Know your Influencers

Alright, so you are set up, tracking and monitoring social media trends around your brand. You know where people are talking and who is talking. You have also identified your top influencers. Now what?! It’s time to move to the next phase and begin to take action, making decisions based on this insight you’re gaining.

One way to take action is to begin to engage with your top influencers. Influencers are people online who talk, share and promote your brand for you. When building a relationship with an online influencer it’s important to come across genuine, open and personable.

Show the influencer that you are interested in them. Over the past few days, weeks or months you have seen this individual engage in your brand. It’s time to give them some acknowledgement. Share your thoughts from the company on their blog post and reply to a tweet. Having this online relationship will build credibility, trust and create a better relationship between the brand and the person.

With that in mind it’s important to decide, from a business perspective, the value of this and make sure not to overwhelm your followers by just mentioning others on your twitter feed every day. Does the influencer have 100,000 followers on Twitter or only 15? Where should your time be invested? Do you still have a balance of the right messages going out? These are all things a company should think about when finding a balance.

One social step leads to the next: after your channels are up and running, don’t be afraid to launch into that next step to engage with your community. They are already telling you they want to start a conversation!