By Katie Delahaye Paine— Little Bird is a cool new tool to help discover connections to people who are influential in your space. Former journalist Marshall Kirkpatrick created Little Bird to help find people who were experts in the fields he was writing about. The difference between Little Bird and other systems like Traackr is in how they identify influencers. Most systems rely on key words and Boolean searches to identify the people who write frequently and with authority about your market or topic. Little Bird uses network analysis to identify the people with the largest, strongest network ties in your business. Most importantly, it isn’t just looking at Twitter or blog posts. It includes everything from Instagram to LinkedIn.
The result is a system that is both fast and accurate. I know from experience that this is a great thing, since I’ve spent a goodly amount of time developing key word searches that are both broad enough to find influencers yet accurate enough to be on topic. Turns out, for instance, that there are a lot more people who are influential on the subject of “helicopter parents” than there are about actual helicopters.
Little Bird’s fairly hefty price point makes better suited to large corporations with a variety of brands and issues to be managed, or agencies that can amortize the cost over a number of clients. But if you can afford it, it’s a terrific addition to your tool kit. ∞
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