Content marketing is an increasingly hot topic these days. More and more people are starting to realize the potent role that high quality content plays in creating visibility for your brand on the Internet. Seth Godin was quotes a few years back as saying "content marketing is the only marketing left".
One of the biggest reasons for this is the intense competition that exists on the web today for nearly any commercial offering. For example, you can see this if you do a search on something like intitle:"lathe operation", as shown here:
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Even this very niche oriented term generates over 7,000 results. Surely the end user only wants to consider a very few options. As I always like to say: "Google only needs 4 results, so how are you going to be one of the 4?" Superior content is one key component of this.
But, superior content is not enough. Unless the world gets to know about it your superior content will get you nowhere. You have to have a way to get the word out. This is where "Influencer Marketing" comes into play.
By definition, influencers reach a lot of people (often more than you do), and they have the ability to influence people's opinions.
Influencer Marketing Defined
Influencer Marketing is the name we give to the process of developing relationships with influential people that can lead to their assisting you in creating visibility for your product or service. This type of marketing depends on your having something great to offer your potential customers, and the audience of the influencer, and it also depends on your building a great relationship with the influencer as well.
In today's social web, there are a three major ways an influencer can have a big impact on your business:
- They can write a blog post / article about you.
- They can share information about you in their social media accounts.
- They can ask you, or permit you, to guest post on their site.
- Or, any combination of, or all of, the above.
Of course, they can also Like or +1 your content as well, which has a lesser impact, but is still potentially interesting. To recap the benefits of the influencer, they often have a larger audience than yours, or at the very least, a different audience:
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However, the benefit is much larger than that. Let's say you had 100 followers in your Twitter account that shared a piece of content, and this results in 20,000 people seeing what they shared. This may result in 20 additional shares and 10 links.
Now consider the same audience being reached by one influencer. Those 20,000 connections will be much more responsive to the shared content because of the trust they have in the opinions of the influencer, and this much result in 100 additional shares and 50 links.
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That's a pretty hefty advantage. Further, the search engines actively calculate author authority, so they will also place more weight on the vote of the influencer.
Leveraging the Influencer
As a fan of content marketing, chances are that you already have your own blog, and your own social media accounts. You probably already use these in tandem, and make sure that you follow similar content themes, and any time you create a new blog post you share it on your social accounts. When you do this correctly, you set yourself up for the following type of virtuous cycle:
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Doing this effectively is a great start. You can grow your audience over time because people who are already connected with you will share your stuff, and this does reach their audiences.
However, this works much more effectively if you can goose the process in two ways:
- Develop relationships with major influencers so they are subscribing to your blog or following/friending/circling you in social media accounts. This is made possible by developing enough of a relationship with the influencer and having a history of creating content of interest to them. Here the payoff occurs when they choose to link to it or share it on a social network.
- You actively reach out to influencers and get published directly in front of their audiences. One example of this is writing guest posts for them and getting published in their blog. This also depends on having a credible history so they will consider your article. The payoff here is quite direct, and happens as soon as the content publishes.
Both of these strategies lead to the influencer acting as an amplifier for your voice.
Building the Relationship
This is not really so different than making new friends when you move to a new neighborhood. When you go to that first neighborhood party, you don't walk around asking everyone there to give you $20. You ruin your place in the neighborhood by doing that. Doesn't work in the neighborhood, and it doesn't work in building relationships anywhere else either.
The process is really quite straightforward, as shown here:
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The major elements are:
- Start interacting with them. Treat it like you are developing a new friendship. When it comes to business, focus on providing value to them. If they have a question, seek to answer it. Don't spend any time telling them what value you bring, just deliver it to them.
- On an ongoing basis, show that you will be active in sharing their stuff to your audience. Even if your audience is much smaller, the give and take attitude will be noticed.
- Actively help out others. When you focus all of your attention on one person to the exclusion of others it starts to feel a bit freaky. Give value to others on a regular basis. Publish great stuff. Share other people's good stuff. Tip: if you discover great content from a little known author, the influencer you are trying to build your relationship with will be more interested than ever!
