I’m going to talk about a way you can super charge your social media marketing efforts. It involves finding influential people online.
I’ll explain an a bit how to do that and give you an example of who social media influencer is.
I’m sure you desire getting your website or business talked about online. Positive word of mouth is the pot of gold at the end or your marketing efforts.
Luckily there is another free internet marketing tool which tells you who the online influencers are.
It’s called Klout.
Klout is a website and mobile app that uses social media analytics to rank its users according to online social influence via the “Klout Score”, which is a numerical value between 1 and 100
Find Influential Klout Users
Last post I talked about a great free tool to help you get more Twitter followers for free. This will post will talk about finding quality people to follow. And how to build a relationship with them.
The key is to build.
You can’t expect them to start sharing your business or website right off the bat. There is too much at risk for them. They have a loyal group of followers. Their word is bond.
They have to get to know you. Trust you. Then they will share your business.
Search for people in your city or geographical area
Click on their Twitter profile link
Follow and add them to your Twitter list
Because you have added the Klout Chrome extension, you’ll be able to see people’s Klout scores.
If they aren’t signed up for Klout, you won’t see the Klout logo and score beside their handle.
You’re looking for people with scores over 45.
The Klout logo also acts as a link to their Klout profile. When you click through to someone’s profile you’ll be able to see what other social networks they are on.
Ideally, you want to find people who are on Google +, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Foursquare as well.
Here’s what to look for:
Are they active on Google +? If so they probably write reviews.
Are they Tweeting a lot on Twitter?
Do they interact with people on Twitter?
Do they check in on Foursquare? If so are they Tweeting it out and sharing it on Facebook?
This person is a prime example of being an online influencer.
People like them are avid social media users. Those are the people who can supercharge your social media marketing.
Once, of course, you build a relationship with them first.
Here’s how to do that:
Follow them on as many social networks as you can
Interact with them (without selling yourself)
Share and retweet any content they put out
After you have built up some online communication, keep doing it.
Then subscribe to my email newsletter because I’m going to be blogging about how you can strategically get these people to talk about your business online. You can subscribe up in the top right hand corner or in the popup box that will appear at the bottom of this post.
Trust me, that post will really super charge your social media marketing like never before.
I could write a real long post on this subject. There are hundreds of ways you can do it. But you’re busy.
So I thought why not share with you the fastest way!
I’m going to let you know that resource in a bit. But I want to explain the psychology behind having lots of followers. and why it will help you get more.
Social Proof
You probably think that more Twitter followers means more retweets and shares right? Well, not so fast. Chances are good many of the followers you get will not be in your geographical area. Therefore how can they buy from you? Unless of course you run an e-commerce website.
I’ll assume you run a brick and mortar store though. Now even though many of your new followers may not be in your area, they alone will help you get others to follow you.
Just how to get more Twitter followers though?
Social proof.
Having lots of Facebook likes can lead to getting people to like your page simply because lots of other people liked it. Read more about social proof in my Facebook marketing post.
So the definition of social proof is:
Informational social influence is a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others reflect correct behaviour for a given situation.
But social proof is online and offline.
Here’s a quick offline example.
Last month I went to a baseball game. When my friend and I arrived at the gates to buy tickets we noticed two line-ups. There was no signage saying “buy tickets” on either line.
So everyone who got to the line-ups was relying on what the other people were doing.
Of the two line-ups, one had 15 people in it. The other only had three people.
Naturally we were excited to watch the game so we went to the smaller line. Surely enough we got out tickets in under a minute. The other line had hardly moved though.
Remember that there were no signs for both these lines. Without any direction people had to rely on what others were doing. So they blindly followed the actions of others by lining up in the larger line. That line was bigger and they assumed that was the correct and only line to purchase tickets. They figured the smaller line was for role call.
Social proof works online too.
If you’re on Twitter and you see someone with over 2000 followers, you’ll probably follow them. You’re essentially following the actions of others by following that person. After all since lots of people are following them, you should to right?
Having a large number of followers can lead you to getting more people to follow you much easier. They won’t second guess following you because you only have 300 followers. Nope. They’ll see you have 3000+ followers and think you must be important.
How To Get Them Fast
Alright. I’m still going strong with my content strategy of writing about the 10 best free Internet marketing tools.
The tool I am about to share with you lists 2000 Twitter users who are very likely to follow you back.
Pretty cool right? I’d give yourself a good hour to go through and see how many people you can follow.
Let me know how many followers you get from using this tool.
PS. In my next post I’m going to talk about another free tool that indicates how influential people are on social networks. Be sure to signup for my email newsletter so you don’t miss that post.
And if you run your own business, you might be struggling to find time to monitor and post on your social networks. Thankfully there is Hootsuite to solve both problems. It’s another one of my ten best free internet marketing tools that you should totally be using.
Hootsuite can manage all your social networks in one place. It’s great if you have content you want to share on multiple accounts at once. There’s nothing worse than having to login to each social network to post and update or see who’s talking to you.
But Hootsuite does that and allows you to schedule posts into the future. Overall it’s great for when you and your staff are busy. They also have a mobile app which is great if you’re on the road and don’t have a laptop with you.
Hootsuite’s Dashboard
What I love most about Hootsuite is the ability to monitor streams. From specific Twitter lists or Google + cirlces, you can see specific streams from all your networks. This is a huge timesaver. No longer do you have to login to each of your accounts to see what people are saying. You can do this all from the dashboard.
Here is what the dashboard looks like. You’ll notice that I have all four of my social networks and specific lists and streams running.
Anita Campbell from Smallbiztrends wrote and in depth review on Hootsuite which I encourage you to check out. If your going to take my advice and start using this great free internet marketing tool, then watch the video below for a tutorial on how it all works.
