Tip #4 – Tag Relevant Influencers

Social Media Marketing for your business… can be easily achieved when you follow this tip!

What you want to do with this strategy is, if you have a topic, let’s say you’re talking about influence.  My friend, colleague, mentor, long time author, and influencer in the field of influence and persuasion is Dr. Kevin Hogan.  So, what I’ll often do is I’ll talk about influence and persuasion as it relates to Social Media.  That’s my specialty.

But Dr. Hogan is an expert in all things influence.  He’s written dozens of books, best selling, NY #1 best seller, and, again, he’s a friend.  He’s someone I have conversations with. I’m not trying to glom off something for his name or a famous Dr.’s name.  It’s someone I do have that relationship with.  So I kind of have that permission to tag him and post on his wall.

Now some people don’t allow you to post on their wall.  Big mistake on their part.  But it does protect them from people spamming.  And I actually, when I went to create a new profile page for me and then turned my other one into a fan page, what I did was I only accepted people that I knew in real life. Otherwise known as ‘irl’  in the Twitterworld, a popular acronym hash tag.

And the people that I meet  in real life or met them personally, or at a conference, I physically met them face to face.  Or they might have been friends of friends.  So I might not have not have ever met them in person, but we’ve had good, intelligent interaction on Facebook and they were a friend of a friend.  Right? So another kind of recommended friend. Once I did that I allowed comments and allowed people to tag me again because they were only people that I knew, trusted, and they were not going to try to spam my wall.

Social Media Success Pro and Con on Facebook

So there is a pro and con that you need to consider when you do allow people to tag and post.  But you can always make it so it’s permission granted, so say Dr. Hogan does it, he says, “Ok, I’ll allow people to tag me, but only with my permission.”  So what happens is, I’ll tag him in a post.  If he likes the question and feels it’s an intelligent conversation that will be good for his fans, he approves my comment.

What happens is, boom! It shows up on his wall and reaches all of his fans and followers.  Now all of a sudden your reach has extended by thousands, in many cases.  Hundreds in other cases.  Depending on what your field of influence is, hundreds or thousands of extra fans and followers and exposure.  It’s great PR. Great marketing, and a great way to be introduced to your friends’ friends.

This is social media at its best. It’s being introduced by someone they already know, trust, and love, and respect in many cases.  And they go, “Oh, this is so-and-so’s friend.  And especially if you get that influencer motivated to also contribute to the post. If you write engaging questions that are thought provoking and intelligent, you will get them to engage.  They can’t help but not.

Here’s the secret.  And this is something I learned from Dr. Hogan.  People have to respond to questions.  Every time you pose a question, boom, their mind is engaged with you even if they don’t express it.  Even if they don’t type it down, they have actively sought an answer in their mind.

And then it’s just a matter of, how motivated are they to take a moment to type it up.  But they will come up with some type of answer whether they express it or not.  That is awesome!  That is engagement.  That’s true influence, and that’s the way to engage your audience and get influencers to give you that exposure and also engage with you.  Now you’re talking about a really good network of people that follow you and that will then recommend you to others.

But now, here’s how this works.  It’s like that shampoo commercial of years ago that went, “…and she told 2 friends and they told 2 friends…” and all of a sudden the whole TV screen is filled with faces because they just told 2 friends.  And typically in social media, it’s 10 friends that you get exposure to. So 10 friends telling 10 friends, if you do the math, you very quickly have millions of people that you have extended reach to, even if you only have a couple hundred people following you or liking you.

Here is the Social Media Success Secret

Don’t get hung up on those numbers.  You might have just a hundred people following you, but those hundred  people have reach to also a  hundred people or hundreds of people.  You can actually look in your Facebook stats and you’ll see that you actually have reach way beyond the number of people that like you or follow you.  That’s powerful and something most people don’t think of or realize when they’re just looking at their own numbers or other people’s numbers.  That doesn’t matter.  The secret is engagement.

When we compare clients, some of whom do their own social media and don’t engage, but they have got a lot of followers vs. another client who only has a hundred people following them.  They had literal reach to 38,000 people because they engaged with their followers.  And that’s just a hundred people that liked their fan page.  That’s it.  A hundred people.  Yet, they had reached the 38,000 people.  Think about that for a moment.  That is powerful influence and that only comes from  engagement, asking questions, getting involved, and the having other influencers and other fans that are actively a participant on your wall.

Because…influencers may be someone famous.  I mentioned Dr. Hogan.  Famous author.  Best seller.  Awesome.  That’s a huge influencer.  But there’s also influencers of people that are, what we’ll say, no names.  Right?  They’re not the Oprah Winfreys of the world.  But, they’re the person that comments on Oprah’s wall all the time.  That person has huge reach, huge influence.  It’s just of their tribe, their clients, and when you reach those influencers that are engagers themselves, you’ll find your reach will expand.

And that’s Social Media Marketing Tip #4 – Tag Relevant Influencers