Locating online influencers – part one: where to begin

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How can an organization begin looking for influencers online?

Before you can dive in to an online influencer outreach program you obviously need to figure out who is influential and where they hang out online. Customers and potential customers read blogs and take part in discussions online every day, and online influencers are writing those blogs, and leading those conversations. If you can find out which blogs, and where these discussions are happening, you can begin to seek out, and build a list of online influencers.

For now, we will focus on finding potential online influencers and compiling a list.

Step 1 – identify keywords:
Since customers and potential customers will be actively seeking information, they will be searching for content based on keywords that are related to what they want to find. For example, your company produces and sells tablet computers – people who are interested in buying a tablet, or learning more about tablets will search the internet for more information. They will search for things such as “tablet computers 2011”, for example.

To determine which keywords related to your product type are the most commonly used, you can use a tool like the Google AdWords “Get keywords ideas” Tool. Once you’ve populated a list of popular search terms that are related, you can make a note of the most commonly used ones (between 5 and 7 should be plenty), which will come in handy in the following steps.

 

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Step 2 – locate bloggers:
Now that you have identified the keywords that your customers and potential customers are using to find their information, you can search for blogs that contain those keywords and begin building a list.

A handy, accurate tool for doing this is also a Google property (oh how I love Google), called Google Blog Search. It works much the same way as any other Google search, but focuses on blog results only. You can search for both blogs and blog posts, or just one or the other. The advanced search function allows you to really narrow things down, if a broad search is turning up too many results.

Technorati is also a great tool for finding blogs, so be sure to check there as well to make sure you don’t overlook any major players.

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Step 3 – find discussions already taking place
Forums are great for finding influencers as many of them will take part in online discussions as a means of driving traffic to their blog. Yet another Google tool (are you surprised?), you can use the same keywords identified in step 1 to search Google, then simply click on the “Discussions” tab on the left sidebar of the results screen.

Another place that hosts a ton of discussion that can in-turn lead you to influencers isTwitter. Try using Twitter Search with those same keywords to see if any discussion is taking place there. Though this will involve more digging than any of the other steps thus far, it can pay off large if you find one or two big influencers there.

 

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Building your potential influencer list
Throughout steps 2 and 3, you should be compiling a list. I use Excel for this, but any charting tool or contact database you are comfortable with will be just fine. One thing to note with regards to your list is which information you should capture. Below is a basic example of the type of info I usually capture in a potential influencer list:

 

Once you’ve pulled together a solid list of potential influencers you can begin to determine which will become a part of your outreach and rank them based on a number of variants. Next post will get further in to that, and teach you exactly just how to rank them and make educated decisions, maximizing efficiency.  Your final list will host even more detail on each of the influencers and their online spaces than what is shown in the chart above – stay tuned!

Some other resources for locating influencers online:

Blog search engines you can use to help identify your influencers:

Other places to look for influencers:

A few tools that can help locate and grade influencers, but as I’ve mentioned before, these should be used with caution:

Thank you for reading and be sure to add your thoughts on locating online influencers in the comments!
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Business blogging with personality, tip# 2: Pass the pen

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A great way to add some personality to your corporate blog is to have multiple people writing and sharing stories – through their own points-of-view.

Start by figuring out who the “thought leaders” (yea I know, it’s an aging term) are in your organization – these are the people that readers will care most to hear from (aside from the corporate heads, of course). A thought leader may be a manager of a certain division within your company – someone who has worked in their sector for 10+ years, and ideally is already known and respected within their industry.

Of course, your organization’s thought leaders aren’t the only people that you should have contributing to your corporate blog. Your junior staff may very well have some leading-edge, game changing ideas too, so be sure to give them a chance to write and share their thoughts as well.

Once you’ve determined who you would like to have contributing to the blog, present them with the opportunity to write a weekly, monthly, bi-annual (whatever the case may be that best suits your needs) blog post. Allow them to write in their own words, and editing must only be for grammatical and spelling errors – do not alter their message.

If your blog features regular posts from various members of your staff, personality will automatically be “injected” through the different ideas and points-of-view that each of them present. If done right, your blog may even become a resource for people interested in learning more about your industry, and can lead to new business opportunities. It will drive traffic to your website, that I can guarantee.

It will also help retain readers and keep them coming back to your blog, as people will enjoy learning from multiple writers. So go ahead and pass the pen!

Thank you for reading and be sure to add your own blogging tips for businesses and other thoughts in the comments!