Do you use Hootsuite or any other social media management tool?
Last week I broke out of my comfort zone and went to a networking event.
Normally I hate these things. Most of time I find people aren’t really concerned about you and simply want your business card so they can add you to their email list.
But this event I met a couple of interesting people from different industries. One of which was a local realtor named Scott Garman. He and his brother run Garman Group.
Scott made the jump from Vancouver to Victoria to start his real estate career. He had been away from Victoria for close to 15 years. He couldn’t rely on his old network of people since he lost contact with many of them.
What was he to do? He turned to Twitter.
His start in real estate happened around the same time Twitter started. He found the community of Victoria users to be very close at the time. They were lots of meet ups offline which helped really grow connections.
Since Twitter was new, there weren’t many other realtors on Twitter. Jumping into something new with little competition is a great way to grow.
But it was the most overlooked benefit of Twitter that helped him more than anything. One of the few marketers I look up to Gary Vaynerchuck also credits this benefit as the main reason his family wine store’s sales grew to record numbers.
Eavesdropping
I’m a notorious eavesdropper. Especially when the conversations involve business.
Well the advanced search function is a way you can eavesdrop on peoples Twitter conversations.
Unlike Facebook you can zone on what people are saying about your industry, products, services and competitors. This is a great way to get involved in the conversations. Doing so allows you to become the local go to source in your industry since most people are asking questions on Twitter. You’ll also be able to spot out potential business opportunities as well.
Here’s what you need to do:
Develop a list of keywords related to your industry, product, service or competitors
Type one of your keywords into the “all of these words” form
Add the city you’re located into the “near this place” form at the bottom
From there you will get a list of Tweets over the course of the last few days from people who have mentioned your keyword within your targeted area.
Scott mentioned his list of keywords included:
realtor
house for sale
home
moving
I may have made a couple of those up but you see where I’m headed.
Gary Vaynerchuk being in the wine industry obviously had a larger pool of keywords. He could choose all the brands and grapes he wanted. He could also simply search the term wine and join in on people’s conversations. And that’s why his business and personal brand grew.
Do you see how beneficial this could be for your business? Instead of spending a hours every month Tweeting and finding content to Tweet, you can do this and see a better return on your time.
This has caused the media outlets and fans everywhere to talk about Cuban, the Mavericks and the possibility of Brittney playing in the NBA.
It’s brilliant really. You see, Cuban most likely isn’t going to draft her. But he’s taken a very small news story and blown it up.
It’s great for Brittney, Mark, the Dallas Mavericks, the NBA and the WNBA where she’ll end up playing professionally.
What Mark Cuban did here was jack the news. He took a small story and made it HUGE! Because of that he’s created a bunch of free media impressions for his team and himself.
This is known a newsjacking.
Newsjacking
I’ve talked a bit about newsjacking on my Facebook page.
Why? Because it’s an awesome way to get some free PR. Especially on a local level where slow news days are common.
It’s the art of spinning a news story in a unique way. So much so that media outlets have to talk about your angle of the story because it’s unique.
Why and How it Works
Here’s why it works. Reporters from all over are always looking for a different angle. After all what reporter wants to pitch the same angle of a story? And who wants to listen to the same story over and over.
So reporters will begin to search for that different angle. My suggestion is to start cuddle up and build relationships with reporters in your city. When a story hits and your ready to jack the news, you can contact your reporters and pitch your angle with ease since you’ve built a relationship with them.
Kind of like this post your reading. If I was quicker to the party, I might have been able to jack the news away from Cuban with my angle. Who knows I still might.
By Saying He’d Draft a Female Player Mark Cuban Is A Publicity Genuis – Click to Tweet
Since you and I are not Mark Cuban, we don’t have full access to the media. This is why a blog post comes into play. Reporterts will head to Twitter or Google to see if anyone has a different angle on a story.
You need to blog about it and spread the word via your social platforms.
Examples
It can be hard trying to figure out ways to newsjack. You need to be fast and creative. My suggestion is to learn from other examples.
Here’s two examples of newsjacking to help you.
Since I’m a big sports fan, I’ll use another story from the NBA.
A few months back the San Antonio Spurs and Miami Heat were set to face off. It was a marquee game and nationally televised on TNT.
As you can tell this created a news story that hit just about every major sports and news outlet. So this lawyer created massive waves because he was smart. Of course the suit wasn’t going to go through.
McGuinness is probably all over the media in Miami. He started out small I’m sure. Over the years I bet he has made solid connections with reporters to help him break the story above.
Here’s another example from Wynn Resorts spokeswomen Jennifer Dunne.
Back in 2010 Hilton Hotel Heiress Paris Hilton was arrested on drug charges. Dunne saw this as great opportunity to newsjack.
Imagine Wynn Hotels banning the Hilton Hotel Heiress. The nerve!
More importantly what an angle and news story for media outlets to pick up.
Wynn’s free media impressions went trough the rough. And they took a story with only a tiny hook (the Hilton Hotel Heiress) and turned into something big.
To prove that it was done for the PR, the ban as lifted a year later. So they had no real intention of banning her for life but merely to create some impressions.
I love it!
Practice
Since I read Newsjacking a few months back I’ve been praciticing. Whenever I read a news story I try and see what business could jack the news.
More often than not the ideas are not that ground breaking. But they’re effective because of the timing. You have to be quick and get your angle out there.
My suggestion is to do the same. Scan any news story and think about how you could create a unique angle.
It should be noted that your angle has to have some sort of meaning. Or else no reporters will care to write about it.
Or worse you could be like Kenneth Cole and really outrage people after this tweet.
I’ll be blogging about other opportunities on newsjacking so be sure to follow me along and subscribe to my email updates.
What Do You Think?
What do you think about newsjacking and how could your business benefit from it?