As for interacting, the more personal the better. I built many of my relationships in the search industry by going to conferences and sitting in the front row when people I wanted to meet were speaking, and then being the first person up to speak to them, when the session was over. Face to face contact like that is awesome.
The following diagram tries to illustrate which types of relationship building methods are the most personal, and therefore carry the most value:
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It's also important to prioritize. Which people are worth the most effort? How do you decide? You might fly to a conference to go meet some critical person face to face. Others you might simply interact with on social media accounts.
Note that it certainly is possible to build meaningful relationships with people through social media only, but nothing beats face to face.
Opportunities are also important. Your first opportunity to make a big impression on someone might be to respond to a blog post, a tweet, or a Facebook update. Your target may ask for help with something, as Rand did in this November 2006 blog post:
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How did that one turn out you ask? Somebody stepped up and took it on:
Oh right, it was me. The analytics report published on August 27, 2007. Point is, jumping on opportunities like this makes a big impression, and can really accelerate the building of a relationship.
What are the chances someone will share or link?
Once you have developed a relationship, you still need to do the right things to get someone to share or link to your stuff. No one is going to share everything you do, because some of the stuff you do is not that good or not that relevant (don't be offended, no one is great all the time).
Here is a formula I have developed for the probability of someone sharing or linking to your content:
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Let's look at the major elements:
- Relevance - if it is not relevant to them, they are not going to share it, even if it's great! - if it is not relevant to them, they are not going to share it, even if it's great!
- Uniqueness - Seth Godin likes to tell us to be remarkable. If what you create is not exceptional, no one is going to care, and no one is going to share.
- Quality Content - This goes without saying. Crap content will bring crap results and no amount of relationship building will change that.
- Trust in the Author - This is where the relationship comes into play. You can create great content, but if you are not yet trusted, your share rate will be far lower.
- Trust in Referring Sources - How someone learns about a piece of content is a factor in the share rate as well. If an authority tells you about it, you are more likely to respond by passing it on.
- Visibility - People can't share what they don't see. For example, if you create a great blog post and you tweet it once, a small percentage of your followers will ever see it. Tweets are here now and gone 5 minutes later. Even the most addicted tweetaholic misses some of their tweet stream.
- Impressions - Impressions is an interesting one. This is classic marketing in action. Marketing experts used to say that it took an average of 7 impressions per sale. Of course, all impressions are not created equal:
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As you can see the reach of influencers is long. Not only can they get you links, they can give you shares that result in other people giving you links.
Summary
Learning to work the very human dynamics of people on the Internet is a critical marketing activity. This is not new. It has always been valuable to build relationships with influential people. The Internet simply gives us new mechanisms for doing that.
Communication and relationship building is easier than it has ever been. You can easily get started with social media or blog conversations, and that's great. Don't overlook the power of the old fashioned way though. More personal interactions still have the biggest impact.
Creating fantastic content is a must, so make that a key part of your plan. Then, supplement that by building the right relationships so you can get the world to know about all the cool stuff you are doing.
One last tip, add value to the audience at each step of the way. Even when you are creating content for your own blog, people are only going to share it because it helps others. Give, give, and give, and always be helping others. People will notice, and that's a good thing.
For those of you who are interested in more, drop me a line at info at stonetemple.com and I will send you our white paper on identifying influencers.
Eric is active on Twitter (@stonetemple) and Google+ (+Eric Enge).
Hi Eric,
That’s one awesome post and the concept of influencer marketing is very intriguing but here’s the deal and please do not misunderstand my points, I am just trying to state my views here -
The biggest challenge is not the first step i.e. identifying an influencer, but the biggest hurdle would be the second step i.e. to build contact.
A few questions that a marketer should think about before contacting the influencer
What should I talk to him?
It’s important to understand that you do not talk any random crap. Its important to remember that first impression should always be the best impression
Which medium should i use? Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Email?
Very crucial, what’s the point if your influencer is not very tech savvy and does not understand the meaning of @mention. Identify their favorite spot and BANG catch them :)
What will make the influencer interested to respond to me?
This is again a tricky one, it’s important that you showcase yourself as someone who knows what he is doing, one should definitely not look like an idiot while contacting an influencer.
