influence marketing Archives

4 Methods to Build Your Influence on Social Media

October 6, 2014/by Corey Padveen

When it comes to growing your social business, one thing you’re going to want to leverage is your influence on social media.

Influence on social media can be valuable to helping build your brand online. But attaining a level of influence on social media that makes an impact with your target audience can be a tough thing to accomplish.

Though there are several ways to go about building your influence on social media, these are a few techniques that can help you get there much sooner rather than later.

Write What You Know Best

It has been proven time and time again that blogging can be a hugely valuable online asset. One way to build your credibility online is to write avidly on a topic you know a whole lot about.

While some studies have shown that writing multiple blogs per day can have exceptional SEO value, it is not a necessity for every brand. What you really want to do is write periodically when you know you have a great bit of content that will resonate with the audience you’re trying to reach.

What’s more, you’ll want to ensure that when you write, you’re as detailed as possible. The best rule to follow is a 70-30 split; share 70% of your knowledge and leave your audience wanting that extra 30%. This is an excellent technique for building influence, credibility and driving new business all with one technique.

Answer Questions

On sites like Quora, Blurtit and Yahoo!, people are asking questions hoping, in some cases, that an expert will provide them with an answer. Spend some time on these sites and share your insights. It will certainly be noticed.

Sites like these are ideally designed to let you showcase your expertise. People are asking questions to which you might be able to provide a detailed answer. The key in a case like this is being as detailed as possible.

Unlike a tweet or even a Facebook post, people are posting to these sites because they want a detailed answer. So take some time and really provide your audience with as much of your insights as possible. They will be more than happy to take the time to read it.

Produce and Share Instructional Videos

If you’ve ever visited our YouTube channel, then you might have seen our Q&A with t2 video segment. There, we answer questions that have come in on networks like Twitter or LinkedIn from our audience.

These have proven to be excellent resources for building credibility. Again, this is an area that is ideal for sharing expertise. Look at any content direction recommendations, and you will almost always see a recommendation that suggests the use of videos. Your audience like to see, not always read.

Videos are an excellent way of getting valuable information to your audience, humanizing your brand with the face of an employee, and, of course, building your influence and authority.

Interview Experts

Expert interviews carry a lot of weight. That is particularly true when it comes to building credibility and establishing your own level of expertise.

When an audience sees that you have the clout to command an interview with an industry expert, the impression left is one that reflects on your own expertise. There is an understanding that if you can carry a conversation with an established expert, you must be an expert yourself.

Whenever you get a chance, conduct interviews – either on your blog, on YouTube or in a podcast format – and your audience will see it as a reflection on your own industry influence.

Conclusion

There are several ways to build your credibility online and establish your brand as an industry or thought leader, and as the examples above indicate, a key part of that is dedication.

It takes time and involvement to grow influence on social media. But when you take that time and partake in these activities, your influence on social media will grow at a much faster rate.

How do you build influence on social media? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

6 Criteria for Identifying Social Influence

February 26, 2014/by Corey Padveen

What makes up social influence and how can you identify your industry’s influencers?

Building social influence can be extremely valuable. When people see you as a thought leader, your brand, personal and Social Equity all spike. But sometimes, leveraging other industry influencers can be just as powerful. But how can we identify social influence for a particular industry?

Though every definition of social influence might be unique – after all, influence is a pretty subjective concept – there are some criteria that, on social, are clear signs of an influencer. When determining the social influencers in your industry, keep a few of these aspects in mind.

1. Following

Virtually any marketer would tell you that it’s all about quality over quantity when it comes to an audience, and that, for the most part, is true. That said, quantity is important, too.

Your industry’s influencers will surely have a strong following. You don’t become an influencer when only a handful of people are interested in what you have to say. But keep in mind that black hat techniques are not all that penalized in the world of social (yet) as they are in search. So verify the quality of an apparent influencer’s large following by ensuring that audience members include other industry peers, and that engagement is consistent.

