benefit of the doubt ONCE and may put it back sometime, but if it disappears again after that…]
I created a PeerIndex list for my regular DoFollow CommentLuv collaborators – I highly recommend anyone serious about blogging or Twitter connect with these people.
Other PeerIndex lists you might want to check out are:
- Thomas Power Top Twitter Influencers (5,542 Twitter Users on this list)
- Tim Lin 2000 Leaders BestTech (2,026 select Twitter Users on this list)
This is a live widget that shows the PeerIndex numbers of my closest collaborators:
That is an iframe and WordPress and iframe do not always work well together so if it disappears you can go directly to PeerIndex to see my Collaborating Bloggers List.
Gail Gardner
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Peerindex will make things easier that’s for sure.
I was looking forward to tanned women in bikinis but I can’t seem to open the website. Thanks for getting my hopes up Gail 🙁
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Another cool Firefox plug in to add 🙂 Thanks for sharing.
Great tool. But I have not fully understand everything about PeerIndex.
What does exactly the numbers represent and what are the factors that increases the numbers. I assume the it’s number increases as the user has more interactions.
This is a great tool that I didn’t know existed. I am new to twitter and trying my best to utilize it for my site but am still in the learning process. Thank you for sharing 🙂
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I have recently installed this plug in and it works amazing showing the twitter activity of my colleagues.In fact, it motivates you to engage more with your fellow twitter community. Thank you for sharing this post.
I have lots of plug-ins in my browser and I think this one is awesome. Good for me since I’m using Firefox. I really appreciate that you spare your time in sharing this. I hope I could use this plug-in efficiently.
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Sounds like a pretty awesome plugin. I’d be curious to download it just to see what my own PeerIndex number is. 71, though, that’s not too shabby! 🙂
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Hi Petra,
You don’t have to install the plugin to see your score – you can just enter your Twitter user name on the PeerIndex site. I can see your score after @pc_prima in your comment as I type this. It is currently 4. If you want to increase your Twitter influence see my Twitter Best Practices post and especially #3.
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Oh so an ego thing.
I’m with John, if I meet and talk to you, then I’ll decide whether or not to follow you.
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Ah, Dennis,
It isn’t an ego thing. Influence is important and even “fame” can be used beneficially as long as we don’t let any of it go to our heads. I learned something very important back in my days of breeding thoroughbred race horses. The most important quality for a stallion is to be famous. (Why that is true is complicated and I don’t have time to elaborate and many wouldn’t be that interested.)
Bloggers who are interested in maximizing their ability to accomplish good in the world need to have great reach and influence. The easy way to do that is to collaborate with other bloggers with similar goals, reach and influence. Tools like PeerIndex and Klout assist us in doing that.
You know sales so let me share another example of why this is important. When I had about 10,000 followers on Twitter if I shared a link I would send about 60 visitors. Now that I have almost 20,000 I can usually send 120-130. Double the visitors doubles the traffic and IF the traffic is targeted can double sales.
A few months ago @TonyRobbins (THE Tony Robbins the motivational speaker) tweeted a guest post published here. BECAUSE he is famous that post got over 350 RTs and ten times the normal traffic. Was that post 10x more deserving? The best post ever published her? NO.
Fame is useful. More targeted followers interested in what you share equals more traffic equals more influence and more people willing to support a worthy cause you’re promoting, or really learn how to make a living online or buy something worth having. It is as simple as that.
My followers x Kristi’s followers x @AskKim’s followers x @AffiliateXFiles followers x …… collaborating with each other multiplies reach for all of us.
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@Antonia now most of the plugin are working and built for firefox 4 i was also using version 3.6 because of this prob but now its ok.
Thanks for the plugin dude it is really helpful with twitter…
Thanks for letting us know that most of the plugin developers have got their plugins working. There is never any guarantee though – pretty much trial and error diagnosing the cause(s) when FireFox hangs.
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Neat plugin, thank God it works on Firefox 4.0.1! Half my plugins stoped working when i updated.
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Hi Antonio,
Thanks for the warning! I’m still on FireFox 3.6.17 and hope it doesn’t take it upon itself to automatically upgrade to 4.0.1. Many plugins have to play catch-up after every release to fix what stops working!
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So why do I care about peerindex, klout…? So that people will see I have influence, come to me as a source of information, and mention me other places? Is that that goal with all of this?
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Hi Annie,
Tools like Klout and PeerIndex have numerous benefits including those you mention:
They allow us to see whether what we are doing is more or less effective.
