Okay, I’m just thinking aloud here , please comment if you disagree.

And I think the answer to the question above is no, not necessarily.

I mentioned previously I was trying out PeerIndex and found it really helpful to get another view of keeping my twitter lists (2 in particular: Digital Bloggers and Digital Groups/Events/Associations) ‘clean’ and useful. It’s a work in progress but is helping me review 3+ years of follows and list curation.

For example, its allowed me to look again at some of the ‘lower scoring’ bloggers and spot that they may be inactive or just ‘isolated’ – which could imply a lack of quality content.
Its hard to actually read 200+ blogs and in truth I stick to some faves more out of habit than anything, So you could make a case for drawing an arbitrary line at (say) a PI score of 60 and un-following anyone lower than that on twitter, then paring down the PeerIndex Group manually. (There isn’t yet an auto-refresh / dynamic link between a twitter list and a PeerIndex Group. The guys at PeerIndex are looking at this though, which would be very neat.)
But culling (sorry bloggers) anyone with PeerIndex score lower than X is both harsh and also a bit rash. And as it turns out, would deny me some great content.

A lower PI score doesn’t necessarily relate to content quality (or original thinking) :  some of the bloggers with relatively low PeerIndex scores just don’t ‘reach out’ to others that much or publicise themselves. But what they talk about is often well researched and written with conviction. And I like reading them.

I guess where it could be useful (for them rather than me) is where they are specifically a social media practitioner (actually, one could imply, any digital marketing practitioner) and a low PeerIndex score may suggest  they don’t walk the walk , take part in online discussions, share links, get enthused about what’s new etc..
But that’s also just one aspect of being a practitioner, I know, so no value judgement being made there.

And it’s often cobblers shoes – you’re too busy working for clients and putting campaigns together to then discuss / debate / share / influence (proactively) with others. I get that.

Caveat #1 : I primarily write my blog for my own learning / absorption of facts / assimilation of arguments currently in the industry and I don’t wildly promote it – which is reflected in my own ‘mid-league’ position. So using my logic above I could well have culled myself if I had taken the ‘un-follow if below a score of X’ route. hmm.

Caveat #2 : A huge number of those on my PeerIndex Groups are not actually registered, so their score could be astray a fair bit? I do think Peer Index and social capital scores like this will become more ubiquitous in any industry (especially at the senior level) – as it helps others gauge you better than reading your CV alone. So there’s a probably a lot of shuffling of scores to be had as people / organisations sign up..

Finally and in a similar vein, if you’re intrigued by PeerIndex or social capital in general , have a look at a blog post on my agency’s blog : Top marketing agencies ranked by social media influence  – a PeerIndex Group of marketing agencies & their social media influence.

I try not to link to my agency blog if I can help it as treading that tricky path of independent thinking and non-salesy content.. But, hey, it’s a good post and very relevant

Related articles

• What You Should Be Getting Out of Social Scoring Sites (lauraleewalker.com)
• PeerIndex Measures Your Personal Social Influence (alltopstartups.com)
• 4 Megatrends in Social Media and Social Business – Forbes (forbes.com)
• Four social media business trends for 2012 (theglobeandmail.com)
• Can PeerPerks Identify Your Network’s Worth (programmableweb.com)
• Social ranking platform PeerIndex rolls out ‘topical influence’ with its new API (thenextweb.com)