For anyone using social media for the purpose of promoting or growing followers, social media influencers will always be important. A social media influencer is someone who is recognised for work in their field and has a strong social media following.
You will find that influencers on social media are power users who lend a voice to products or services that they either use or endorse and are trusted voices online. They also share valuable information that their audience will learn from. The first thing you need to do is ask yourself; are you an influencer on social media?
Identifying Influencers
Growing your influence isn't something that happens overnight. You need to look at your current status on social and identify those who are influencers among your followers; starting with who you know and who knows you is important before branching out.
Another way to see how you fare on social media is to look at your Klout score. This a good way of determining how influential you are on social media, as well as looking at those in your immediate circle and their Klout score.
Once you have looked at this, look at your following. How many followers do you have? Although I always say quality is more important than quantity, you can really see whether you are reaching a large enough audience to have a social impact. Look at your followers and who has the biggest following as they could be one of your influencers for your business.
Connecting with Influencers
Now you have determined who are influencers in your social media circle, you need to have conversations that are important to both you and the influencer at hand. Determine specific measures to ultimately achieve success by spending some time connecting with important people in your industry; their voice is the most important online.
If you want to delve deeper into finding out how to connect with influences; look at the content, timing and topics which most inspire them to interact on social media. Make sure you prioritise this content
Enlist Influencers
The first thing you need to understand when reaching out to potential influencers is that they are ultimately going to be a hard sell. If they have 10x more followers than you, how are you going to make they interested in what you are saying?
Provide valuable information and give the influencers what they want; engagement. Interact with influencers by sharing content that is engaging and starting the conversation. Once you have looked at your network, look outside for more thought-leaders by creating a list of influencers in Twitter and make a point of connecting with them specifically.
Retaining Influencers
Once you have found the influencers who are engaging with you and building your online following, your half way there. Now you need to make sure you are retaining these influencers and they are brand advocates for more than a short period of time.
You always need to be giving more away than what you are asking for with your influencers. Building up their credibility while promoting your business is going to be hard but make sure your influencer is the biggest part of this because without them sharing your information, you can't yourself become a thought leader.
Collaborate with Influencers
When I run my joint webinars, I look for people who are thought leaders doing great things in their industry to team up with and it should be the same concept for you and your influencers. Once you have built a good working relationship, look for ways of collaborating together.
Social media is one of the best tools to allow for collaboration and mutual benefit, when approach properly. Partnering with brands or individuals with similar target markets exposes your message to those who might have initially been unreachable.
Your voice and reputation are based on the social network you build. Having a lot of followers looks great but in reality, 50 engaging, influential followers are 100 times better than having 1,000 unengaged followers.
Are you ready to reach out to social media influencers to grow your business?