In today’s world social media sites have become a crucial part of our life. One way or the other these sites are affecting our daily routine, our way of thinking and much more. This includes some good and some bas result.

http://techcricklets.com/2012/11/role-of-social-media-sites-in-our-life/

Many professionals are turning to social media as a place of trust for their purchasing decisions and it’s no different for the IT industry. IT decision makers have a highly-regarded task of ensuring they recommend the best products and services for their organizations.
LinkedIn, Forrester Consulting, and Research Now zeroed in on these professionals to see how they utilize social media, including its effects on their purchasing decisions and how they engage with social.
According to Michael Weir, Head of Category Development for the Technology Industry at LinkedIn, “It’s no surprise that [IT decision makers] are heavy users of social networks. In fact, 85% have used at least one social network for business purposes. What’s surprising is that 73% have engaged with an IT vendor on a social network – underscoring the value of the channel for IT marketers. Even more revealing is the fact that social media is now a critical source of influence across the entire decision making process, not just during the initial research phase.”

This piece and infographic is from Adam Vincenzini on his blog.

I selected this article because it's another way for you to find key influencers and these tools will help to narrow your search

Here are some highlights:

Instead of focusing on the subjectivity of this process (and how this insight is deployed) Here's how you can use a combination of free tools to narrow your search.

Where do online influencers operate?

**They are active everywhere:

     Most popular are:

     blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Online

     communities, discussion boards

Assumptions:

**Influencers are active on Twitter

**Influencers operate some for of blogging hub

Focus on the intelligence you can glean from Twitter initially then verify this initial sweep with blog (or relevant hub) data

The initial steps involve:

1. Search by keyword

2. Search by location

3 tools useful in the process: The first two you can also search by location:

**followerwonk.com - then run this through another influencer tool -   

     tweetlevel to give it even more relevance (this isn't fool proof)

**locafollow.com

**twingulate.com

There are more suggestions in this piece having said that:

**No matter how hard we try, a 100% fool proof influence rating is near on impossible because influence is not a science, it can't be.

** this can help narrow things down, significantly

Selected by Jan Gordon covering "Content Curation, Social Business and Beyond"

Read full article here: [http://tinyurl.com/7humubp]