Where should i draw the line between stalking and following?
The most rookie mistake any marketer would do. Never show desperation, it’s important that you give influencer due importance but at the same time and for heaven’s sake don’t act desperate, Give time and be patient.
If the influencer replies how long should i wait before contacting the influencer again?
This is where i would say the word planning comes into picture. A little understanding of Human psychology is important here, i mean if a person is going through crises then obviously it’s not a good time to send a mail to an influencer stating, "look at the awesome blog post that I have written".
What USP does my brand have?
Never approach an influencer if you don’t have anything to offer, i mean what’s the point. Put yourselves in the shoes of the influencer, why would he respond to something that has no value.
Is there anyone who can influence the influencer?
The biggest and the most important strategy, one needs to identify people who in themselves might not be great influencers but are definitely important to the influencer in consideration. Try to reach out to them and then via them reach the influencer.
Nature of the influencer?
This is slightly a tricky one, some people may not like it but the reality is I would prefer to talk to someone who is well natured and does not think of himself as the KING of the world. Trust me you wouldn’t want to work with such morons, unless of course they truly are the kings and queens of their field.
These are some of the questions whose answers a marketer should always have, the reason is very simple, a potential influencer should ideally get like a thousand emails, and there should be something that will make you stand out.
Most importantly it’s important to classify your influencers, for example do not go for the biggest influencer, start with a little lesser known people, interact with them start building your reputation and then go for the big fish.
The concept of how an influencer can help is great and this is something that you have explained brilliantly but i believe its the approach and strategy that would go into contacting an influencer whichis MUCH MORE important.
- Sajeet
Use the power of a contact who knows that person you wish to speak to and who likes you and understands what you do and ask them you would like to be introduced... its worked for me for 11 years in SEO/web marketing, and has built a loyal fanbase of clients who trust what I do for them offline - take that with you online and it will open up contacts you may have never even thought about it... :)
Oh and its not all about FB, email, Twitter contacts - some people still like to resort to the good old fashioned phone.
Hi Sajeet, Just a little note... Why don't you start proposing posts here for YouMoz?
Lately your comments are simply great and their length and deepness so that they could be considered "mini-posts".
I am sure that not just I will be really interested to read your posts :) Thanks for your contributions to the Moz community :).
Thanks Gianluca,
I am working on a post and when completed will surely submit it to Youmoz. Hopefully people will like it :)
- Sajeet
I would like to second that Sajeet - Gianluca is right, I was only thinking that when reading one of your responses to a post yesterday - "12 Things That Will Kill Your Blog Post Every Time" confirmed by the rest of the moz community with the 31 thumbs up!
I agree too - YouMoz!
Hi Sajeet - thanks for the very long and thoughtful comment! The approach is important, I agree. Note though, the benefit you offer the influencer may not come in the form of a unique selling proposition. It may start with something as simple as you address some need they have which is not about what you are specifically offer in the market.
The example I gave of the analytics study illustrated this. Stone Temple Consulting, my company, does not even offer analytics consulting. But I stepped up to answer a need of Rand's. I have seen people play on their newbie role in a marketplace quite effectively too.
Someone who is just learning a space can have a lot to offer, because watching people learn can also be of value to an influencer - they learn in the process. There are many ways to bring value to a relationship with an influencer that are not centrally focused on what you are trying to sell.
Hi Eric, great post indeed and very needed surely.
First of all, let me act like a teenage fan of a pop artist: "I luvvvv your interviews!!! They are actually the model I look at when planning mine"
Ok.... recomposing myself and let's start the real comment.
I think that everything you have written is perfect and correct, but - sincerely - the ones we call Influencers, in many cases are those same ones we called the Linkerati. Many times and not always, because the influencers' base is surely bigger than it was the Linkerati one, thanks especially to Social Media, which has introduced in the Online-Aura-of-Influence many people who were already influencers but using other Media (i.e.: television, press, radio...).