 

Online influence measurement: you can’t “count” on the numbers

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The Friendship Algorithm, as seen on “The Big Bang Theory”

It seems that more and more people are relying on numbers to determine online influence lately. They’re interested in Klout scores, numbers of followers, how often things are shared or retweeted, and don’t seem to be looking too far beyond that.

Since there is no definitive algorithm behind measuring online influence, and never will be, we need to do away with this trend in our way of thinking.

No matter how you analyze the numbers (followers, retweets, etc.), you simply can’t determine influence this way. Even if you’re a mathematical genius, there is no formula that can be built on any variation of these numbers to accurately determine influence.

Just because someone has a lot of followers on Twitter, or a high score on Klout, doesn’t mean they are influential.

Case in point

To use David Armano’s (@Armano) example from the Mesh 11 panel with Valeria Maltoni (@ConversationAge) and Mark Evans (@MarkEvans) titled “How do you (or can you) measure online influence”: Charlie Sheen has over 4 million followers on Twitter, yet has little influence over his following (“Sheen’s Cadres” aside), as far as affecting their actions.

If you are following Charlie on Twitter, it’s most likely because you, like most people in western society, can’t help but get a front row seat to watch as yet another celeb spirals out of control. Does he have influence over your actions though? Not likely… If he does, you may want to see a psychiatrist.

So, what exactly is influence anyway?

This seems obvious, but if it were then this blog post probably wouldn’t be needed. According to Merriam-Webster, influence is:

  1. to affect or alter by indirect or intangible means
  2. to have an effect on the condition or development of

For the purpose of our topic today, it simply means to affect someone else’s actions, by way of a tweet, Facebook update, or blog post (for a few examples).

Pete Cashmore VS. Charlie Sheen

Let’s take a look at two Twitter accounts with very different numbers.

For those who are unfamiliar, Pete Cashmore is the CEO and founder of Social Media site Mashable – one of the most read and shared social media content sites in the world, and the 3rd ranked blog on Technorati’s top 100 blogs list.

Compared to Charlie Sheen’s 4+ million followers, 19+ thousand seems miniscule. Yet Pete has a knack for driving action (aka influencing people) – here are just a couple of recent examples:

Pete mentions a game for the iPad – people check it out.

Pete tweets about the Syrian Revolt and not only does it get retweeted by a number of people, but Alyssa Milano gets on board to show her support too!

Pete is so well respected online that Entrepreneur Magazine turns to him for answers to questions like “who should you be following on Twitter?” Most importantly, people who read the list will follow Pete’s recommendations.

And then there’s Charlie:

This tweet received over 100 retweets, but only two replies… here they are:

Here’s how Pete and Charlie stack up on Klout:

While Charlie’s tweets do often get retweeted by A LOT of people, they don’t typically lead to any form of action. Seeing how he has over 4 million followers, he needs only a small percentage of his following to retweet his messages to appear influential to a tool that calculates influence based on the numbers.

According to Klout, Charlie is more influential than Pete – who do you think is more influential? Does Charlie drive action through his tweets?

How SHOULD we measure influence online?

By digging! I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it will take effort. You have to get in there and research the potential influencer thoroughly before you can really even begin to judge whether they’re influential or not. You have to look far beyond Klout score, or how many followers a person has – these numbers unfortunately aren’t directly indicative of influence. Are tools like Klout useful as a starting point in finding those who may be influential? Absolutely, but that’s a whole other discussion entirely.

When it comes to ranking, you can create a system and put people on a scale of say 1-10 yourself, but not without first digging to see the side of the story that numbers can’t tell on their own.

Here are some of the ways you can look beyond the obvious numbers:

  • What kind of content is the person creating and sharing (quality, focus/niche, credible and sourced, etc.)?
  • How does the content they create relate to what you are planning to achieve? The most effective blogs are often tailored to a very niche audience – is their blog attracting the group of people you want to reach?
  • What kind of engagement does their blog receive – comments? Discussions between readers through the comments?
  • Are people sharing the content through their own networks? (Through Google +1, Facebook “Likes”, Twitter, etc. – this can most often be seen by a counter next to its respective button)
  • Is their content ever picked up, or linked to by other bloggers or even major news outlets?
  • Perhaps most importantly, are they seen as credible? (A look at the tone of the comments and the kinds of comments the blog receives should give an indication of this. People won’t be afraid to speak their mind if they think the writer is full of it).

These are the kinds of things that will help determine just how influential someone really is, in my opinion at least.

How do you determine online influence? Do you have any other tips to add? What are your thoughts on tools like Klout and their importance in determining influence? Please share in the comments!