Businesses employ several techniques to improve brand visibility on social media and connect with their audience. Posting quality content frequently, using multiple social networks to improve reach, and engaging with users are all important to succeed in social media.

Another very important way to improve your performance on social media is to foster connections with other influential users from your niche. This is a must if you want to succeed on social media. The first step in this regard, is to identify influential users. This involves identifying influential users and then making an effort to connect with them by following them, sharing their posts, tagging them, and more. In this article, we take a look at free tools that can help you to identify influential users in your niche. You can also use these tools to measure your own online influence.

Here are 8 free web based services that you can take advantage of for identifying influential users on social media.

1.Alianzo.com

Alianzo provides tools to compare how brands are doing on social media.  It also provides a general Alianzo rank, a score that that measures combined social media influence score from all networks into one. It allows a brand to know how influential it is and also find influential users and brands on social media so you can foster relationships with them. One of the best features of Alianzo is the easy to use lists of top users as a whole as well as categorised by each social network individually. This is one of the easiest ways to identify influential users on social media.

2. Technorati.com

Technorati is the universally accepted measure of blog authority. In many ways, it is to Blogs what Google is to regular websites. You can use Technorati to search for influential blogs or bloggers in any niche or category. It also publishes a list of top 100 blogs across several niches which can also prove very useful.

Although Technorati primarily measures blog authority, it is a useful way to identify influential social media users as blogs play an important role in determining overall online influence. It is very useful for identifying users to connect with.

3. Klout

Klout is the universally accepted measure of online influence. You can use Klout  to measure your own influence as well as to identify other influential users. Klout awards an influence score on a scale of 1 to 100 based on the combined activity of users on several leading social networks. It also lists influential users by topics which is a great way to identify and engage with influential users.

4. Commun.it

Commun.it is one the leading Twitter community management tools that allows you to better manage your Twitter relationships. It lets you focus on your top influencers, supporters & potential leads. It increases your social productivity by analysing relationships and allowing you to focus & engage with the right people for you. It also provides actionable insights into whom to follow or unfollow, whom to reply or thank for being top member.

5. Kred.com

Kred Story is a visual history of your Social Media influence. It lets you explore the posts, pictures and links that make you influential. It shows your full influence story and allows you to zoom in on important interactions. In addition to tracking your own history, you can also use it identify other influential users or identify most influential content of other users  and see their social profile.

6. Empireavenue.com

Empire Avenue offers a unique and fun way to drive traffic, boost engagement for your content and social profiles, and  gain relevant new fans, followers and subscribers on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Google+ and other networks. It uses Social Stock Market simulation to expand your social media audience. Your virtual investors will share in your success as they earn valuable currency through your online activity and engagement.

7. Followerwonk.com

Follower Wonk is one of the simplest tools to identify Twitter users with good following in any topic or location.  You can filter users by the number of followers they have. It also helps you explore and grow your social graph on Twitter. If you want to find other influential users to connect with, then this tool can prove useful.

8. Socialstatistics.com

Connecting with popular Google Plus users with a large following is an excellent way to increase your influence, expand your reach and Get more out of Google plus for your business.  This is where Social Statistics can help.

It is a tool to identify influential Google Plus users who have a large following. It lists top Google Plus users based on the number of followers.  It lets you filter results based on location which can prove very beneficial for a business. You can also use the search box to search for people by name or niche and use the dropdown to filter results for individual accounts or business pages.

CONCLUSION:

The free tools above can help you to identify influential users relevant to your niche. However, identifying influential users is only half the batter. You then need to monitor their activity and explore opportunities to connect and engage with them. This includes following influential users, answering questions, sharing their posts, tagging them in your posts, and more. This will allow you to foster relationships which can prove to be a very valuable asset for your business and help increase your overall online influence.