But, substancially, nothing has really changed from when we were trying to outreach the Linkeratis just few years ago, apart the incresed communication channels we now have (and which facilitate greatly our "influencer marketing"
What does really surprise me, though, is how we (I include myself too in the pack) forget how Online is just a reflection of Offline when it comes to build relationships. I say this, because a classic question people and clients ask me is "How we can get in touch...?). To them I usually socratically reply with another question: "Who are the people you talk to already in your industry?". Because the Influencers are there already, between the people you are talking to when you go to a Congress, when you give a speech in an University or when you are having an Industry meeting. Simply we don't do 1+1 and transfer these conversations from the offline to the online ecosystem.
And let me finish with two things, a tip and an advice.
The tip: listen, listen and listen before to start approaching an influencer. For instance "analyse" what they say on Twitter, what they really love to talk about and what they do really like to share. Study their wording, because the way we talk reflects the way we are: is she witty or serious in her communications, does she separe firmly her job sphere from the private one or mix them up (i.e.: Dan Zarrella use Twitter 90% of the time just professionally, while Danny Sullivan use it also for sharing his passion for rugby, Minecraft, the sunsets and the disavventures with his Nexus S).
Just when you really can say to know the influencer, start interact with her. Help her, laugh with her, sustain her in her fights, retweet intelligently (= with a little bit of curation) her content and share directly things you know she is interested about (i.e.: Reading this link. I'm quite sure that @xyz would love it, am I wrong name of the influencer?). Be her curator, somehow, and you'll be able to break the barrier of indifference.
The advice: networking... it is a great word and a great tactic... but be aware to not transform the effects of networking into "clientelism", which is substantially the dark side of networking... and which is the same that saying Mafia.
Ok... before I wrote to Sajeet about his lenghtly comments, and see what I've done here :).
Again, great post Eric!
Hi gfiorelli1 - lots of good thoughts in your comment. I particularly like the "listen, listen, listen" piece. Essential to success in getting the relationship started. Influencers will provide LOTS of clues about what is interesting to them. Leverage that and you chances of success will be FAR greater!
Eric, great post, I've been a BNI member in the UK for years and this is something we are trained to do, its not who you know, its WHO THEY KNOW that can help you.
1 to 1s are encouraged between members to find out more about their businesses and encourage referrals between one another - the 1 to 1 allows you to see how you can work together. Influencer marketing has been a primary way these past 11 years but now tieing this in all together with FB, LinkedIn and Twitter is only going to make business referral networks an even more attractive proposition to many - especially the ones who get the power of having not just influencers, but also referrers within their sphere.
Check out the head of BNI's profile here, I understand he is a highly influential person in the business world in not just the USA but across the world...https://ivanmisner.com/bio/
"Called the Father of Modern Networking" CNN
Worth a read.
Darren
PS In terms of fairness there are many other great, great networking organisations that can help with influencer marketing out there to choose from, not just the one I mention
Loved the relationship building pyramid, its so realistic and true!
"Give, give, and give, and always be helping others. People will notice, and that's a good thing." I always try to keep that mantra in my mind - with which I am sure, if you make it the right way, everybody can succeed.
I do always admire this American characteristic which is not so wide spread here in Europe (at least this is my impression).
You might be surprised, build a trusted network with others that give, give, give, they are out there, I know, I work with many.
Sadly I've to agree with you about the "give it up" syndrome many in Europe suffer.
Sometimes, it seems like not sharing knowledge or helping without immediately asking something in change is something genetically written in their genes, as if people fear to loose "a competitive knowledge advantage" if they share their skills openly, when - actually - it is exactly the contrary.
True, but times are a changing fast... you will always get people who don't want to share, its not that they don't want to but they don't know how to...
I spent time in the USA in the nineties, so I know it is a different mindset here in the UK but it is changing, in fact comments I am receiving even this morning are that people are waking up to this concept - the only thing some don't want to do is share with others who don't care for them and only want to use them to provide a cheap, shoddy service.
Please believe me when I say in the future there won't be "social media" - we will look at this arena as a "trusted online network of contacts" - integrated with your relationships created offline. :) - those words are quoted by Peter Kay from Not From Bolton, it is not something I take credit for, in fact what I have done is shared a resource with others...
