To come up with our 10, we used both objective and subjective analysis.

We used social media tools Klout and Followerwonk to help us out. Both determine “social influence” by measuring factors such as:

Number of followers across social media

Number of Twitter “retweets” and “mentions”

Number of Facebook “likes” and “shares”

Number of Google Plus “+1s”

In addition to these tools, we made sure that each of our 10 was a) active on social media over the past month and b) providing gold followers with useful insight and analysis.

Because our list includes only tweeters in English, we recognize that there is a bias in favour of areas of the world in which English is the primary language.

We should also note that in order to make our 10, the expert needed to be ‘gold-focused.’ A special kudos to those tweeting exclusively on gold!

We also welcome you to follow our great news editors on Twitter:

@CeciliaJamasmie; @anakomnenic; @frikels; @anthonyhalley; @michaelmccrae

…and of course MINING.com’s news feed: @mining

So, without further ado, here is MINING.com’s Twitter Gold Top Ten:

10) Tekoa Da Silva @TekoaDaSilva

Precious metals publisher.

# of Twitter followers: 2,286

9) World Gold Council @GOLDCOUNCIL

The market development organisation for the gold industry

# of Twitter followers 3,070

8) Gold News @goldnews

Tracking all English language news about gold prices.

# of Twitter followers: 5,237

7) “Hal” @gold_tracker

Precious metals analyst. Gold and silver in particular.

# of Twitter followers: 12,421

6) James Turk @FGMR

Focusing on precious metals since 1987.

# of Twitter followers: 9,401

5) Live Bullion Prices @GoldMarket

Precious metals market insight.

# of Twitter followers: 16,260

4) AlphaFlight @AlphaPortfolios

Professional Resource and Commodities Investor specializing in Precious Metals.

# of Twitter followers: 22,964

3) ET Gold News @ETGoldNews

Gold news from the Economic Times.

# of Twitter followers: 9,837

2) The Gold Report @SWGoldReport

Leading investment coverage of precious metals.

# of Twitter followers: 20,668

1) Kitco News @KitcoNewsNOW

Precious metals expert analysis and spot prices.

# of Twitter followers: 20,252

Also check out this cool compilation of gold statistics: https://mining.com/the-sweat-of-the-sun-the-breath-of-god-gold-through-the-centuries-73916/

If you think we’ve missed someone, or you’d like to make a suggestion for another top ten list, please write to us in the comments section, at [email protected] or [email protected]