Speaking of which…

2. Engagement

People should be regularly sharing and talking about the content that an influencer posts. Keep in mind that engagement does not have to be measured in the tens of thousands of shares, tweets and comments. So long as engagement is consistent and relatively strong, you might just have an influencer on your hands.

Again, however, it is important to ensure that the quality of the engagement is positive as well. Note the audience members engaging with the content. Are they relevant to the conversation or industry? Are they employees of this ‘influencer’? If so, you might not be dealing with an individual as influential as they might want to be.

3. Message Consistency

True influence generally means thought leadership. Thought leadership often means that you start conversations that no one else has had and stick to your guns.

The message and rhetoric of an influencer should be consistent and sound. Going back and forth on a point is not a sign of a great thought leader. Sometimes an influencer might face criticism, and have to defend their point of view. That’s all well and good so long as they stick by the message that created the social influence they have.

4. Respect of Best Practices

True influence means understanding the platforms on which one is most active. This translates into a mutual respect for an audience and the adherence to a network or platform’s best practices.

If an ‘influencer’ on Facebook has a poorly designed page and shares nothing but spammy links, but happens to have generated a following, you might want to consider looking for thought leaders elsewhere. Best practices are in place because the industry has spoken and the majority has expressed their wants. True influencers understand that and abide by those guidelines.

5. Up-to-Date

When a major change, breakthrough, deal or update is announced in your industry, your influencers should be among the first to comment, discuss or simply bring up the news.

Having influence means keeping your ear to the ground and being first-to-market on social platforms when there is something important to discuss. This does not mean that an influencer should be breaking the news, but they should be aware of it and, depending on the industry, have an opinion or an analysis of what that means for the industry as a whole.

6. Practitioner of Own Advice

If you are reading an email marketing influencer’s blog and they tell you to keep your subject lines clear and concise, then proceed to send you emails with spammy, cryptic subject lines, you are likely not dealing with a thought leader.

Building influence means that you have done the leg work and found what works in your industry. Therefore, an influencer should be practicing what he or she preaches.

What criteria helps you determine social influence in your industry? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Social Equity: Influence Marketing on Social Media

August 30, 2013/by Corey Padveen

Your business can benefit tremendously from influence marketing on social media.

There are few forms of marketing that have as big of an impact as influence marketing on social media. With a very clear understanding of who your industry’s influencers are and a plan on how to leverage their power, you can reach audiences tens if not hundreds of times larger than your own.

In the past, we have looked at case studies like Kotex and Standard Life, where brands leveraged the power of influence marketing to quickly reach their goals and expand their presence online. Here, we aim to explain how this form of online marketing can really add a lot of value to your business in terms of Social Equity.

Influence Marketing Defined

So what exactly is influence marketing?

If you’ve read the case studies we mentioned above, you know that influence marketing has to do with leveraging the influence of others on certain social networks in order to reach a broad audience very quickly.

Generally, influence marketing can be a benefit when it comes to reputation management (e.g. having influencers speak to their audiences on your behalf) or individual campaigns (e.g. having industry influencers promote a campaign to their massive audiences). Furthermore, engaging with influencers and leveraging their power can save you a bundle as well.

The Savings of Influence Marketing

Reaching millions of users can be very expensive. You want to reach a targeted audience with any campaign. What’s more important, however, is reaching an engaged audience. If my campaign has 20 million impressions that’s great, but if not one converts, it’s a failure.

Perhaps the greatest value of influence marketing is the fact that by reaching out to your industry’s influencers, you are essentially reaching out to a very engaged audience by proxy. Influencers did not get to be where they are by building an audience of disinterested followers. People hang on their every word, and if they talk about your brand, you can rest assured that it will translate into buzz and intrigue for your business.

The speed with which all of this takes place – thanks in large part to the inherent nature of social media – makes it a very viable undertaking from an economic standpoint. You can start seeing return within hours of a campaign launching; this is assuming, of course, that it is well thought out and geared towards the right audiences.

By engaging with your influencers and leveraging their power, your business can benefit in a very big way.

Have you ever taken part in a form of influence marketing? Tell us what you did in the comments below or on Twitter!