Yes, exactly right. These days we should be doing this very same thing. We, personally, do not realy believe in scheduled meetings or get-togethers. We just exchange any relevant info via Twitter and Facebook, it works out great, because its much more open and less forced. Eventually people will pick up on this and start doing the same thing.
You're right when you pinting the fact that in europe people are not always confortable with "give" for free. Even in the US people do not always share their best ideas but in comparison to europe the share rate here is better than there though
There is a fantastic book by Robert Cialdini called “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion”, and a key takeaway to is that if you give somebody something, they are predisposed to give something back. You can find it on Amazon.
Thanks for all the insight and taking the time for such a detailed post.
Awesome! This is basically the presentation I just saw Eric give two nights ago at SEMPO Boston.
This led me to wonder - you know how there's correlation between links and social sharing in terms of rankings? Would LOVE to add a TIME demension to this and analyze
Basically what Eric is saying is;
Makes me very interested in doing a few case studies and looking at the timing of the links vs social shares.
--> Thanks for posting this Eric!
Hi,
I'd be very interested in seeing your case study if you can pull one together. Inparticular if you can quantify influencers from different industries (and sizes) and their effectiveness against others. My opinion is that it will scale with the size of the social market or interest in it.
E.g. A football players (soccer) account on twitter against a well positioned industry leader within say spoon manufacturing (i dont know where that came from).
Obviously the footballers account will have the larger (scale) social influence but in a more challenging / competitive market will it show higher improvements or gains against competitors than other influencers in their market?
Interesting..
No matter online or offline building relationships and connections to influencers has always been important. I would complete agree that ‘online’ actually give us an easy and strong medium to interact with the influencers without any layer.
The worst part that many people do while building relationship is they build relationship to achieve certain target, in my opinion one should strengthen professional connections in general and not for any particular goals to achieve.
Another Reason to build connections to influencers is because somehow it will help you build your fan base. If the influencer is sharing your stuff that you wrote, some people from his fan base will jump and read your stuff and possibly becomes your fan, subscribe to your blog and even more.
Obviously no one can beat 1 to 1 relationship, I mean no twitter tweet can be more powerful than a glass bear after the Moz Con with people like Jennifer Sable Lopez or Wil Reynolds or others... but for many flying from my country to Moz location is not possible all the time so I tried building relationships with other medium and in my opinion any medium that is quick and personalized will be helpful... I prefer Twitter and Email as most important.
Thank you Eric for a very good read!
Thanks Eric. It's a great post and the high quality images break up the text perfectly.
Articles are much more readable and shareable when visual content is used to punctuate the paragraphs :-)
This was a great read... As a digital marketer I happen to love online influencer strategy and recently I started using a platform called Find Your Influence. It connects my brands to influencers and I can create campaigns to effectively market the product. I highly suggest anyone in marketing check them out! findyourinfluence.com
Hi Elisa,
It looks like you've helped with press releases for Find Your Influence. We do request that you disclose any relationship with companies you recommend when you use Moz. Thanks for understanding!
I run a blogging platform for local business owners in the UK under the name of influencer (dot biz) and that is exactly what I tell them. In an interview recently I was asked why a cab company would go through the bother of having a blog and adding content and I told them its simple - to stand out - to do more and be more than the other cab companies who just supply a phone number. To allow those who use the company to stay in touch and share their love of the company. To build an audience who are always reminded of the fact that they are there because of the content they share.
Being online now is all about influencing and without it you are just another business professional. It takes some work to write great quality content like this but it pays dividends in the end.
I am one of the few who believes individual businesses - especially those who provide services like cab driving, plumbing, electricians and handymen - should NOT have their own blogs and don't really have to even have their own social media accounts.
What they really need is someone like Diane who is an experienced blogger to write ABOUT them and use their social media and online marketing skills to benefit the small business. Most small businesses do not have the desire, time or resources to do this themselves - and it is more effective to have a local influencer doing it for them anyway.
I have posts that explain this concept in detail on my blog and would be happy to share the links or elaborate in a guest post if anyone is interested. (No, I am NOT trying to sell services to anyone - I could not fit in any new clients even if I wanted to do that. I just want to share what works so that others may benefit.)
