4 Quick-and-Easy Ways to Connect With Influencers on Social Media

Social media is one of the easiest and most inexpensive ways to promote your brand within your target market, but you won’t have much of a reach on your own page.

Building relationships with social media influencers is your answer -- you can extend your reach and boost your visibility by creating relationships on social media with the right people. You probably already have a personal network built and know some of the people in your industry. But there is more to be done. Are you connected to the bloggers who write about your industry? People who have written books on your topic? What about magazine editors in your space, or investors who are particularly interested in your sort of product?

Keep in mind that there are billions of people out there, many of whom are looking for the answer that you provide. Here’s how to get their attention and utilize your network to the fullest, building relationships that get you noticed.

1. Connect on Facebook.

Facebook is a good tool for finding influencers in your space. Though some of the advertising capabilities have fallen off, Facebook is still the best platform for B2B and B2C companies to build their following in a targeted audience.

First, search Facebook for influencers in your industry using key words and significant phrases. Then, once you’ve found influencers who can help you, build an online relationship with them: "Like" their profile page and their content, like pages that they have also liked, comment on their content and share their posts. Post to their page about how much you like their message or product. If they like your page back, send a message quickly to introduce yourself and extend a warm greeting.

Remember, be judicious and non-promotional -- you’re trying to build a relationship, not overwhelm them. By getting in front of their audience, hopefully they will follow you and their followers will, too.

2. Connect on LinkedIn.

The importance of LinkedIn cannot be overstated, especially for B2B marketing. Like Facebook, search for the users that you want to meet by looking for key words. Send them a connection request, making sure to tell them how you know them or know of them. Follow the influencer’s company page, and share their content.

Once the influencer accepts your connection request, send them a message explaining that you know their time is valuable -- influencers get a ton of mail, so write a message that is to the point and explains what you bring to the table for them. If you don’t want to wait for them to accept your connection request, you can always upgrade to LinkedIn Premium, which lets you send direct messages without being connected.

3. Network on Twitter.

Twitter, to me, is the most fun of the social media platforms. There are so many ways to interact and have conversations that there is real opportunity for creating relationships.

First, Follow the influencers you’ve identified on Twitter -- all of their accounts, personal and business. If you get a follow back from them, tweet a thank you to their @handle.

Next, use your Twitter lists and make one just for influencers. When they tweet, it is very easy to find them. Engage in their conversations and re-tweet, like or reply to their tweets -- this is the best way to build relationships. Stay active, post often, and automate your evergreen content so you are always visible.

4. Connect on Instagram.

Search for your keywords to find influencers: accounts featuring your keywords, or people who are using your keywords as hashtags.

Once you identify the accounts with the largest followings that are in alignment with your space, get their attention by following their accounts. If the influencer doesn’t follow you back, try un-following them and following them again.

Instagram is about reciprocity. If an influencer comments, comment back. If they like you post, like theirs back. Make sure that you are posting frequently and regularly, and using relevant hashtags in your posts that will help you to be found.

Though this may seem like a lot of time and effort, social media marketing of the grassroots sort is one of the most important tools that you can have. Building relationships are imperative, and that can be hard work. If you feel overwhelmed, start with one or two social media networks and work up to more, or consider utilizing a tool like HootSuite to streamline your posts. Once you get the attention you deserve, the relationships you make will serve you long into the future.

Written By: Murray Newlands

Credit: Entrepreneur.com

10 Laws of Social Media Marketing

Leveraging the power of content and social media marketing can help elevate your audience and customer base in a dramatic way. But getting started without any previous experience or insight could be challenging.

It's vital that you understand social media marketing fundamentals. From maximizing quality to increasing your online entry points, abiding by these 10 laws will help build a foundation that will serve your customers, your brand and -- perhaps most importantly -- your bottom line.

1. The Law of Listening

Success with social media and content marketing requires more listening and less talking. Read your target audience’s online content and join discussions to learn what’s important to them. Only then can you create content and spark conversations that add value rather than clutter to their lives.

2. The Law of Focus

It’s better to specialize than to be a jack-of-all-trades. A highly-focused social media and content marketing strategy intended to build a strong brand has a better chance for success than a broad strategy that attempts to be all things to all people.

3. The Law of Quality

Quality trumps quantity. It’s better to have 1,000 online connections who read, share and talk about your content with their own audiences than 10,000 connections who disappear after connecting with you the first time.

4. The Law of Patience

Social media and content marketing success doesn’t happen overnight. While it’s possible to catch lightning in a bottle, it’s far more likely that you’ll need to commit to the long haul to achieve results.

5. The Law of Compounding

If you publish amazing, quality content and work to build your online audience of quality followers, they’ll share it with their own audiences on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, their own blogs and more.

This sharing and discussing of your content opens new entry points for search engines like Google to find it in keyword searches. Those entry points could grow to hundreds or thousands of more potential ways for people to find you online.

6. The Law of Influence

Spend time finding the online influencers in your market who have quality audiences and are likely to be interested in your products, services and business. Connect with those people and work to build relationships with them.

If you get on their radar as an authoritative, interesting source of useful information, they might share your content with their own followers, which could put you and your business in front of a huge new audience.

7. The Law of Value

If you spend all your time on the social Web directly promoting your products and services, people will stop listening. You must add value to the conversation. Focus less on conversions and more on creating amazing content and developing relationships with online influencers. In time, those people will become a powerful catalyst for word-of-mouth marketing for your business.

8. The Law of Acknowledgment

You wouldn’t ignore someone who reaches out to you in person so don’t ignore them online. Building relationships is one of the most important parts of social media marketing success, so always acknowledge every person who reaches out to you.

9. The Law of Accessibility

Don’t publish your content and then disappear. Be available to your audience. That means you need to consistently publish content and participate in conversations. Followers online can be fickle and they won’t hesitate to replace you if you disappear for weeks or months.

10. The Law of Reciprocity

You can’t expect others to share your content and talk about you if you don’t do the same for them. So, a portion of the time you spend on social media should be focused on sharing and talking about content published by others.  

Written By: Susan Gunelius

Credit: Entrepreneur.com

5 Questions to Determine If You've Outgrown Your Web Hosting

Web hosting can seem like a commodity these days. You just choose the amount of disk space and bandwidth you need, and you’re up and running. Whereas before there were all sorts of limitations imposed on you, nowadays you are spoiled with choices, and hosting costs have become almost inconsequential for most businesses.