Marketing with More Influential People
One of the greatest advantages to hiring a social media professional is that they may already know a lot of the social media industry’s biggest influencers. That means a shorter lead-time to get some real buzz going on for your business.
 | DEFINITION |
An influencer is someone whose voice and actions many people in a community respect and react to.
Beyond this, they know how to identify the main influencers in your industry. This is essential to do whether you hire a social media professional or not.
The job of the social media professional is to identify who your audience is in terms of wants, needs, and demographics and find an influencer(s) who can get your word out faster to a larger audience.
That will, in turn, create buzz, traffic to your social sites, and conversations. The job of the social media professional is also to ensure that you’re prepared for high responses by setting up workflow with your team.
The Power of Influencers
Getting an influencer on board with your social media program can be the fuel you need to launch your Facebook marketing to a higher level. A social media marketing or public relations consultant can help.
One of the most important advantages of hiring a social media consultant is their experience in researching and finding influencers. It takes a lot of skill to be able to sift through the internet to find the right conversations for your industry and identify who has the largest reach and potential influence. Then, it will take some convincing to get them on board with your business to write about, endorse, or even acknowledge you.
What if you are a budding rock star and your consultant is able to get Lady Gaga to mention you on Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, and Twitter? Hello, instant American Idol traffic!
Let’s take that down a notch to a local level. Let’s say you have an ice cream shop called Grahams in Geneva, Illinois. Well, it’s going to be hard to get Lady Gaga to mention how she loved the double chocolate fudge, but you could certainly benefit from local influencers.
A consultant is going to be able to identify these influencers on a national or local level. At least, that should be your requirement before hiring them. And the direction you give them will be to find local people that the local people know and trust. That might be the local Chicago news station television anchor, or maybe the business with the largest number of Facebook fans in town.
There are several categories when it comes to types of influencers.
• Super-connectors: Generally these are rock stars and celebrities.
• Social elite: These are the most active personalities online who blog, tweet, and post a video weekly.
• Loyal customers and advocates: These are the people who have been customers for years and love your brand. They tell everyone about it.
All of these influencers have potentially large audiences who follow them and engage with them on a regular basis. You will use their reach to get your message to more people.
 | FRIENDLY ADVICE |
Does one particular person come to mind when you think about the heroes of your industry? Create a list of potential social media influencer candidates. They may be the only fuel you need for marketing on Facebook.
How to Find and Win Influencers
Even though you may hire a consultant to help you with this daunting task, it helps to know how they do it so you can help. Now that you are sold on this concept, you need to find as many influencers as possible and get them on board. How is that done? And what is the process?
Here are some tips to get you going:
• Search for keyword phrases that define your audience.
• Identify the list of influencers.
• Follow them and begin having conversations with them. Offer them value, not only casual conversation. Ask how you can help them.
• Bait them with stories that share what you have to offer to their audience. Be transparent. Don’t sell them.
• Create conversation triggers to keep the contact active.
Repeat this process over and over again. You want to develop a system so the process is easy, but you also need to make every conversation authentic. If you come across as fake, you’re not going to succeed.