Hi All, this is Shawn from Kred.
Kred influence measurement is a great tool for putting together a portfolio of influential people to reach out to for an influence marketing campaign. Its great for targeting content marketing initiatives because it gives separate scores for Influence and Outreach (to find the influencers who are also most likely to engage) and scores within communities connected by interests and affiliations.
This assures that you are reaching out to people who are interested and have a strong record of sharing - perfect for creating viraiity from valuable content.
I'd love to hear the thoughts and ideas of others on this thread about how influence scoring can help a marketer get their message spread throughout their networks.
Cheers
Shawn
Hi Eric,
Fantastic blog. I liked the influence pyramid. While I agree that the impact on the influencer is most effective from the 1-2-1 to Meetups stage. The effect diminishes from Blogging stage and beyond. One reason could be difficulty in seperating the noise in blogging. There is too much content and create the desired impact would need more efforts than desired. At this stage, too many people would reaching out to the influencers at the same time. One solution I can think off is to create the impact in the 1-2-1 stage, but there are issues of drawing the line between stalking and marketing. There could also be communities who would have a "no to marketers" as entry And marketers need to watch out for these communities. The marketer has a lot of reputation stakes involved in the game of influencing. So picking the right bunch and understanding the fit of what you want and what is the influencer looking for is utmost.
Great post! Influencer outreach a required marketing strategy. An alternative concept is a strategy focused on determining influencers who already engage with your brand. If you can determine who, in your subscriber list are influencers, it's much easier to encourage them to promote your brand because of the established relationship. A related blog post can be found here: https://spotright.com/digital-marketing/the-other-one-percent/
Awesome analytic post, really helping... YouMoz also fine.
You should checkout wahooly.com to find influencers that are relevant to your product or service. Klout.com is kind of helpful for that too.
I am going to need some sort of cloning device to do this. I will continue the give, give, give thing and look around for influencers when I can. Hopefully, someone will notice in the meantime. Excellent direction to aspire to though.
Thanks for this insight, Eric. I'd be interested to hear from the community about the success of influencer marketing outside our industry. Chris Winfield just wrote a great PR post on Moz. I'd really like to hear his thoughts if he comes across this comment.
Building influential relations as a marketer is very similar to traditional public relations. Gfio made a comment on Chris' post regarding how one, who wants to add to their community, can pretty much singlehandedly accomplish the task.
Are we as marketers adopting yet another role too as a new iteration of PR professionals? Say I write something for a local ski shop. I'm sure there are SEOs out there who love skiiing but the community I'm a part of is not the ski shop's ideal target market. In such a situation would I counsel the owner to go after his respective influencers? Being more savvy perhaps about such things, should I be the third-party connection to the owner's influencers? Would love to hear thoughts here. Thanks.
Although it's difficult to correlate we've set out to get more positive interactions with the influencers in our clients sectors and although I can't say masses of traffic coming in through this line I can definitely see those influencers being much more engaged with our content which I'm sure can only pay off in the future. I've been mainly doing this in the office supplies (specifically Ink products) sector.
Thanks for your reply, Simon - much appreciated. Interesting.. perhaps as more industries 'catch up' to ours re: online engagement, your clients will be ahead of the game, making online marketers even more of an overall business asset.
This is a great question Anthony but unfortunately it's not something that is cut & dry. So much of this is going to come down to the owner you mentioned in your example. Are they natural networkers? Are they willing to put in the time (and maybe swallow a bit of their pride) to effectively schmooze? Is it even something they want to do? If the answer to 1 or more of these questions is No/Not Really/Hell No/Meh/ or anything like that - then the owner probably isn't a good choice. But that's not saying that someone else at the company might not be a better choice (we see this all the time with evangelists or the non-owner/CEO being the figure-head for the company).
That's why in many cases, it makes more sense for us (the marketing/PR company) to be the ones building those relationships. But as I stressed in my post, those don't come easy (or in many cases: quickly) so be prepared to put time and effort into really getting to know the people.
