As a marketer, you’ve undoubtedly heard about the 1% rule — that just 1% of your brand’s social media followers are responsible for the majority of sharing. They share your social media campaigns with their larger social network, passing on links to your contests, promotions, deals, and other marketing campaigns. These key influencers are more than just fans — they’re brand ambassadors.
At my company, we’ve seen that brands that track and quantify word-of-mouth impact have found that these key influencers can drive 20, 30, or even 70% of all visits to their campaign pages, beating out display and search advertising as the most efficient driver of traffic to their sites. That’s pretty incredible, considering social campaigns require no media buys and cost next to nothing to implement, whereas banners and search ads are a huge expense. These “super influencers” drive an even higher share of conversion — on average influencing 30% or more of all conversions on marketers’ sites just by recommending a brand’s products, content, or promotions to their online communities.
When you see data like these as regularly as we do, you realize pretty quickly that super influencers are worth engaging. If you can reach out to this 1% directly by offering them special promotions, thanking them for their influence, and rewarding them for their loyalty, they will be motivated to share early and share often.
Identifying your key influencers is fairly straightforward. There are a wealth of social media measurement tools that enable marketers to find the people who are talking most about their brand, see what type of content they’re sharing and with whom, and how they are sharing it (e-mail, Twitter, Facebook, their own blogs, etc.). Once you find these influencers, the trick is activating them to share even more.
Here are three tips to help you activate your top influencers.
1. Reserve Your Best Content for Influencers Only
Influencers love to be an inside source of information for their friends and followers by sharing contests, information, or deals with their social networks before other people have heard about them. Create exclusive content you share only with your key influencers, and let them know they were one of a select few to receive this special offer. This makes your brand advocates feel appreciated and provides them with exclusive information they can use to boost their reputation as a source of inside deals.
One of my company’s clients decided to engage its most ardent fans when planning a large industry event. The company reached out to these key influencers, inviting them to post a “register now” button on their blogs and websites, and offering them lower-cost VIP passes if they shared the event with friends. The result was a huge uptick in sharing that significantly influenced registrations for the event. People who found out about the conference from an influencer were 37% more likely to register than direct visitors, and influencers ended up driving more than $1 million in total registrations.
2. Mine the Blogs and Forums
When you’re looking for super influencers, chances are you’ve already determined who shares the most on Facebook and Twitter. But, in many cases, the people who really influence traffic and conversion on your site are the bloggers. One of our clients launched a social media contest and found that one blogger alone shared the contest with thousands of people and directly drove 42% of all traffic to the contest page.
To find and activate the people who are truly passionate about your products, services, or sector, you’ve got to carefully monitor the blogosphere, message boards, and forums. Once you’ve used analytics tools to find exactly which individuals are driving the most traffic to your campaign sites, you need to reach out to these people individually. Treat them like the real VIPs they are. Let them know you appreciate their loyalty and interest in your products. We’ve found influencers appreciate your attention and kind words even more than exclusive promotions.
3. Differentiate the Influencers from the Super Influencers
Your top fans are so valuable they are worth the extra effort of some special attention. But, not all influencers are alike.
When you plot the influence of individuals, you’ll see a curve that looks a lot like the long tail distribution of search terms. Influence follows a “power law,” where a relatively small number of individuals influence the lion’s share of referrals. Those at the peak of this curve are the super influencers, and those in the tail are regular influencers. Super influencers have large, loyal followings and audiences who trust their insights. The latter are people who pass along info to friends and family from time to time via e-mail and Facebook.
Understanding these differences is key to crafting your influencer activation strategy. You need to interact with super influencers on a one-to-one basis, but you could target the rest of your influencers a bit more broadly.
For example, you will want to reach out directly to all your influencers by commenting on their blogs and syndicating their content via Twitter, Facebook, and your own blog. Thank them for their loyalty, and generally praise them. But, make sure to go the extra mile with your super influencers. Offer super influencers the opportunity to obtain and review your products before they hit the market, for example. Offer them after-hours shopping at your stores, a few free hours of your services, or invite them to a special VIP party. Be creative, and have fun. Remember, your super influencers, when treated right, can drive a huge percentage of your site’s overall traffic. Isn’t that worth throwing a party?
The Takeaway
Just identifying your key influencers is not enough in today’s market. Instead, you’ve got to find them and then motivate them to share. Over the long term, your goal as a marketer is to increase the size of your influencer base. By finding and engaging in a direct dialogue with your super influencers, you’ll get a clear idea of what motivates these brand ambassadors to share. Then, armed with that knowledge, you can begin reaching out to your influencers — and even your fans who never share — to offer the right kind of content and rewards to turn more “followers” into “sharers.”
No comments:
Post a Comment