Photo credit: Scott Maxwell
Influencer marketing can supercharge your PR and marketing campaigns. You might wonder why some blog posts get many more visits than others or how some blogs appear to come out of nowhere to quickly rank among the most popular sites in their niche. Chances are that influencers are the cause of that sudden popularity.
According to a BuzzSumo study of over 100 million articles, one influencer sharing a post can lead to a 31.8 percent increase in social shares on average.
When three influencers shared a piece of content, it doubled the total number of shares; five influencers quadrupled it. In other words, the number of influencers sharing content has a compounding effect on total number of shares.
What is an Influencer?
PR and marketing professionals might often begin their influencer marketing campaigns by seeking people with large social media followings. However, having a large number of Twitter followers or Facebook fans does not necessarily make someone an influencer. Moreover, loud voices are not necessarily the most influential. As the term suggests, influencers have the ability to influence others.
In addition to followers, influencers must have both recognized expertise and credibility in their niche. Followers trust influencers and relate to them. Consumers trust advice from influencers the way they trust recommendations from peers. Influencers and peers sway opinions and purchase decisions of followers more than communications by brands can.
The top fashion bloggers, Man Repeller and The Blonde Salad’s Chiara Ferragni, hold greater sway that even the most famous celebrities, according to Econsultancy. They even rival established fashion media titles such as Vogue.
Entrepreneur Kyle Wong offers this formula in an article for Forbes:
Influence = Audience Reach (# of followers) x Brand Affinity (expertise and credibility) x Strength of Relationship with Followers.
Wong says Scott Cook, the founder and CEO of Intuit, the best summary of the power of influencers and social media when he said: “A brand is no longer what we tell the consumer it is. It is what consumers tell each other it is.”
Finding Influencers
PR and marketing personnel can locate influencers through manual internet and social media searches. Fortunately, tools are available that can help you save time.
BuzzSumo can list influencers in your target area based on page authority, number of followers count and engagement. It can identify posts that receive the most shares for competitors or for certain topic areas. You can search based on topics or Twitter usernames, filter by type of user such as bloggers, influencers or journalists.
Followerwonk is another popular tool for finding top Twitter users in your niche. It also provides a social authority metric that can be useful for gauging a Twitter user’s influence.
LittleBird also offers influencer identification and engagement tools.
Social listening tools such as Glean.info can also be used to identify influencers in addition to monitoring for corporate names, brands, competitors, and issues.
Once you identify influencers in your niche, properly engaging them is crucial. That’s a topic for another day.
Bottom Line: Influencer marketing can be a powerful tool for PR and marketing. Endorsement of top influencers is often more valuable than adverting and can cause your content to go viral. However, identifying influencers requires more than simply spotting people with large social media followings. For a successful influencer marketing campaign, you must find the social media aficionados who have in-depth expertise and whose opinions are respected by their followers.
William J. Comcowich founded and served as CEO of CyberAlert LLC, the predecessor of Glean.info. He is currently serving as Interim CEO and member of the Board of Directors. Glean.info provides customized media monitoring, media measurement and analytics solutions across all types of traditional and social media.
Great post William! You could also add BlogsRelease to the list. We connect brands who want to launch blogger review campaigns with relevant influencers around the world: http://www.blogsrelease.com.