Do you have any important and persuasive key influencers in your social media arena?

Someone like Oprah and Ellen in your circle —

— A person or entity that has captured the attention of their market —

— Is trusted by potential customers —

— And helps them make buying decisions through social networking?

On a large scale, think of Oprah or Ellen and how they’re identifying with or endorsing a particular brand drive sales.

This type of command on social media platforms makes key influencers powerful.

This sounds great, right?

So how do you identify key influencers that can impact your business growth and sales?

That is an excellent question!

It’s a process, so let’s identify it, step by step.

6 important steps in identifying social media key influencers

Steps to Complete Before Picking the Most Important and Persuasive Key Influencers

1. Plan clear objectives. Your intention of using a key influencer must be clear. Find an influencer who fits the characteristics of your followers. This will also give you an effective framework to check your strategies and outcomes.
2. Identify the most appropriate promotion media. Choose a media channel that is effective for your campaign. According to an article written by Olivia Spinelli and published in KloodDigital.com, each brand requires a particular media. For example, Twitter for news, Instagram for food, and YouTube for beauty products. As you assess the right media for your content, do not forget to factor in the target market. Determine the content, followers, and comments associated with a particular media channel. Select the channel that’s most effective.
3. Know the influencer. Shop for influencers who relate to your target market.  Assess the geographical sphere of the influencer. Look for ones who already share content that is like your brand. Make sure they use the media channel you have chosen.Analyze this data to establish the most followed or viewed social media account. This will give you a picture if the influencer fits your desired profile.
4. Find people who are producing content that has an effect. You can analyze influence in a lot of ways. Check whether someone’s content has a high engagement rate, and gets a lot of shares on social media. Consider whether their content is a worthwhile resource for your own followers.
5. Compare similar profiles. Review profiles like that of your desired influencer. Collect them before settling on any. Look for contact information in their accounts.
6. Contact several candidates. Reach out to 10 to 20 people. Watch how you approached them and see who responds. Send an email or message that lets the influencer know you’ve been following them on social media. Also, reference one of their articles that you loved and shared with your community. Tell them how it resonated with your fans.

Grab Your Resource: Social Media Key Influencer Characteristics Tips Sheet

Characteristics of social media key influencers

Trusted: A good influencer must be trustworthy. Most social media users will find honest and trustworthy influencers credible and authentic. Individuals without these crucial traits may lose the confidence of their followers.

Knowledgeable. Besides experience, influencers must have great skills and expertise in their field. They get their skills through formal or informal training. These experts are authentic and speak with authority.

Communicative. Social media influencers can increase followers naturally over a given period. In brief, their social circles are ever expanding. They tend to have a more developed fan base than their followers. The ever-growing followers make them valuable in product and service marketing.

Good timing. A social media influencer knows when to swing into action. They add their voices when it is really needed. They do not hesitate to use the power of their followers to communicate a particular message.

Persuasion power. Social media influencers have the power to make people listen. Their opinions can influence behavior and mindset change.This implies that once influencers endorse something the endorsement is as good as gold. Such a trait is difficult to mimic and replicate.

Role of key influencers in building relationship with the targeted audience

Social media key influencers are bloggers, product reviewers, industry experts, a trusted source. Below are 5 ways social media marketing key influencers can enhance your business.

1. Promoting a particular brand. Influencing marketing is a powerful promotion tool. It can drive sales upward naturally as opposed to paid social media ads. When an influencer, with loyal followers, mentions your item it goes much further than a mention from your account.
2.  Connections. Social media influencers have long reach, many followers, and the best connections. They are instrumental in establishing a business relationship beneficial to each party.
3.  Creates a business community. Influencers may turn their followers into a brand loyal community of customers. Your relationship may help grow your network into a community of customers.
4. An influencer who voices positive feedback also encourages positive reviews. A well-crafted strategy can produce followers that become part of your business audience. For example, they encourage sharing of a link that leads to your website, blog, or social media. You can reach a market segment that you hadn’t reached before. These personalities and entities can help your business reach new audiences.
5. Improves SEO performance. Having a link from a social media influencer may help improves your SEO ranking. The more people are talking about your brand, the likelier they are to share, post, comment or cite it in a blog. All these lead to higher organic traffic.Backlinks on your site help increase your SEO and its popularity and importance. This helps increase your site’s credibility.

Where to Find Social Media Key Influencers

It takes research to identify specific key social media influencers. Web sites that offer research capabilities include:

• BuzzSumo – a tool used to measure and track content. It has an influencers and outreach feature identifying top writers, bloggers, and publications, using keyword research. BuzzSumo is an efficient way to ID the total number of shares per article, site domain authority, retweet ratio and page authority.
• LinkedIn – Networking tool used to connect with individuals in and around your industry.  The search feature allows research of 1st and 2nd level connections within your industry.
• Twitter – Great platform to find, interact and talk with social media influencers. Its advanced search features can identify audiences and specific niche crowds you select. Twitter users can push content and measure responses and traction for a post or article.
• Tumblr. –  Tumblr. is most often used as a blog and for publishing in-depth posts.The more you engage with posts by liking, reblogging, and commenting, the more likely readers will return the favor.  78% of the content posted to Tumblr. are images, which receive a lot of response and feedback.
• Research Hashtags – Identify the hashtags that your target influencers are using. Use them to identify active talkers in your categories.  Check blog topics you’ve written to appeal to them.  Once you found influencers that meet your criteria, put them in a Twitter list. That way, you can organize and follow them better.
• Google Alerts – Set alerts for keywords pertaining to your brand to identify people who actively write about topics in your realm.
• Inkybee – Discover and research the blogs you need to target. Track relationships with your bloggers and measure and report the results of your outreach efforts.

Ways Key Influencers Can Engage Your Business and Target Audience

A popular way to engage with key influencers is having them take part in a roundup blog post. Entrepreneurs can get a substantial return on investment (ROI) from the engagement. A roundup blog post usually asks influencers to respond to specific questions. Or, they can provide their opinions about a specific topic.

If influencers share posts with their community, you’re leveraging their participation. For example, even if only half of the 20 people you invite actually tweet the post to their 50,000 followers, your post can reach a much larger audience than your own 2,000 Twitter followers.

Another way to leverage your association with key influencers is to have them take part in a Tweet chat. Introduce them to your followers by giving them a natural way to join in.

Compensate Key Influencers

if someone is going to give your brand a shout out, they should receive compensation. And, it doesn’t have to be financial!

For example, share a post they’ve written, with backlinks to their sites. Or, promote their content via a series of Tweets. Offer them a discount on your services. If it’s a big product or service they are promoting, offer a commission for the clients they send your way.

4 more ways key influencers can help market your business.

1. Promote your partnership through their accounts.
2. Arrange giveaways and competitions.
3. Celebrate an event or brand milestone.
4. Suggest a few ideas for your marketing strategy. Bear in mind that they know how typical social media users respond to different types of content

Conclusion

Smart companies know a social media marketing key influencer’s long-term value and will use them as a marketing tool. They know that the power user’s content is in high demand, and a marketing campaign based on the relationship between an influencer and their followers can generate more benefits.  Especially more traffic, leads, and sales.

Collaborating with key social media influencers can have a multiplier effect. Of course, it all comes down to choosing the right social media influencer for your brand.

Call to Action

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