In this latest Swift Six, I’ll be looking at how you can engage influencers on Twitter. Engaging with influencers is a great way to get them to talk about you and your business to their audience. That means potential customers are more likely to be made aware of who you are and what you do – that’s the first step in them becoming actual customers. Although I talk about Twitter in this video, the underlying principles of what I talk about hold true for engaging with influencers across other social networks. Click the video to get started.
The first thing, and it’s really obvious, follow them. You’ve got to think of Twitter as though it’s a room full of people. The first way that you’re going to engage and you’re going to get a relationship with anyone there is to go up to them. The way that you do that on Twitter is to follow them.
Most people look at who follows them unless they are gaining tens or hundreds or thousands of new followers every day. Most people will get a notification on their phone or on their desktop and will take a look at who followed them. That’s the first that you can get their attention.
The second thing to do is to create a list in Twitter that pays that influencer a nice comment. For example, let’s say you make cakes and let’s say this influencer is a food blogger. You might want to add them to a “cake making expert list”. It’s a nice way to flatter their ego, to tell them that you think that they are an expert about something. When you add them to a list they will get a notification that tells them that you’ve added them to a list. So they will know that you think that they are an expert and that is a great way to start a relationship with someone.
The third thing to do, and again, think about this room full of people that you want to get a relationship with, is to start retweeting and commenting on the stuff that they share. The way that you pay a compliment and you start to interact with someone is start to echo their view, start to say that you agree with them or say that you disagree with them and why.
You need to start those first few steps in terms of having a conversation. That takes me on to the fourth thing because if they ask a question, and people often ask questions on Twitter, make sure that you answer them, and answer them in an interesting or unique way. You need to answer them as soon as they ask that question so that you know that they’re receptive for their answers. It’s often the first people who answer that are the people who manage to get the attention of those influencers.
So three and four – start retweeting and commenting on their stuff, and if they ask a question make sure that you answer them.
The fifth thing that you can do is to really try to delight them. There’s a few different ways that you can try to delight influencers. If you make a physical product can you get a hold of their address and send them a physical product? Can you send them something within the post in order to delight them? Or, again this goes back to the question thing if they’ve asked a question, can you write a more extensive answer than you can fit in a tweet and put it on your blog? Then tweet them a link to that blog saying “look, you asked this question and I actually thought it was pretty interesting so I wrote this longer answer”.
That is a great way that you can get their attention because they thought “wow, this person has really gone and thought about this”. You’re really putting effort into starting a relationship with them and that’s going to get their attention and it’s going to get them interacting with you, and having a conversation with you, and that’s what you’re looking for.
The next thing that you might want to do is if they are an expert and if it is relevant to your blog or your audience, then ask them for an interview. Everyone likes to be asked for an interview because you are saying to them in a slightly subtle way “I think that you are brilliant, I think that you’re an expert”. That flatters everyone’s ego and makes them feel good about themselves.
The sixth thing that you can do is something called “ego baiting”. So try to do something else that will make them feel good about themselves. Again, it’s like adding people to a list but can you create a blog post where you can quote what they said or where you can talk about the work that they’ve done and where you can list them as an expert within your blog. When they read that or when you share a link to it they will go “wow, this person has written a blog post, I’m listed there as an expert”. You know what they’ll do? They’ll share that post because they will love to tell their followers that they are an expert. It’s made them feel good, it says something about them that they are going to want to share.
So that was another 123-reg Sift Six and this week we did six ways to engage influencers on Twitter. I’ll see you next time.
