How to bring a SuperInfluencer into your business
While all eyes have been trained on Barack Obama’s visit to Australia this week, it’s his wife Michelle Obama who wields the stronger influence over the world’s primary purchasers: women.
She is joined in these elite ranks by the Duchess of Cambridge who, like Michelle Obama, is publicly active on the world stage and possesses a supreme selling power.
Why?
Because the decisions these women make in their everyday lives from what they eat, wear, decorate, read or watch is copied religiously by other women around the world. And this isn’t just a trend, the impact of their influence can take just minutes to reverberate around the world and is significantly change the fortunes of many businesses.
Since her engagement to Prince William last year, almost everything the Duchess of Cambridge has worn has sold out within minutes, such as the nude Reiss dress she wore to meet Obama at Buckingham Palace in May. As soon as pictures of the Duchess wearing it appeared, the British retailer was selling the $316 dress at a rate of one a minute.
Meanwhile Obama was dubbed the $3 billion woman after a study by New York University’s Stern School of Business found a company’s stock skyrocketed when she was photographed in one of its garments.
Identifying your SuperInfluencer
While not all businesses can be gifted with the grace that flows from these two iconic women, there are some steps you can take today to being engaging with a SuperInfluencer in your own community.
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 . Once you find these influencers, you can them begin to engage with them with the goal that they will continue to share about your brand.
Ben Straley is the CEO of Meteor Solutions, provider of word-of-mouth analytics and optimization platform that enables marketers to measure, manage, and monetize earned media. He suggests that you try these three tips to help you activate your top influencers.
1. Reserve Your Best Content for Influencers Only
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.
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.
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 .
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.
If you want to tap into some of that magic that women like Michelle Obama and the Duchess of Cambridge own, just identifying your key influencers is not enough: you’ve got to find them and then motivate them to share.
Over the long term, you need 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.”