Marketing is competitive, and any tool that will give you a leg up is an advantage. That’s why so many B2B brands are turning to influencer marketing.
Influencer marketing has been around for a very long time, but it wasn’t called that. Imagine your favorite football player endorsing a cereal brand on television when you were a child.
That was influencer marketing. Now the only differences are a more skeptical public and different channels of influence.
It’s time for you to harness and wield those influencers.
Here are a couple of useful tools for finding influencers in your industry.
Followerwonk
This tool from Moz has both free and paid versions. To find influencers on it, sign up for it, then click, “Search bios.”
This function lets you search for keywords in the bios of those on Twitter. If you pay for the service, one perk is that you can follow right from the application.
But, from the free version, you can just open those you want to follow in new tabs by clicking their names.
To find out who the most influential users are in that keyword, be sure to click social authority to rank influencers by their pull.
Buzzstream
This tool is pretty simple — search keywords to find influencers in those keywords. There are a variety of filtering options, including: number of followers, location, category, domain authority, etc.
You know now how to find influencers, quickly and easily, using these tools.
But how do you get these powerful influencers to share and spread your content?
FEATURE THEM IN YOUR CONTENT
Create content that features the work of these industry influencers, then direct them to the content using social. Everyone loves being talked about, creating content that does that will encourage influencers to share what you have created.
INTERVIEW THEM
If you can get ahold of them, interviewing influencers is another great way to ensure that your content gets out there.
HIPB2B has done this a few times, featuring Scott Vaughan from Integrate and Dayna Rothman (from Marketo when the piece was written). Find a relevant and timely issue, then find the expert on the topic using the tools above.
From the interview, create a piece of content and share it with influencers.
ENGAGE THEM VISUALLY
Instead of just replying to tweets saying stuff like, “I love this article,” make yourself stand out.
Send customized videos, photos, and GIFs to influencers. They will see the extra time and effort you put into contacting them and are more likely to respond because of it.
That creates the foundations for powerful relationships that will inevitably result in benefits for your brand.
SHARE CONTENT AND BE SURE TO TAG THE AUTHOR
Whenever you share curated content, track down the Twitter handle of the author and tag them in it. It reveals to the author/influencer that you shared their work. Doing this benefits both of you and strengthens your relationship with this influencer.
Social media marketing is a key part of the marketing puzzle nowadays. By implementing some of these techniques, you will start, grow, and strengthen relationships with influencers, resulting in better brand reach overall.
