Houstonians are proud. We’re Texans, we’ve got great sports teams and our economy has remained strong throughout the recession.

Our city is one of the largest metropolitan areas in the nation, and is consistently ranked among the top in business, energy, technology and medicine, yet Haydn Shaughnessy’s list of the top 50 Power Influencers in Social Media fails to list a single person from Houston.

Most of us have been to plenty of Crystal and Lantern Awards ceremonies where we’ve seen great marketing and social media campaigns recognized for their ingenuity and effectiveness. We know there are great social media professionals in our amazing city, but who are they?

The Qualifications

For this ranking, I found every Twitter handle that mentioned Social Media in their bios and was located in or near Houston – about 250 total.

I added folks from LinkedIn near Houston with “Social Media” in their job titles. Finally I took to Twitter to ask people for their personal suggestions, increasing the total list to about 350.

I then took out any accounts belonging to businesses or agencies, or those belonging to people who weren’t focused on Social, reducing the list back down to 150. I fed these all into Peek Analytics and got the top 100.

The Metrics

When trying to find out who these influencers are, it’s important to gauge the activity and influence of their followers, both to measure the effectiveness of the content shared by the influencer, as well as to determine how active their followers are (bots and spam accounts are not likely to engage with content or have relationships developed across networks). With this in mind, we used the same methodology that Haydn used for the global list, PeekAnalytics‘ Total Social Pull.

Social Pull is a measure of the user’s audience, expressed as a factor of an average user. A score like Michele Price’s 825 means that she has 825 times the influence of the average user, but it’s not only a measure of network size. It also takes into account other social networks your followers are using, as well as their network sizes. Basically, if you have a lot of people in your network, and the people in your network have a lot of people in their networks, you’re more likely to be influential.

Social Pull as a metric isn’t perfect, as Mark Schaeffer notes in this blog post, but neither is Klout, Kred or PeerIndex. I’m simply using it in a spirit of using the same methods as the global list. You’ll see the social pull ratings as the number listed after each influencer’s Twitter Handle.

You can find your Social Pull here.

So without further ado…

The Influencers (Follow them all on the “HoustonTop100” Twitter List)

1. Michele Price  founder of Breakthrough Business Strategies, a digital and social media agency, Brand-Digital Marketing Director at Tech Street Houston, and the on-air host for #BBSradio – business internet radio show. @ProsperityGal – 825

2. Madalyn Sklar is an independent Social Media Strategist and founder of GoGirlsMusic.com. @MadalynSklar – 674

3. George Benckenstein was almost a coworker of mine at Insperity, and he’s currently the Internet Marketing Manager for American National Insurance. @Benckenstein – 619

4. Jennifer Haubein is the Social Media Manager for Forthea Interactive, an internet marketing agency. @JHaubein – 572

5. Robert Banach is a Social Media Trainer for Leadership Insights Organization. @RobertJBanach – 551

6. Damien Franco is the newly appointed Director of Social Media for the Tech Street Houston conferece. @DamienFranco – 549

7. Jeff Flowers is the Social Media Specialist at Smith & Associates, where he creates content for ServerMonkey.com @Bukowsky – 373

8. Kara Singh is an actual former coworker and friend from Insperity, where she’s led the way for Social at Insperity Recruiting Services. @KaraSingh – 332

9, Chris Makara is also a former coworker and friend from Insperity. Chris is the Interactive Marketing specialist, where he works with the online marketing team to lead Insperity’s multiple business units. He’s also a Social Media blogger and freelancer too. @ChrisMakara – 261

10. Grace Rodriguez is Creative Juicer at Culture Pilot where she works on branding and maketing strategy. She is also cofounder of C2 Creative, a creative office space. @GraceRodriguez – 206

11. Tracey Holloway-Koetting is the owner and Social Media Manager for Get Social Butterfly. @GetSocialButter – 197

12. Frederick J. Goodall, better known as “Mocha Dad” is a top-50 dad blogger and internet marketer. @MochaDad – 186

13. Daniel Calderon is a former social media manager for A’La Carte Foodservice, and current Assistant General Manager at Beck’s Prime. @DanielNCalderon – 186

14. Kami Watson Huyse is founder of Social Media Breakfast Houston and the CEO at Zoetica, a communication consulting agency. @KamiChat – 179

15. Raegan Hill is a Marketing Recruiter for Onward Search and one of the most prolific networkers in Houston. She is also spokesperson for The CMO Club Houston. @RaeganHill – 169

