In order to be considered an leader in your niche the most influential people in your market must know about you an be talking about you. So, you can either sit around and wait for that to happen (which may never happen) or you can reach out and bring their attention to your brand, your products and services, your website and your content. The goal of connecting to a key influencer is to get them to voluntarily promote your business either by syndicating your content, allowing you to guest post on their site, or getting them to actually create original content that references and links back to your website.
Keep in mind the characteristics of a key influencer. Some of these are a bit contradictory, so they do not all need to apply. In fact, someone may only have one of these traits and still be a major key influencer in your niche.
- Key influencers will often have a large following on social networks relative to others in your industry.
- Contrary to the above point, sometimes key influencers may not have the largest social followings, but do have strong connections to other key influencers.
- Key influencers are often the owners of or contributors to the most popular trade publications in your industry.
- Key influencers are often involved with the organizations that either govern or support your industry.
- Key influencers often speak at industry events such as trade show keynote presentations and “state of the industry” type educational sessions.
- Key influencers often put on or manage industry events.
- Key influencers are often “famous” within their industry for having invented, founded or created some sort of important company, technology or breakthrough.
- Sometimes key influencers are known for being prolific and successful investors within your industry.
Any of the above qualities can cause someone to gain notoriety and earn a stature of significance within their particular industry. Once they have that stature, gaining their backing or praise, even getting them to talk about your company publicly can help you quickly expand recognition and elevate your own status.
Use the following strategies to identify the key influencers in your market.
- Set up Google Alerts and use SocialMention.com, Topsy.com, FollwerWonk.com, Klout.com, Alltop.com (for top bloggers), PeerIndex.com, Traackr.com and Kred.com. These tools will all help you find influential people that are somehow related to your most important keywords.
- Follow the key influencers on social networks. Reach out to them, compliment them and engage them in intelligent conversation about the subject. Once you have a conversation going, bring their attention to something you have done that may be interesting to them.
- Join groups related to your niche on social networks like LinkedIn and Facebook. Participate. Contribute to conversations and connect with everyone who is active in the group.
- Follow every conference and trade show related to your niche and connect with both event organizers and speakers.
- Collect the contact information of key influencers either on their website or in social networks. LinkedIn is the best social network for collecting email addresses.
- Make sure that once you connect with that key influencer on social networks, that you stay in front of them by paying for promoted posts targeting them.
- Once you have the contact information for a key influencer you should also consider applying all of the strategies that we will discuss in the
of this course.
So, Get Out There And Connect With Some
Key Influencers!
Next If you really want to give key influencers something to get excited about and a reason to talk about what you are doing… then pay attention to the next lesson and