What are Social Media Influencers and How Can They Grow Your Business

What are Social Media Influencers and how can they grow your business? Simply put, A Social Media Influencer is a user on social media who has established credibility in a specific industry. A social media influencer has access to a large audience and can persuade others by virtue of their authenticity and reach.Want to know how to grow your social media audience? How about networking with a social media influencer? Some of the toughest things to do on social media is creating and maintaining a specific audience. Thankfully there are a few solutions that you can use that don't require buying followers! There are many social media influencers, users with broad follow-ups and personalities in the industry, such as famous authors, celebrities, or business leaders, who can make a significant boost to your profile. Your success impact could be created by having a single influencer who endorses your company or shares your content.

Find, track, interact, and learn from industry influencers

Connecting and becoming involved with influencers will be an integral part of your networking strategy. Connecting with Oprah Winfrey may be a long shot, of course, but many more may be beyond your grasp. Here's one tactic which might be useful:

1. Find influencers in your business and learn from them.

Focus on influencers who are an involved social network with a website and whose opinions resonate with the company's values. Interact by posting, sharing, and enjoying with their content, but be honest and don't overdo it.

2. Use a tactic called "ego bait" to target them.

Reference them on your blog and social media, and positively mention their name. You'd be shocked at the performance that this can bring. Influencers may share your mention with their audience and maybe linking to or following your content.

3. Reach out directly to them.

Compliment them on their work, and ask if you can commission a blog post. Yeah, this will cost you some serious money, but their focus would be more likely. Getting just one influencer article would be a massive boost to reputation and will hopefully draw more.

What if you fail?

Don't be discouraged when everything fails; concentrate your attention on other influencers who may not be as hard to attract.

Create contacts with social media influencers through posting, sharing and liking their posts

Although recruiting influencers is a good starting point, your social media strategy should ideally aspire to become an influencer yourself. The influencer status will do miracles for your social media marketing and your own career as well.

Working towards achieving an influencer status is a long journey that starts with creating great content, constantly improving it, tireless networking, and working your way up to win industry respect and confidence.

You will learn a great deal about being one yourself by networking and communicating with other influencers (see the previous tactic). Below are a few recommendations:

• As an emerging influencer, you must be prepared to contribute through the creation and curation of a lot of quality content.
• Figure out where other influencers are sharing their content and putting in some of the best stuff.
• Be prepared for initial rejection. Use the feedback to enhance the content, and don't abandon it. Training makes for success.
• Participate in debates and discussions. React to any comments; engage others across multiple channels to discuss their content.
• Be omnipresent by putting your name and face on any piece of content you make. It's all about knowledge building.
• Also, post over several social networks. To help plan your posts using automation software.
• Use your personal social media accounts and platforms to share and receive input about your content.
• Be supportive of others by providing support and guidance. Helping others to expand would also increase your network.
• Be active offline. Attend networking events, seminars, conferences; try to land some speaking engagements or interviews. Get your name out there!