We can more easily identify other influencers and connect with them to collaborate. That benefits us, them, and whatever good they are working to accomplish.
It can bring bloggers income in the form of advertising on their blogs, blog outreach requests, or payment for other services they offer. I need to do a post showing how much traffic an influential Twitter account can drive.
I just pulled stats for some content I shared for another blogger on su.pr. I sent her over 135 visitors twice in one day. That is more traffic than many small blogs get per day from all sources.
She is one of a new group of bloggers working I am mentoring. I will be writing up what we are doing and publishing the results starting later today so you may want to check out those posts and apply the strategies to your own business.
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This is a great post. I am testing this too and will tell you what I think, when the verdict is in! 🙂
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Hi Ana,
If you write a post about it please do make sure I get the link either here in the comments or on Skype, Twitter or IM. I continually upgrade my existing content with the best related links. That goes for this post and any other.
Feel free to add related links in the body of any comment with anchor text or get them to me on Skype, IM or Twitter. I will often add them to the body of the post.
Hi Gail. I use the Chrome extension for Peer Index and I have the one for Klout too. It’s interesting to see how much the scores differ between the two services. Like John said, I think giving someone a +K is pretty cool. You can only give out five of them per day – in fact it’s time for me to head over to Klout and give out some +K love now!
Hi Ileane,
Yes, Klout and PeerIndex numbers can differ substantially so they clearly are measuring different things; however, most people who are influential on one are similarly influential on the other.
I’ll have to start using +K and try the Chrome extensions. I just really prefer using FireFox because I hate losing time switching back and forth to use tools FF has that Chrome doesn’t. I’ll have to check it out.
I don’t get to read everything you write so do please start sharing links to related content you have when you comment here. You’re welcome to add them with anchor text within the comment or just drop the links. I will often move them up into the body of the posts.
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Gail, I entered the Blog Engage Guest Blogging contest for June and I mentioned Klout along with some other very helpful networking tools like Twylah, Summify, Pluggion, TwentyFeet and more.
The post is titled How To Be a Social Media Research Ninja for your blog http://www.blogengage.com/blogger/how-to-be-a-social-media-research-ninja-for-your-blog/
I hope you and your readers have a chance to read the article and share it with others.
As always, thanks for your support!
Thanks for letting us know, Ileane. I popped into BlogEngage and voted then did my usual Social Media thing. (Twitter length review on StumbleUpon with your Twitter user name in it that gets fed to Twitter and Facebook and pulled into FriendFeed.)
Then I scheduled three tweets using su.pr that include Twitter usernames for the various tools you mentioned in that post. If they’re paying attention and social media savvy they should RT those and get more readers to your post.
Each tweet asks my followers to either vote for or support you in the @BlogEngage contest. I just started posting about a new blog collaboration method you may find interesting so I’ll also be bringing in readers new to my blog. Feel free to pop in and comment on the new posts and add a link to your post over on Blog Engage in the body of the comment. If it doesn’t go live immediately rest assured that I will approve it as soon as I see it.
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Gail, with someone like you as an ally I’m destined for success 🙂 I can never thank you enough. Have a wonderful day.
It does remind me a little of the Klout for chrome plugin, after reading that Ileane uses Peerindex for Chome as well, I’ll have to check it out for myself 😉
Hi Karen,
Klout and PeerIndex do similar things and we’ll probably want to be using both.
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Thank you for the link luv, I appreciate it. Oh, and the “warning” tag. lol
Needless to say…. finally signed up for PeerIndex to see what all the hype has been about lately. Seems like Im seeing PeerIndex everywhere. I logged in and checked it out, connected my accounts and what not. I can’t really picture myself caring what anyone else’s PeerIndex or Klout score is, I either talk to people and connect or I don’t, so the score won’t really mean much to me. My own score, yes, others… eh not so much.
I do like Klout’s new K+ feature, add’s a nice little “thank you” option to the mix.
Thanks again for the inclusion I appreciate it.
Hi John,
I thought the warning could do double duty. A few might avoid and many might visit because of it.
The reason we will care about PeerIndex and Klout is it makes it fast and easy to see who influencers are that we haven’t “met” before. We already use many tools like CommentLuv comments, #followfriday, recommendations and links from bloggers we know, etc. to find notable bloggers.
This is a fast path to seeing when others are influential and potentially worth following. It makes it obvious that those we already know such as Kristi @Kikolani or @AskKim or @NewBizBlogger or @Ileane are influential and points out others like us/them we may want to “meet”.
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