7 Steps To Dominate The Influencer Marketing Game In PR

Influencer Marketing is this year’s Holy Grail for public relations. The reasons are clear—no matter how successful you are at traditional public relations, a story in the press is striving to present its information in a balanced and unbiased way. In contrast, an influencer’s voice—whether it’s in a blog, a column, a review or simply the opinion of a topic expert who seems to move the market at the speed of a tweet—is worth gold.

Influencers represent marketing leverage. For every influencer you “influence,” their opinion impacts dozens (or hundreds or thousands) of others in a personalized "she should know, she's an expert" or "she's another mom like me" kind of way.

These coveted jewels are even more elusive in the respect that while an influencer may blog and may or may not be a formal or informal journalist, most are not a formal part of the press. They are not likely to appear on anyone’s database. And while a plethora of tools has suddenly appeared for identifying and even automating the process of finding and supporting influencers, for small businesses, especially, the best efforts are still the communications that flow from person to person, or even better than this, face to face.

Many of my company’s clients are engaging in influencer marketing efforts this year. But for businesses considering their own efforts, without an agency, here are the steps:

1. Find people your audience already trusts and follows. How do you find them? Ask your customers and prospects who they’re watching and listening to. Which bloggers do they follow? When you run a Twitter search or a hashtag search on your topic of interest, who are the voices that show up and inspire reaction and trust? Can you find published lists of top sources on a sector or topic? Cover as many mediums as possible, including broadcast, social media, columnists, presenters and bloggers.
2. Don’t be fooled by large followings. Quality of following is more important than mass. An individual with 53,000 followers may be less influential than a person who inspires trust and can invoke a reaction in just several dozen of the right people on Twitter or via their blog or LinkedIn.
3. Create a spreadsheet and a plan of action. Find as many strong influencers as you are able and continually update and prioritize the list you create. But focus your greatest energy on those you determine to be the highest ranking 25-30 names on the list. Subscribe and follow these influencers closely. Take the time to like, to share, and to remark on their materials that genuinely resonate with you. Be sure your efforts are authentic, but remember that it is disingenuous to expect an influential person in a sector to take the time to connect with you or your agenda if you haven’t already made an equivalent effort to follow and study their materials, too.
4. Develop direct relationships with as many of your targets as possible. If you are launching a company or a service that falls in their area of focus, let them know. Invite them to offer opinions, or perhaps to even participate or suggest participants in your beta. Listen to their opinions, both positive and negative, with real intention to learn all that you can. There is no better bond you can create with an influencer than for them to know they have been the genuine catalyst for a positive change in your product or strategy, if warranted. Be sure to let the influencer know in these cases that such an evolution has happened, and that you value the time and attention they provide.
5. As you prepare your news, reach out to targeted influencers first. The chance to consider and weigh in early on the news that matters in a sector is collateral that reinforces an influencer’s role. Let a select set of influencers be the first to report your significant news (but never promise an exclusive unless you are willing to follow through in protecting that first-mover role). Giving the influencer a heads up on a new development ahead of time – and even in person – is a courtesy that will have much more meaning than attempting to ingratiate yourself with frequent comments and praise (although it is meaningful that you have made the effort to read and really understand what the person writes and cares about before making your pitch). For example, when PR people approach me, as a PR influencer, if they’ve followed my columns, know that I write about innovative ways small businesses are doing PR, and offer me an exclusive look at new data or suggest a unique do-it-yourself campaign that would interest my readers, they'll be well received, even if it’s not a story I’m able to use. In contrast, however, imagine my response to a pitch I received this week to interview a Wharton professor on the way the country of Brazil should address the reputational harm of the Zita virus? (I did stay polite. But I will no longer look at pitches from this hapless PR person at all.)
6. Continue to build and cultivate the “care and feeding” of the influencers on your list over time. A true influencer strategy goes well beyond the short-term goal of an influencer campaign. The top 10 – and 15 – and 25 on your short list should get regular updates from you that are personal from you to them, and that show you respect and value their influencer role. It can even be appropriate to send a handwritten note or a small gift now and then such as a plate of brownies or a favorite book to thank them for their effort on a post or an article that included you or that you particularly enjoyed. However, don’t send an item of high value, as accepting a gift worth more than $25-35 is considered a breach of ethics or even a breach of contract by most magazines. It would also imply that you are trying to "buy" favorable press. In a thank you note, it is appropriate to thank the influencer for the time and care they took to understand your topic thoroughly, but not to thank them for writing a positive review—this would imply that doing so was a favor they chose to bestow instead of a carefully studied and considered decision they’ve made.
7. Lastly, and perhaps most important of all, take the steps necessary to become in influencer, too. Step up to the plate and blog yourself. Provide practical and authoritative information, not promotional “hype.” Be straightforward about your company role and any vested interest you have in the category at hand. But as you are steadily gaining experience and expertise in your topic, thanks to your role, that knowledge can benefit others as well. Share the informational wealth, and the effort will bring engagement and audience to you much more effectively than any amount of promotional material could.

There is an assortment of tools emerging to help identify influencers on Twitter and in social media. As further resource, here’s a set of 9 recommended by influencer Lee Odden, CEO of TopRank Marketing and editor of Online Marketing Blog. Still, I maintain that the most important aspects of influencer marketing, whether or not you engage an agency to help you, are the steps you can accomplish yourself. If you’re engaged in an influencer marketing strategy this year, or if you’ve used any of these steps with success in the past, I look forward to hearing your stories in the comment section below.