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How to Find Influencers in Your Industry

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Published: February 20, 2014

Influencers can help to sell your products and services faster than any other person in the industry. If you want to sell your products and services easily, you must always identify the influencers early in the sales cycle. Here are some suggestions for finding your key market influencers:

  1. Identify Your Celebrity Market Influencers
  2. If you’ve ever watched or listened to an Oprah show in your life, you know that she is one of the biggest market influencers alive. Everyone wants their product or service featured on Oprah because she can influence numerous people to buy.

    Oprah is not the only celebrity influencing product purchases. Olympians sell cereal. Sport figures sell Campbell’s soup, and NFL MVP players promote Disney after winning the Super Bowl. Most people do not recognize how easy it can be for celebrities to sell products, but if you can get one to promote your product, you’re likely to reap the benefits.

  3. Social Influence Metrics
  4. Social influence metrics will help you identify your market’s social leaders. Klout, Kred, and PeerIndex can find the people who can drive people to your blog based upon established trust. Since 90 percent of consumers trust reviews from their peers, this is a preferred way to identify social leaders. Klout measures activity from over ten different social media sites such as Twitter, Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn, and WordPress.

    PeerIndex measures social media influence based upon how often the users engage others on social media platforms. This platform has its own algorithms to determine who is influential and who’s not. The algorithm shows who the influencers are influencing.

    Kred is another site that can help you find key influencers and gather intelligence about your competitors. The tool will also measure outreach activity and provide the information in an easy-to-read format. The application will tell users how often influencers are engaging with other people through tweets, blog shares, and mentions.

  5. How to Utilize Your Influencers
  6. There are so many different sites where your can identify your influencers, but once you identify them, you should begin to build relationships with them. There is no one way to build relationships, but some ways work better than others. Experts recommend asking for opportunities to write on your influencers’ blogs. You can also ask them to write on your blog to gain more interest. They can share the content with their social influencers to increase the likelihood of it is being featured on major sites. Influencers can also ghost write for you on your sites to help you gain more interest.

How to Find Influencers in Your Industry

Finding influencers in your industry is not always easy, but with these tips, it becomes easier to find them. Combine many of the different techniques to ensure that you can maximize the use of your influencers to sell more products or services. They can also help you gain more visibility for your products or services which may lead to more sales. Don’t forget to identify influencers in your industry early to avoid spending time marketing to people who cannot have a big impact in the industry.

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