Influencers are people who have a following within a specific niche. People respect who they are, what they have to say, and the knowledge that they have to offer. An influencer’s following and their reputation as an expert is why they can be especially valuable for a startup company.
Influencers are the people who go up to a colleague or friend and speak the highest praises about something they care about, doing so in a way that completely motivates their followers to check it out for themselves. Think about a time that a celebrity endorsed a product in a television commercial—that was a strategic move to use that celebrity’s stature to convince people that, “Hey, I love this product. You should too.”
Influencers come in all forms: industry experts, celebrities, bloggers, and more. In order for your startup to have influencers, you need to find out what conversations they are already having that relates to the industry, product, or service that relates most closely to your startup.
Before reaching out to an influencer, there are several questions to consider:
- Does the influencer fit your startup’s target market or audience?
- Will the relationship with the influencer be mutually beneficial?
- Why would this influencer want to help your startup in particular?
On Twitter, you can use hashtags and keywords related to your startup to search for and contribute to conversations that your influencers are already participating in. Using Twitter, you can find influencers who not only have a decent-sized following, but who also have followers who are engaged with them.
When you find the right influencers, start by following some of the people they engage with a lot. You should also ask those influencers to retweet your tweets and share your links to your site, products, and blogs.
LinkedIn is the social media platform that is most helpful for finding and interacting with influencers. By doing some searches on LinkedIn, you can find the influencers that are strong in the niche that is best related to your startup and begin interacting with them. For example, you can ask influencers questions on posts where they share their own thoughts, so that your name will become familiar to them. You should also share what you are trying to accomplish with those influencers.
The blogging community is another way for you to find influencers, and it’s potentially one of the strongest. Bloggers build up an audience by posting their own thoughts and views, and then sharing them with a specific niche. Really successful bloggers can develop followings of thousands of people.
Another way you can find specific industry influencers is through forums like Quora. Forums are a great place for people to interact with influencers and ask them questions related to their business. Search forums for people who are already having discussions related to your industry, and find the ones who are answering a lot of questions, thus providing great perspectives.