How companies go about turning influencers into advocates
Social media is basically anything online that enables conversations between people. Marketing within these realms should therefore be 100% focused on the individuals behind all of these conversations. This is very important and this is what alot of PR and marketing agencies are getting wrong.
Some of these indivduals are more influential than others, meaning that a message carried by them, has a much greater impact than one carried by another similar user. This might be a blogger, a facebook page administrator, a Twitterer, a forum poster, an established YouTube user, a Digg user or a Flickr account holder.
influencers given treats
But, the thing to remember about this is that it is all relative. Everyone online these days has influence in one way or another. Just because one Twitterer has 2,000 fans and another has 200, doesnt mean that the one with 2,000 has more of a voice. What is important is how trusted that voice is, and how many of those global followers are online at any one time. The same goes for a blogger, a video maker or a podcaster. Even if they have a small audience, it might be a very loyal audience, so this is something that you must keep in mind when considering your influencers.
DONT GET DISTRACTED BY THE NUMBERS!
So how do you find these influential individuals online? after all, social networks like Facebook have over 350 million users, so how do you find the ones that you need?
Influencers are given types in traditonal media so lets stick with these types to make it easier;
- Activists -these guys get involved most likey raise money for charities
- Connected – They have alot of followers, readers and fans
- Impact – They are trusted by their followers, readers or fans
- Active minds – They have a wide range or interests and are creative in all of them
- Trendsetters – these are also called early adopters (the first people to join facebook or twitter for example)
The things you need to look at when finding influencers are;
- Reach – how far reaching is their message, do they have the abilty to reach a large audience?
- Veiw Point – Does the influencer have a specific point of view such as , religious, political, ethical or ethinic?
- Frequency of message – How active are they online?
- Experts – Are they an expert in what they do?
- Persuasiveness – If people ignore this persons advice, do bad things happen?
- Complete control – How much affect has the influencer on their followers lifes?
The easiest way to find social media influencers, is with tools. Mostly of these tools are free and enable you to find exactly what you need. Tools such as those that track stats of usage can be used to assertain an individuals influencer score;
http://facebook.grader.com/user/search
http://klout.com
http://twitter.grader.com/search
Search tools that show you what a user has been saying, posting, sharing online;
http://socialmention.com/
http://www.samepoint.com/
http://www.whostalkin.com/
http://addictomatic.com
If you are researching a blogger you can find out more about their blog reach by using;
http://www.quarkbase.com
http://www.sitemention.com
Of course these tools only go half the way, the thing to understand is that whom ever you choose, they must be relevant to the content you wish to promote, or else it really won’t work.
ie: a celebrated fashion blogger isnt going to be as niche as a mommy blogger if your content or campaign is focused about Fashion for pregnant women.
This is when common sense comes into play, if they are a blogger, do they have lots of comments, do they comment on other similar blogs. Whats their social presence, are they active on niche areas in social sites such as Twitter and Facebook.
You also need to know what type of influencer you need, if you are wanting people to ‘create a video’ for your campaign, then you need to be directing your message at ‘creators’ people who will pick up a camera or phone and make a video for you. So you need to know who these people follow, who they listen to and what drives them?
If its a slightly risky or controversial news article that you want to promote and gain traffic to your site, then you should be looking at targeting ‘collectors’, such as those on social bookmarking sites like Digg or Reddit, creators like bloggers and Joiners like Twitterers to push out the content out to their audience.
So how do you organise all of this?
There are a number of ways, but my favourate way is to create a community map using a tool called http://www.spicynodes.org. This free tool allows you to create a living, breathing, floating map for the target areas that you are going to search to find your influencers. You can add links, content, images and videos to these nodes and they are all hosted by spicynodes so you can look at your node map later via a tailored URL
But what do you do, when you have found your influencers?
Firstly, you need to treat them with respect. These people are now unpaid members of your workforce. They should be considered priceless, invited to launches, allowed to try out new products, given first access to any product news before the press and LISTENED TOO.
If you are lucky enough to find a group of people who love your products, you need to listen to them. Their ideas should be displayed publicly, voted on and if chosen they should be given the acknowledgement they deserve.
Crowdsourcing is something that i will go into indepth in another post, but using your influencers to develop products for you, isnt a bad idea.
1) They know what they want
2) They know what the product is lacking
3) They will buy the product after
4) Their enthusiam will be infectious
Check out these companies that not only embraced targeted influencers but empowered their own customers in the process;
Sony BRAVIA “Amplify through influencers”
http://www.iabuk.net/media/images/SonyBravia-Paintcampaign_3550.pdf
“As a brand it is very flattering to have an audience take so much interest in our advertising. This year we are looking to return the compliment by giving the online audience even more content and access to what is happening during the shoot.”
David Patton / Senior Vice President, Marketing Communications, Sony Europe
DELL IDEASTORM “Giving customers what they ask for”
Dell, an old example but a good one. this is ideastorm where DELLs customers and their influencial fans can vote on what DELL should do with their products. The most popular suggestions go into manufacre. Simple.
THREADLESS “Crowdsourced design”
threadless.com
these guys are masters at including their customers, the community votes on the top designs that have also been supplied by the community, then the top designs are made and sold.
STARBUCKS “ask customers what they want to drink?”
Starbucks are allowing customers to come up with ideas for their products, from anything from free pastry day to Gluten-Free cakes.
