How SocialCred Might Just Have Gamified The Experience of Becoming An Influencer
Without a doubt, digital technology has totally changed the way people meet, interact, and build their reputation. With the growth of social media platforms, the term ‘global village’ often used to describe the world has become more real, given that the closeness it brings increases daily, as every social media user now has a channel to air their views and engage with just about anybody they wish at the tap of a few buttons.
These interactions over time, add up to some sort of social validation or increased credibility, and in recent times, a new rave has engulfed popular social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram where people have now put themselves on a quest to earn this validation by dominating interactions within their social niche. This often involves them posting a lot of content in an attempt to capture the attention of their audience which ripples into increased follower numbers and engagement. The longer this happens for them, the closer they get to the tag of an influencer.
Interestingly, the quest is a never-ending one, because, for every type of influencer, there is a higher influencer driving more engagement, amassing more followers, and getting more brand endorsements. As with every race, people want to know where they rank and that is where SocialCred comes in.
SocialCred is a new web-based social media ranking app, which launched in June 2020.
The app whose name was probably coined from “social credibility” was released by marketing technology startup, Plaqad with the aim of answering the vital social media questions that many users have about their influence online.
The SocialCred tool helps users to measure how much influence they have online, based on four key metrics – their number of followers, average engagement rate, audience sentiments (positive, neutral or negative), and the ratio of original posts to shared posts within a 30-day window. It allocates points for each of these metrics and the total number of points earned determines the rank a user gets, providing a game-like feeling.
The app’s ‘About’ page shows that there are a total of ten possible ranks a user can get, based on the points they earn, with the maximum number of points being 100. These ranks come with fancy names such as A-Lister, Big Shot, Socialite, Trend Setter, JJC, Superstar, and Learner; with the highest being A-Lister. Verified accounts are most likely to earn that rank because they get an additional 10 points just for being verified and will get more points for the large following they have.
As users go through the process of discovering how they rank across YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram, SocialCred adds another layer of fun by letting them compare themselves with their friends and other influencers on the three platforms. It further gives users the ability to brag about their rankings by sharing their search results with their followers on various social media platforms.
Although SocialCred isn’t the first to do most of these, it is surely a unique breed with the way it attempts to gamify the process, making things a little competitive along the way.
With its playful user experience and easy language, users can easily understand what each metric tracks, better than they would if they used their social media app dashboard, and this is a plus for SocialCred. Why? Well, with the way each element is broken down, each user knows what to improve on if they want to rank higher.
For instance, the app measures audience sentiments in percentages and splits them into
positive, neutral, and negative. This way, a user might discover they have more neutral followers thus, will need to engage a bit more to get a higher positive value, and those with a higher negative rate might need to change their content style or tone of voice.
Packed with several benefits, it also serves brands a golden opportunity to identify social media users and content creators who could be useful in supporting their cause or improving their brand visibility. It might seem like an all fun app, but it does give accurate and insightful stats, and these are important for effective influencer campaigns.
As always, there is always room for improvement, and for SocialCred, it could go from a nice and fun app to a game-changer with few tweaks. First extra feature should be the addition of more social media platforms. TikTok is an influencer delight right now and it would be great to see who the top users are. A short description of the ranks, maybe with the point range and how they compare to one another would make it easier to draw conclusions from the results.
Also, integrating a section that features top-ranking social media users within a niche might help people and businesses easily make their comparisons and decisions. However, if SocialCred does stay the way it is, it will still be a very handy tool for every social media user, with a fun way of discovering what truly makes a user an influencer.
