Over the past five years, the relationship between brands and consumers has dramatically changed. Social platforms like Facebook and Twitter have gone mainstream, offering new ways for brands to express themselves and connect with consumers. In this context, brands have been racing to acquire as many fans as possible, often without knowing how to leverage the fan bases they have built. And if the game already changed from acquisition to engagement a while ago in the U.S., that change has just started to take place in Canada. Right now, Canadian businesses are at a tipping point, and they are just beginning to realize that their fan bases are only worth the engagement they generate. Influence was a buzz word for a couple of years, with the rise of Klout and similar start-ups, but there still wasn't a way to tie in brand engagement with online influence.

To achieve this, we acquired an influence measurement company in late 2011.Our development team joined forces with our social media experts and they completely re-thought and re-built the platform, giving it a new purpose — to measure a particular individual’s influence toward one specific brand through Facebook engagement.

Although Top Voice was already a functioning technology when we acquired the platform, we completely re-designed its purpose, and consequently, its technological features. We needed to define the algorithm that would measure a fan’s influence towards a specific brand, based on their interactions with the brand’s page. The algorithm had to focus on influence, not engagement, so we had to take this into account so our fans could generate visibility for the brand among their friends, one of the most challenging aspects of the development process. Our complex algorithm now allows us to attribute an influence score to any fan of a brand, based on their interactions, as well as the impact they have on their network of friends.

Top Voice was not created for one specific brand, but rather as an adaptable platform that can be leveraged by any brand. It is a Facebook app that can be integrated into any Facebook page, and as a result, any fanbase based on our influence parameters. When installing Top Voice, brands can set the rewards they want to give away to their top influencers, as well as customize the look of the tab that hosts the app.

Our agency is the sole owner of the technology, as well as the sole investor (it is self-funded). Our plans for the future of Top Voice include allowing brands to fine tune the parameters used to calculate scores according to their needs (for instance, the points awarded for specific user actions vs. generated reactions). CRM integration will also be the next step for Top Voice so brands can link their fanbase to their CRM databases.

First of all, we are able to identify the most important influencers for a brand, based on their own actions and their own network response. We launched the project internally, with 120 users and prizes on offer for the top 10 influencers. Right after implementing Top Voice on our agency’s Facebook page, we noticed a dramatic increase in interactions—the number of “likes,” “comments,” “shares,” and “mentions” skyrocketed, quadrupling our usual viral reach. A month later, our viral reach was still high—double what it was before we implemented Top Voice.

We are also proud to announce that we have signed our first deal with a client, and Top Voice will soon be integrated into the Facebook page of our client.

You will also be asked to detail key stages (with dates) in the Development Timeline.