Influence is a word thrown around like confetti these days. Yet just as there is no homogeneous audience in a social media world, there is no homogeneous influencer.

So those launching social PR or marketing initiatives need to know more – precisely who is influential about what, to whom, and in what context?

However, faced with shiny new topic, a place to start is needed.

To find and prioritize who, of millions of bloggers, to begin to engaging with, follow these steps:

1. Find relevant bloggers (Try Google Blog Search, Blog lists in the category, these social media tools, Followerwonk to search Twitter and then check the blog rolls of good ones)
2. Record for each blogger: Awards / List membership, Google Page Rank, Twitter Followers, Klout and PeerIndex (Bear in mind there is ongoing debate about how reliable a measure Klout and PeerIndex are, but they can at least serve as a comparative indicator)
3. Prioritize based on the overall picture (Make notes and don’t rely on one measure alone. If there is time and the blog is very active, you could make more in-depth ethnographic observations on participation occuring)
4. After launching the campaign measure referrals back to your target URL – to ascertain which blogs are bringing most traffic /are most goal-achieving

More on brand engagement with bloggers from Eric Schwartzman, including stats from the 2011 Technorati bloggers survey:

Digital confetti image by Frankief