Top UK agencies ranked by social media influence
Another day, another Top Agencies List. However, this time, instead of the agencies (ad, integrated, digital, social, search, PR, brand……) being ranked by turnover, billings or people, the list is ordered by those that are most influential in social media.
The term ‘influence’ has been debated at length lately, and one of the tools vying for the position of the definitive measure is Peer Index. The tool is similar to Klout and claims to help you “understand your social capital”.
Peer Index uses three scores (authority, activity and audience) that are normalised to give a score. The normalisation is non-linear, so to get a score of 90 you need to be in the top 0.001% of the community. Peer Index starts by looking at your Twitter profile and the tool allows you to register to link up more of your online profiles and gain better analytics.
The Independent have used Peer Index’s List in the past to show who is hot and who’s not on Twitter, with Sarah Brown (@sarahbrownuk) topping the list.
Peer Index recently made the list function publically available and a few have sprung up. I thought I’d have a bit of fun by creating a list of the Top Agencies in the UK to see if there were any surprises.
I added all the major digital, social, search and integrated agencies with a digital slant that came to mind and had a look at which agencies appear on other Twitter users’ lists. At the time of writing this blog post, sixty agencies had been included.
Some agencies like giants Ogilvy and cool kids Made by Many shone brightly at the top of the list:
But there were also some of the big boys like McCann London and Mediacom languishing right at the bottom of the list.
The Top 20 Agencies currently looks like this:
| 1 | Ogilvy Digital | 11 | FishburnHedges |
| 2 | madebymany | 12 | CakeGroup |
| 3 | LBi London | 13 | Paratus |
| 4 | H&K UK team | 14 | Tamar UK |
| 5 | We Are Social | 15 | Agency Republic |
| 6 | glue Isobar | 16 | Brass Agency |
| 7 | syzygy uk | 17 | Lucre |
| 8 | Umpf | 18 | iCrossing UK |
| 9 | Neo@Ogilvy | 19 | 1000heads |
| 10 | McCann Erickson PR | 20 | Mother |
What do you think? Does this list indicate which agencies are managing to grasp social media and which aren’t?
All Comments
Its not about how agencies are managing to grasp social media, its about how peerindex is scoring. yogeshmalik is ranked 59 -now isn’t that funny?
our agency is neoco, UK social CRM agency that has a peer index of 49 which is well within the Top 20 and closer to the Top 10, yet it is not featured in this list.
I question this statement
“Does this list indicate which agencies are managing to grasp social media and which aren’t?”
Because surely the measure of if an agency ‘grasps’ social media is how successful their work for their clients is. Not by how well they use social media to ‘promote’ themselves.
Hi Ally,
Although interesting, measuring an agency’s social media influence based on Twitter only seems very limited to me as other platforms are becoming increasingly important as “Influence channels” for agencies ; Facebook but also Scribd/Slideshare and of course LinkedIn. It’s an awful lot of research but creating an index with Facebook Fans + Average Number of LinkedIn contacts + views on SlideShare + mentions on the Social Web over the past 30days (measured with Radian6) could be very insightful.
By the way, I work for Carve Consulting,, a London-based Social Media consulting agency. Just checked our “Peer Index” and it’s 38…maybe we’ll be in the list when the new index comes up!
Certainly makes for interesting reading, but I’d question the choice of agency profiles in the ranking.
For example, @weareMBA (MediaCom’s content & social division) hasn’t been included, and I also know a few folk at PHD who might also have a few things to say…
Great comments guys.
Benn – I’ll add your agency in. The list isn’t a static one.
Phillip – It was definitely a question, not a statement…I was hoping to start a debate. I agree, it’s sometimes very difficult to have time to do your own promotion as an agency when client work takes priority. The agencies that I have seen doing well with their own promotion within social media are those that have a structured plan in place.
