The Tory Power Bloggers : how fame and influence are not the same thing

I was going to call this The Kiss of the Spider Blogger but I think I need to move on from movie title puns as head lines.

Anyhow, the issue of how "influence" and "fame" are not the same thing is shown well by this analysis by Flemming at Onalytica.

Indeed finding out who is "influential" is rather important over here in PR;  even advertising media planners and communication planners seem to be starting to think about this issue.  It's a 2.0 type of thing.

So over here at Bell Pottinger we have added a rather nifty new feature to our webmap doodah whereby you can toggle between the "fame view" and the "influence view".  In the past we have had a lot of fun mapping out political bloggers and so our first a demo of this new feature (and indeed the fame vs influence distinction) features the on-line debate around Tory Party policy.

What emerges is that two Tory "power bloggers" are highly influential but not that famous (I hadn't heard of them until I got into this game a few months ago).  I sense checked this finding with a senior Labour Politician and she confirmed that these two are considered part of the Westminster media circus.  So the software seems to work.

Anyhow, if you are not too busy watching WebCameron (forgive me if I don't put a link here),  here are the two maps:

Download David-cameron-Tory-Conservative-policy-POPULAR.pdf

Download David-Cameron-Tory-Conservative-policy-INFLUENCE.pdf

Comments

[Tom Hopkins]

Hope you don’t mind, but I put you guys in for the “Five things people don’t know about you” thread. Happy holidays!

[Sam Coates (ConHome)]

Thanks for doing this it's quite interesting.

Which category do you reckon the Tory power bloggers are in, the Strong silent types?!

[Jonathan Sheppard]

What about doing something similar for podcasts

[Chad]

Well, well, UKIPHome is the 3rd most influential blog on Tory policy issues. Thatmust make a lot of Tories very happy... ;-)

[Praguetory]

This work is an absolute joke. Someone paid money for this???They'd be better off asking someone who spends an hour a day on the Tory blogs what to do.

I can't wait to tell Paul Newman that he is the third most popular Conservative blogger.

[Chad]

Boo hoo, poor old PragueTory's ego bubble has been burst. I guess it would have been the model of excellence if your ropey blog had been in the top 10.

Nothing like asking the tory bloggers for a *cough* balanced view.

[Chad]

Hey PT - On your website you have called PatternRecognition's analysis as 'clever data mining' for the top 10 in which you like the result (the popular sites) but suddenly the very same analysis is a joke in the top 10 in which you don't like the result (the influential list).

That is exactly why PatternRecognition would not ask Tory Bloggers opinion.

[Praguetory]

I was joking on my site about Paul Newman - do you need me to put a joke up in lights for you, Chad?