Finding Key Influencers in Social Media

Social media is all about making connections, so it seems obvious that we should put a great deal of effort into interacting and forming relationships with others online. Despite this fact, it seems that many B2B community managers are much more focused on broadcasting information about their companies and products than on interacting with others. As a result, opportunities for engagement and relationship building are missed every day. The reason, we believe, is that many simply don’t know who to interact with.

That’s why we’ve created this quick primer on finding key influencers in social media. Follow these steps, and you’ll never have to wonder who to interact with again.

1.  Run a search on TweetLevel. If you spend a lot of time on Twitter, this tool is the best way to identify key influencers in your field. Simply plug in keywords related to your area of expertise (ex: green energy or mobile computing technology) and TweetLevel will spit out a list of top influencers. TweetLevel’s algorithm is based not just on activity, but also on number of followers and retweets, so you can be sure you’ll find users who have something valuable to say.
2. Run a Google Blog Search. Many thought leaders are also bloggers, so the blogosphere can be a great place to look for key influencers in your field. Simply search for terms related to your area of expertise and then take note of the most active, insightful and well-followed bloggers. If you want to check how popular they really are, use Alexa’s page rank tool for an estimation of their daily page views and visits. Most bloggers link to their social channels on their homepages, so it won’t be difficult to locate them in social media.
3. See who your top customers and competitors follow. On most social networks, it’s easy to figure out who your connections interact with. Names that show up on the friend or follow list of a large number of your customers or competitors are likely to be key influencers in your field.
4. Set up an influencer monitoring system.  After you’ve identified key influencers using steps 1-3, it’s time to set up a system for keeping track of what they’re saying. We like to organize key influencers into a stream on Hootsuite so that all of their tweets show up in one place. We also have a Google Reader folder just for key influencer blogs. A quick glance through this folder helps us stay up-to-date on the hottest topics in our industry. On Facebook, we simply “like” key influencers and keep up with them through our news feed.
5. Watch for new influencers. Social media is constantly evolving, and today’s newbies might be tomorrow’s key influencers. To monitor for new voices, we suggest setting up a Hootsuite feed that captures all tweets using a certain word or phrase that relates to your industry. It’s also a good idea to set up a Google Reader folder that pulls articles using key industry phrases. If you start seeing new names pop up repeatedly in your steams, you might have a new influencer on your hands.
6. Interact. What good is all of this influencer information we don’t leverage it to form relationships? Once you’ve identified key influencers, get out there and start a conversation. Answering and asking questions, sharing content, or simply saying “thanks” for a piece of content you found particularly useful can be a great way to start.

What other ways do you identify influencers online?

Featured image via: Hear Our Voices