Chris – when an agency registers with Peer Index, there is an option to add Linked In, Blogs, Facebook etc. – it’s missing SlideShare. Hopefully Peer Index will pick up on that and add it in. They seem to be very good at responding to people’s comments about how to make the system better. Peer Index is a tool that will evolve. It will be interesting to see what the ranking factors are in a year’s time! p.s. I’ll add Crave Consulting to the list too.
Pete – thanks for the Mediacom link and I’ll search for PHD’s
There will def. be some agencies missing from the list. Not on purpose. It’s just hard to catch them all first time around.
The list will be a living breathing one, so any more suggestions for top agencies to add in there are very welcome!
I agree with Benn on this one where is Neoco? Surely if this list was compiled properly they’d be above Tamar UK!
Great list Ally. Can we claim our spot? Digital Outlook have a peer index score of 43:
http://www.peerindex.net/digitaloutlook
Thanks!
Hi Ally,
Saatchi & Saatchi X (@ShopperX) also has a score of 49 (http://www.peerindex.net/shopperx) Could you please include us too?
Hi
Thanks for great comments – and discussion
Yes – we will add increasing number of platforms over time – currenlty quora, linkedin and facebook are supported.
We don’t typically look at things like follower counts, but rather at how your ideas diffuse across these networks an the extent to which other people value them. (All in maths).
Happy to take more suggestions, here or elsewhere.
a
Hi Ally. I’m one of the managing partners at Brando. We have a score of 49 and yet we are not on the list either. Could you add us please? http://www.peerindex.net/brando_world
We’ve got a peer index of 35. Could we be added to the list please – http://www.peerindex.net/noporkpies
Hi Ally
In the spirit of a ‘live’ list, here’s the peer index for BBH Labs, we’d love to be included.
http://www.peerindex.net/bbhlabs
cheers.
am loving the fame. waiting for the fortune. thanks peer index. nice to have some bite as the sun shines down on east london.
Ditto for us, please: http://www.peerindex.net/onlinefire
The list is an interesting mix though!
can we be included too
This blog post is an excellent tool to measure understanding of social media. Anyone who thinks a ranking like this has any validity clearly doesn’t have a ****ing clue.
Our retained agency should be there too according to peerindex (peerinderx23):
http://www.peerindex.net/uberagency
Thanks
Hi Ally – I’m from Rabbit, which currently isn’t on the list – can you add us please? http://www.peerindex.net/therabbitagency
Am adding more of you now.
Anil…agree. LBi are doing well
Jacob…that’s not very nice now is it? Mother aren’t doing that bad on the list. It’s a bit of fun meant to inform debate, which it certainly seems to be doing.
I really like the fact that some of the smaller agencies that do social media really well can play with the ‘big boys’. Will be interesting to see how it evolves.
Hi, I’m from Finn and have noticed we’re not on there with a peer index of 24 http://www.peerindex.net/finncomms, please add. Thanks
Definitely more fun than the usual income/billings tables Ally! For the record, RAPP (@RAPP_UK) has a Peer Index score of 54
I think it’s interesting that you’re comparing some very different agencies on that list. For example, you’ve got the likes of Bigmouthmedia whose heartland is Search; and then us at Numiko – we’d argue that we’re not a ‘marketing agency’ at all!
Peer Index is an interesting toy, but I’m not sure we’re going to start crying about a low score just yet.
It’s fun to see just how much debate this is causing though!
May I point out that the PR Week Power Players of Social Media Peerindex list (which I believe was an inspiration for Ally’s list) has now passed 11K views since launch a few weeks ago. Av. 300+ views per day. http://bit.ly/giceIS
Seems that PR folk need their daily fix of Peerindex rankings.
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Hi Ally,
Great list, as it’s a ‘living’ one, would you be willing to add The Dubs please? http://www.thedubs.com – We’re a digital marketing and social media agency, currently ranking 51 on Peerindex.
Look forward to more and the ensuing debates in the future
Siobhan
I remember a client once saying to an MD,after he was bragging about how much PR his agency got, “Your job is to make my brand famous, not yours.”
PeerIndex measurement is useless. This is just a list of agencies who spend more time on twitter not working than doing what they’re paid to do.
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