Finding and Working with Influencers Online
This is an excellent presentation from GasPedal’s Word of Mouth Supergenius class, “How to Work With Bloggers and Influencers,” by Virginia Miracle (what a name – almost as good as Ryan Money!). I get a lot of questions about this topic and I always say – that is an entire presentation of its own. Well, now you have that presentation.
First, I want to warn you that working with bloggers is high touch. We’re opinionated as a group and can be egotistical (who else would keep it up?). We’re very active – in the top 10-20% of people online who are actively engaged in blogging and often active on multiple social networking sites.
They [influencers] want to talk to you, the brand, directly not to your PR agency. “You cannot just outsource working with influencers. It does not work. It will fail.”
Just like with any campaign, press release or blog post you should start with defining what you want from the effort. What are your goals? Is it to promote an event or campaign? Get feedback? Increase visibility? Say thank you to your best customers?
Next define what the bloggers might want from the effort. Do they like working with brands? Some really want to, others have no interest. Are they open to your message? If you’re Kraft and they are Whole Foods devotees it might not be a good match. This is really time consuming – there are tools to help but unless it’s a group you know well (for instance I know a lot of Utah bloggers) then it’s tough. The good news is if you find one you’ll often be able to find another (we hang out together). You find one blogger who fits and you can follow the links in their sidebar to their friends. Or look (do a targeted search on search.twitter.com) to see who they write to on Facebook or Twitter.
What can you offer them? It can be anything from fame to recognition with their peers (I think these are often overlooked as motivators). It may be a giveaway or free product. Some bloggers just want to be paid (this can evolve over time as a blogger has gotten more popular).
Remember that even though writing may be what we love to do, it takes time to write a good post. For example, my previous post took over 2 hours and I could’ve written for another 2 hours. It takes a lot of mental effort to write. If you add photos, video, etc. it could even take more. If you ask them to review your book, that is several hours of work to read, think about and write about your book. Even as an author I’m aware of what I’m asking when I request a review so I am very grateful when people actually take the time. I will link to them, comment, put it on my site, etc.
Be aware that this is a long-term relationship with a lot of give and take along the way. If you’re not up for that just pay for what you need (consulting, a post, a product review, advertising, etc).
Here’s the presentation:
How to Work With Bloggers and Influencers — presented by Virginia Miracle from GasPedal on Vimeo.
2 Responses to “Finding and Working with Influencers Online”
Leave a Reply
July 13th, 2010 at 1:48 am
finding influencers really is a big plan of mine to grow my business
September 25th, 2010 at 7:50 pm
[...] Finding and Working with Influencers Online (newspapergrl.com) [...]