16. Oliver Glaudy is the CMO of Roar Marketing Consultants, a marketing agency. @OliverGlaudy – 168

17. Lauren Fernandez is the Social Media Manager at Landrys Restaurants where she develops strategy for dozens of concepts with hundreds of locations nationwide. Don’t ask me how she does it. @Cubanalaf – 153

18. Dwight Silverman is the Techblogger and Social Media Manager at The Houston Chronicle. @DSilverman – 149

19. Petri Darby is the Director of Marketing, Communications and Digital Strategy for Make-A-Wish America. @DarbyDarnit – 146

20. Sandy Lawrence is the President of Perceptive Marketing, a publishing marketing company. @SandyLawrence – 135

21. Marc Nathan is the Director of Business Development for Forthea Interactive. @Marc1919 – 125

22. Rebecca Thompson is the Community Manager and Social Media Specialist for CLR Virtual Connection, a Social Media Agency. @RebeccaThompson – 120

23. Aimee Woodall is the founder of Black Sheep Agency, a boutique creative, branding and social media agency. @AimeeWoodall – 113

24. Portia Chandler is Marketing Strategist PA & Associates and founder of portiachandler.com where she develops Social Media Strategy and training. @AskPortia – 109

25. Geri Druckman is the Director of Digital Media at Knowbility, a non-profit formed to help all get access to technology. @GDruckman – 96

26. Brenda Ross heads up marketing and social media at ikan Corp. @BrendaRoss – 96

27. Chris Sully is the Social Media Strategist at Houston retail electric provider, Reliant Energy. @CSSully – 87

28. Jennifer Valencia is the Director of Client Relations at Unleaded Communications. @JenValencia – 86

29. Ed Schipul is the Founder and CEO of Schipul, The Web Marketing Company. @ESchipul – 79

30. Rob Ainbinder is a Content Marketing Specialist at Reliant Energy. @RobAinbinder – 78

31. Juan Alanis is the Social Media and Public Relations Strategist from Lopez Negrete, a full-service agency specializing in Hispanic marketing. @JuanOfWords – 78

32. Alexandra Velez is the Founder and Owner of Velez Media, an inbound marketing, SEO and Social Media agency. @VelezMedia – 73

33. Marcel Santilli is the Global Social Media Manager for IBM. I have no idea how we haven’t met yet. @Santilli – 70

34. Trish Cunningham is the Business Development and Expert Manager at Brookwoods Group, a staffing and consulting group. @TrishRC – 68

35. Sandra Fernandez is the Public Relations Manager for the Houston Public Library. @SandraSays – 63

36. Mickey Bryan is the Executive Director of Compu-Net, who promotes social media and technology training for non-profits. Mickey is also a Social Network trainer at Leisure Learning Unlimited. @MickeyBryant – 62

37. Rachel Macik is the Marketing Programs lead for BMC Control-M and BMC Mainframe products. @RachelMacik – 60

38. Chris Jones is the Web Developer and Social Media Consultant at Network Outfitters. @RealChrisJones – 58

39. Katie Laird is the PR and Social Media Manager at Blinds.com, and former Head Communications Geek at Schipul @HappyKatie – 56

40. Monica Danna is the e-philanthropy manager at the St. Lukes Foundation at St. Lukes Hospital, as well as a special events board member of HiMA, the Houston Interactive Marketing Association. @CosmoPolitician – 46

41. Joe Ruiz is the Web Content Administrator at Houston ISD and Web Director at News Taco. @JoeRuiz – 46

42. Jennifer Texada is a Business Analyst at Reliant Energy where she supports analysis, planning and implementation of retail web projects. @JennTex – 42

43. John Sanchez is the IT Usability Analyst at Academy Sports + Outdoors. @JohnMSanchez – 38

44. Debbie Hutchings is the Social Media Lead at BMC Software, and my boss. @DebbieHutchings – 38

45. Kristen Brady is currently a freelance Social Media Consultant and Maketing Writer. @KB54927 – 38

46. Julian Cavazos is the Marketing and Communications Specialist at YMCA of Houston. @JulianCavazos – 38

47. Zach Doty is the SEO Specialist at Forthea Interactive. @ZLDoty – 37

48. Rachel Wilkerson is the Content and Community Manger at Theatrics.com. @RachelGettingIt – 32

49. Brian Block is the Social Media Strategist and Account Executive at Pierpont Communications, and self-proclaimed Seth Green look-alike (I kinda see it). @BriGuyBlock– 31

50. Gary Remy is the founder and CEO of Biztopia, a local search and SEO agency. @TexasSEO – 31

Continue to 51-100 here.