• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, January 10, 2011

Marketing applications company mBlast on Monday is expected to debut a Web-based service to help marketers better identify and work with relevant Influencers. Named mPACT, the new tool uses a proprietary algorithm for finding and scoring influencers' power, which it combines with media monitoring efforts.

"From bloggers and Twitter celebrities to new media analysts and journalists, there's an unprecedented number of voices covering relevant subjects today," said Brian Solis, author of Engage and mBlast advisor.

mPACT will attempt to help marketers answer questions like: Who's my market listening to? Who can I target to help spread my message? What are these Influencers saying about my company, products, and competitors? What opportunities am I missing to engage with my key Influencers?

Built on the idea that influence does not equal popularity, mPACT bases influence scoring first and foremost on topical relevancy.

"At entry level, mPACT users pay just $10 per month to track each competitor," said mBLAST CEO Gary Lee -- which is a deal, he said, "once you factor in the other features like mPACT's media monitoring, opportunity tracking and influencer ranking."

Per-user pricing ranges from $495 a year to $2,995 a year, based on the number of companies and markets tracked.

Upon signing up, users enter a set of keywords or areas of interest. mPACT then mines terabytes of Web-based data in real-time -- including blogs, social sites, online publications, and journals -- to identify who's writing about that specific topic.

mPACT applies its influence algorithm, which considers what an Influencer has written across online media -- including articles, blogs and social media; how frequently they've been sourced; how often they are quoted, and the number of followers/readers they have.

mPACT users can see the top Influencers for any given market, while casting a wider net than just Twitter to index all of the niche sites and publications that shape a market.

Users can drill down to view details about any Influencer, including the full scope of what they have written over the past months.