To increase your influence online you will have to fully embrace social media, but if you don’t have connections with key influencers growth isn’t going to happen quickly.
So how do new businesses get hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers and Facebook likes?
Sometimes they buy them from a broker, but that tactic is expensive, not that effective and highly deceptive. There are others to which you can pay a fee and then have thousands of Twitter followers magically appear overnight, but then all you have at the end of the day is a big number, a thinner wallet and thousands of irrelevant followers who don’t care what you say and will never buy what you’re selling.
Million Dollar Influencers will always give the same piece of advice to those just starting out, and that is to engage with social media influencers. These are people like fashion blogger Chiara Ferragni , who with more than 3 million Instagram followers (and some absolutely gorgeous photos on her Instagram feed), commands a great deal of attention.
And that’s great advice,if you can get a half dozen social media cult heroes to talk about your message, you’ll have a great start. Remember however these social divas have probably never heard of you, don’t care about you, and are besieged with hundreds of requests from other people who have something far more interesting to talk about.
So how do you get social media stars to pay attention to you to help increase your influence online?
Building that network of influencers involves two steps — first, getting the attention of the influencers and once they see you, then you have to convince them to take action.
Getting their attention isn’t always easy. Sharing your influencer’s content is the easiest way to get them to notice you. Determine what platforms they’re most active on, and focus your efforts there. You can check up on their social pages or use a social-media management tool to create a list of your influencers. That will make it easy to view and retweet their content. Add a personal touch to your sharing by creating a modified tweet that says something positive about the piece. You can also tag them in the tweet to increase the chances that they’ll see it.
Another thing to try is to engage with your influencer on their blog, especially if they actively respond to comments. Say something insightful about the post that might inspire others to engage as well. Make sure you use your real name, so the influencer can recognize who you are, but don’t say anything that can be perceived as self-serving. If the influencer hasn’t noticed you yet, they will if you contact them about writing a guest post. Check their website to see if they have posted guest submission guidelines, and follow them to a T. If they don’t have any guidelines listed, then reach out to them with an email requesting to contribute. You will be surprised how often even influencers are short of quality content, engaging and landing a guest post is not as difficult as you may think. Influencers are well aware or research that states the Internet has a dearth of quality content, which is why when it does appear, it’s bound to get more engagement. If you score a gig your article should be relevant to both of your niches and be well-researched, accurate and engaging. Influencers won’t be interested in sharing rewrites of other people’s work, so be original, and offer a new perspective that will get people talking.
An effective way to get an influencer’s attention with your content is by somehow featuring them in it, especially if you didn’t manage a guest post with them before. It can be something as simple as curating a quote or highlighting positive attributes of the influencer or their brand. If it’s a high-quality, helpful endorsement, they’ll love to share it. Mentioning an influencer in your article is a great strategy, especially for new relationships. The blogosphere and social media are crowded arenas. Even if an influencer is interested in your content, there’s no guarantee they’ll manage to find and read it on their own. It’s your job to make sure they do. If you featured them in your post, it’s totally acceptable to send them a quick email about it.
There are only so many ways to encourage someone to share your content indirectly. If you wrote great content, built a relationship with the influencer and consistently shared their content, there’s no reason they wouldn’t be willing to share yours, unless they’re not interested in collaborating with you at all. If that’s the case, it’s best to move on to targeting someone more aligned with your interests. If you send them an email telling them about the post, you can include a short comment at the end asking them to share if they think their audience would enjoy it. The worst thing that could happen is that they say “No,” and you take your efforts to the next influencer. Otherwise, I definitely recommend tagging them when you share the post on Twitter. Just be sure that the post you’re tagging them in is genuinely relevant to them and their audience, otherwise it will seem like you’re fishing for shares.
Though this may seem like a lot of time and effort, social media marketing of the grassroots sort is one of the most important tools that you can have to increase your influence online . Building relationships are imperative, and that can be hard work. If you feel overwhelmed, start with one or two social media networks and work up to more, or consider utilizing a tool like HootSuite to streamline your posts. Once you get the attention you deserve, the relationships you make will serve you long into the future and will dramatically increase your influence online.
