Successful Blog

Real Influencers Don’t Call Themselves Influencers

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In this brave new world where every marketer is turning over rocks trying to find “influencers,” there’s an easy way to separate the wheat from the chaff.

If someone promotes himself/herself as an “influencer,” they probably won’t be able to do you any good.

You should really be looking for a smart person who happens to have influence (or perhaps “Whuffie” according to Tara Hunt).

Self-described “influencers” used to go by other names…guru, ninja, rockstar, thought leader…it probably dates all the way back to when Caveman Urp tried to tell Caveman Ack how many tribe members were using his new square wheel.

So how do you identify a person with influence, as opposed to an “influencer?”

Here’s my checklist, to help you get started:

  • Acknowledged credibility within a certain subject area – Look for some type of external endorsement that the person is an expert (if you want to know about middle school fashion trends, go to a middle schooler).
  • Lots of engagement (two-way, not just one-way) – Lots of followers is not enough; they must be able to motivate the followers to engage (and hopefully purchase). Look for comments, replies, likes and conversation.
  • Great communication skills – You don’t want someone representing your brand if they can’t write or speak with authority.
  • Systematic curiosity – Find someone who demonstrates a thirst to learn; those are the people who usually share their experiences too. Think Tim Ferriss.
  • Track record of successful recommendations in the past – You want to work with someone who commands trust and respect that has been earned over time. It’s not enough that they make recommendations; it’s that they make recommendations that are valuable to their audience, over and over.
  • No focus on “influencing”, focus on something else and the influence is incidental – If they have #influencer in their bio, walk away.

Are you working with influencers? Have you seen success with that strategy? Please share your insights with us!

 

 

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for Social Strata — makers of the Hoop.la community platform. Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Featured image via Flickr CC: FaceMePLS

Is Influencer Marketing Limiting You?

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We Limit Ourselves When We Limit Our Words

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UPDATE:
What is an influencer? Traditionally it has meant someone or something with psychological and social power to motivate change …

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These days the word, influencer, has become almost a proper noun. Use it in the social media world and we assume that it tags a person who has a close relationship to folks we want to reach and the word, influence, has become an active verb, something we do …

When we talk about influencers in the social media space what we’re really talking about is influencer marketing … looking for people who have an advantage, authority, the agency to cause others to act.

Influencer marketing is a form of marketing that has emerged from a variety of recent practices and studies, in which focus is placed on specific key individuals (or types of individual) rather than the target market as a whole. It identifies the individuals that have influence over potential buyers, and orients marketing activities around these influencers. —Wikipedia

If we check with folks and references who live off the Internet, influence has a much larger definition than that. Think about “driving under the influence of alcohol” and you’ll get grounded again. People who get folks to buy are not the only influencers at work in our world. And for every influencer / person we would like to move, someone or something is influencing us to choose them too. Here are a few influencers we don’t talk about enough.

  • Overheard conversations and subliminal aggregations of things we hear
  • Conditions in our environment, such as energy, time, resources
  • Assumptions in our thinking, including bias, curiosity, and ignorance
  • Emotional attachments we don’t suspect or those we have strong commitments to
  • Genetic disposition, such as fear or self-preservation
  • Our unique experiences, memories, and skills which shape our entire world view
  • The individual wiring of our brains and our cognitive processing
  • Books, movies, ideas, music, art, conferences, seminars, educational events
  • Compelling stories, even advertisements

Influence is what we allow to move our actions and thoughts. It’s all around us and available to explore in ways that provoke new thoughts and experiences. We limit ourselves and our thinking when we limit our words.

We limit our marketing by limiting how we define influencer too. Great strategy looks farther and deeper than that.

What influences you?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
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