Measuring influence

It’s not uncommon for what’s trending on Twitter to break out into the “real” world, shaping our conversations, headlines, and behavior. Having influence on Twitter can be a powerful thing.

Every year we use Brandwatch Audiences to find the most influential people on the platform, and now it’s time to see who made the list in this rollercoaster of a year.

Our Audiences platform ranks accounts according to a selection of criteria that, added together, creates an influence score. This is our measure of how influential an account is, ultimately based on the level of genuine engagement they generate.

While lots of followers, retweets, and replies will help, their score will also be bumped up if other influential accounts engage with them.

Musicians took the lead

It turns out Twitter is an excellent place for musicians. Out of all professions, music makers took the most spots, and by quite a margin too.

Meanwhile, in a year of major political events and turmoil, including the US presidential election, the politician group had the second-highest number of individuals on the list.

Of the six politicians in our list, all but two are American, with India’s Narendra Modi and Ecudaor’s Rafael Correa making appearances.

Going back to the US, Donald Trump and Barack Obama unsurprisingly made the list, but we also saw Alexandria Oscasio-Cortez—elected to the US House of Representatives in 2018—enter our list for the first time.

So, who made it?

Right, that’s enough build up. Time to get to the list.