Great artical Eric. Thanks for sharing your experience.
Good post Eric, I agree with alot of the concepts, you really need to provide some great content for the community to leverage, with this content it can instantly drive traffic/links ect.
I have been working with various large brands recently to assit them in working out strategies around influence marketing, it is really just a matter of education to work out strategies that can work.
Great analytic post Eric. Thanks for sharing your valuable experience.
Excellent post Eric - your article made me think of the comment by iPullrank on the article "The Last Linkbuilding Strategy Your Business Will Ever Need", he said, "What it all boils down to is: Make News and Make Friends." Never a truer word spoken in relation to online marketing. The internet is a very social place and building up relationships with people especially influencers is a very important aspect of it I think. A good example of how a lot of people go wrong when doing social media marketing is by just tweeting links etc rather than trying to get involved in the current conversations and build relationships with others, especially influencers. As Eric said above "When you go to that first neighborhood party, you don't walk around asking everyone there to give you $20" - I will be using this to get this point across in the future - sometimes inane conversations can be very powerful at cemeting a relationship!
Really interesting article. I think your pretty much spot on with your "influencer marketing" opinions, However in practice its very difficult to build these relationships. Usually a financial incentive is very much required. In my mind there are only two companies that acheive this well and in the large for free, Apple and Google, and look how sucessful they are.
Usually a financial incentive is very much required.
Respectfully disagree. I've seen this work 1st hand in far too many circumstances without a financial incentive.
Its fine to disagree, i certainly wouldn't disagree with the article & that if it can be put into practice, it will have a major influence in the development of your website. Obviously getting 1000's of people to create links to articles, news or any other content or repeating links in the case of twitter and other social sites is much better than getting one person to develop 1000's of the same for you.
My point is that not all industries or niche's will have any / many influencers and if they do they may be making money from doing this already. Developing a relationship to the point that they will effectively support your business for free is very difficult (but obviously not impossible).
An example, it would be much easier to find an influencer for Joe Bloggs who's doing 10 triathlons for cancer research as his brother has lung cancer (obviously he needs all the financial support going), is easier than finding an influencer for John Doe who's business is window cleaning and is looking for new clients. Although its not entirely impossible for John Doe it will be a great deal harder than Joe Bloggs.
If you can do it, then do it. Its a no brainer.
The solution is for bloggers to start developing local reach and content - something that I have been working to get them to understand for a long time. By forming groups of influencers working together to reach a specific niche and/or location they can provide small businesses and agencies a centralized contact, effective places to advertise, and logical people to write about and promote their business.
I have best practices, processes and links that explain everything I've been building toward doing just this. If I knew whether SEOMoz would mind or not I'd be happy to share these resources so that others can apply them and have an idea who to connect with for more information.
Exellent post Eric, your reasons and methods of influencer engagement are highly similar to the method we advocate here at eCairn. Especially important is the fact that you advocate adding value to the community. Our customers use our platform to help identify the influencers and then track their engagement. I'll be sure to refer them to your post for added advice =]
Such a good article, opened so many doors. I really like the relationship pyramid.. Maybe I should be doing my link building on the road to gain some 1 on 1 time with an influencer.
I do have a question, working with an SEO company and working on multipule sites, finding each influencer for each topic seems very challenging, especially when I am not in each of these fields. Should I ask each one of my clients for the influencers in their field? and once I collect these names how can I network with someone important, if I have no knoledge of their topic?
dseom - good question. When you are a consultant, the task absolutely becomes to show your client how to make these connections and them help them leverage them.
Great post, and a good reminder that people skills can go a long way in the tech/SEO business. A solid relationship with an influencer can yield years of valuable opportunities for both parties.
Great post, Eric. Content marketing is a very logical pair for most SEO campaigns, yet it isn't appreciated by most. We're certainly trying to incorporate more of these principles into our processes.
PS - I'm looking forward to those case studies Dan.
Nice article Eric! But the question is if you got linked to a famous person or influencler as what you say, through a social network such as Facebook or Twitter, how should we approach him? That step should be very careful as Sajeet Nair explained. An article on that would be very helpful.