You are looking for people who are active online and might be willing to share your content with their own followers. You might want to find bloggers or journalists who write about your business industry.
 

Who Are The Authorities And Influencers In Your Market?

The important thing to remember, though is you want people who are respected and trusted for their opinion.
How do you find these market leaders in your niche? Do you know how to connect with them?
In this article I’m going to share how to figure out who the authorities and influencers are in your market and how to establish a meaningful connection with them. You’ll learn what you need to focus on and where and how to connect with them.

How to Find Influencers

After reading yesterday’s post, you know why you need to be connecting to the influencers in your industry but how do find these connections? There are many ways to seek them out. The social networks and places you already visit online are great places to begin. But there are other ways too.
There are three main strategies you can use to connect with them.

• Social media platforms
• Social influence metric tools
• Search engines

Finding Influencers in Social Media Platforms

The top social media platforms is the best way to begin. These sites are filled with influencers. Of these sites, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook are the top three. Use these sites to directly find the authorities in your industry.

• On Twitter, use the search function for finding new influencers. Follow hashtags of others to find who and what is being talked about.
• On Facebook, use the search box to research people in your industry. “Like” those who have a high Fan base and high rate of engagement by checking out their talking about numbers. Join Industry specific groups.
• Search for your specific industry on LinkedIn for Influencers socializing here. Follow them on LinkedIn and in their other social sites. Join groups.
• On GooglePlus, find the industry influencers by searching for their G+ page. Join relevant groups.
• Search for your industry specific keywords on Pinterest. Search for and follow those who frequently engage with your niche keywords. Look for broad Pinterest categories to find those with a lot of repins.

On each site begin by setting up your profile and getting familiar with the sites. Most high level networkers will have at least 500 connections, are very active online and have complete profiles.
Examples of high level influencers might include the executives, decision makers and media as well as people you already know are the authority in the industry.

Use Social Influence Metrics Tools to Find Influencers

Social influence metrics are tools that crawl the social media sites, collating and analyzing interactions of the users. The tool then ranks each business or person online for their social influence. These tools are gaining importance in social media marketing.
Although there are many social influence tools you can use to find and leverage the most influential people in your industry, the big three are Klout, PeerIndex and Kred.

• Klout is probably the most popular and oldest source for measurements. It measures activity on ten social media sites including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, WordPress blogs and the Klout site itself.

Use the site to find influencers with higher scores (scores range from 1 to 100).

• PeerIndex measures the levels of user engagement and their influence on the social media platform. This tool shows who influencers are influencing, so if you are targeting specific market you can use the data to connect with these top influencers.
• Kred allows you to find the key influencers in your market and gain insights and intelligence about your competition as well. This tool also includes a bonus feature which measures the outreach activity and provides it to you in an easy to read format. This feature tells you how often the influencers are retweeting, sharing and mentioning others like you. Influencers who are engaging often with others are more likely to share your content.
• Followerwonk‘s key feature is the “Search Twitter bios” that lets you type in keywords. It then lists the Twitter users who have those keywords in their bios. The list is ranked by the number of followers and social authority.

Search Engines to Find Influencers

There is much being said about building authority style websites.  While I do agree with that to an extent, I more so embrace Ken Blanchard‘s quote, “The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.”
Search engines are a quick way though to find out who is writing and influencing in your industry. The information will be general, not giving you details like the social metric tools or even the social media sites can. But search engines give you another option for finding more niche leaders.
Doing a simple Google search is a way to find bloggers in your industry. Using the Google search is helpful if you’re in a tight niche market or looking for specific topics. For example, maybe you have a bird watching business. You’re looking to find the top influencers in your geographic area or your demographic market. You can get an idea of who the top bloggers are doing a Google search.

Other ways to Find Influencers:

• Google+ Ripples is one of the lesser known ways to connect with influencers. With Ripples, you can see who is sharing your SEO content as well as who your specific influencers are and how you can connect with them. It lets you see who is sharing and re-sharing your content. These are the people you want to connect with.
• Engage in groups and discussions. You can interact on blogs or message boards by taking part in conversations. You can find groups and discussion sites all over the internet and most of the social media sites. Look for the influential members who have a large following, who interact and answer questions regularly.
• Look for blogs in your niche market. Popular blogs will have a lot of commenters and interaction, will rank high and be talked about among their peers. These popular blogs have more than likely been around for a while.
• Investigate your competition. Look at their marketing methods to find out where they are advertising and what social sites they are posting on.
• Search out who is following you. You might be surprised to find influential followers already in your tribe.

There are many ways to find the industry influencers in your market – now pick one or more and start connecting!
Share this article with these Tweetables:
• Top tips on how to find the right influencers for your market – Click to Tweet
• Do you need more direction on finding top influencers? – Click to Tweet
• @SusanGilbert shows you exactly how to find top influencers for your market – Click to Tweet