For the 6^th #EUinfluencer event, not only did we create two rankings, but for the first time ever, we recognized individuals from Instagram and LinkedIn for their influence.

This is how we did it:

• We divided top influencers in twelve categories (step 1 & 2)
• We listed the top-50 influencers overall (step 3, 4 & 5)
• We mapped Instagram and LinkedIn players (step 6)

You can see all winners here

STEP 1: FINDING INFLUENCERS

Several social media monitoring tools were used to find users tweeting about 12 categories related to EU affairs:

• Healthcare
• Agriculture
• Economy & Trade
• Energy
• Food & Drink
• Sustainability & Climate
• Technology
• Human Rights
• Transport
• Space
• Travel & Tourism
• Ukraine

We then created queries that would allow multilingual responses and focus our results on Brussels influencers and influencers who tweet about Brussels.

STEP 2: TOP INFLUENCERS PER CATEGORY

We retrieved the number of tweets for each category for the previous year^[1], the name of the user, and their number of followers. With this data, we built a graph for each of the categories, looking at several different factors.

With this methodology, we then classified influencers by interest, potential reach, number of tweets, and followers.

From there, we gathered the top users from “high interest, high potential reach” of each category. Thereafter, these users were ordered by followers and number of mentions in order to rank the top-5 #EUinfluencers of each category.

STEP 3: CREATION OF THE TOP-100 #EUINFLUENCER LIST

We gathered around 100 influencers who were the top influencers of each category, taking into consideration the following KPIs:

1. Number of followers
2. Average retweets per tweet (the average number of retweets the influencer gets per tweet)
3. Density of followers in Brussels (the number of followers of the influencer in Brussels divided by their number of followers; Estimated number)
4. Number of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) that have mentioned the influencer during the previous year.

STEP 4: CRITERIA FOR INCLUSION – EXCLUSION

We established criteria for inclusion and exclusion from the list:

• Only individuals were included; subsequently disqualifying companies and/or association accounts from the rankings.
• MEPs, Commissioners and top Commission and Parliament workers were excluded.

STEP 5: ESTABLISH TOP-50 #EUINFLUENCER LIST

And Bob’s your uncle! This is how we created our #EUinfluencer top-50 list. Using our own unique formula and years of experience in target and influencer mappings.

STEP 6: MAP AND IDENTIFY NOTE-WORTHY INSTAGRAM AND LINKEDIN INFLUENCERS

For the very first time this year, we have also decided to include influencers from LinkedIn and Instagram into the mix. While the top-50 list and category winners were selected through both quantitative and qualitative factors, selecting the Instagram and LinkedIn #EUinfluencers was done mostly qualitatively. As always, we made sure that all these influencers  had a sizeable amount of followers from the EU/Brussels bubble. We also took into consideration the following key performance indicators: adeptness in using either the LinkedIn and Instagram interfaces, the originality of their high-quality content, and the advocacy work these influencers have done to address different problems and issues in the EU.

Contact us for your own target and influencer mapping, or anything else related to digital.

[1] 1 July, 2021 to 15 July 2022