How to Find Influencers to Build an Engaging Presence on Social Media

Let’s be honest – everybody wants to boost their social media engagement.

Even if you are saying that you don’t care about likes, shares, comments, and other vanity metrics, you are secretly hoping that your work will be appreciated.

The unfortunate thing is that, no matter how hard you work to create awesome content, your posts have an embarrassing low reach. It’s hard to stay motivated when you realize your social media profiles are located in a sea of cats and selfies.

And you are not alone.

There’s a lot of noise on social media. Facebook alone adds ½ million new users every day. More than 60 million photos are shared on Instagram every day, and 90 million Tumblr posts are created every day. In fact, if you want to see how crazy every second on social media looks, just check this website.

So, how do you stand out from the noise?

Fortunately, there is something you can do. Reaching out to influencers is one great way to get more people to engage with your posts.

1. How Can Influencers Help You Amplify Your Content?

There’s a common misconception about influencers. Most people believe that an influencer is someone with tons of followers. But, that’s just one side of the coin. Sure, you can easily find people with lots of followers, but the size of their audience is not that important.

What you want is:

• An influencer with a passion about the areas you are focused on;
• To have an audience who is interested in what you have to say;
• An audience with high levels of engagements – numerous replies, retweets, comments, and an active blog following.

You want influencers with engagement, not followers. Someone with 1,000 engaged followers will do more to boost your engagement rates than someone with 10,000 less active followers.

Another important factor that you need to take into consideration is the domain authority of the website where a potential influencer publishes content.

1. How to Find Influencers

Now that you know what you are looking for in an influencer, you need to know how to find them.

A lot of marketers and small business owners fail at outreach because they are not using the right tools. Instead, they send emails to influencers that seem to fit their audience’s profile.

Here’s how

• Find Influencers Interested in Your Niche

According to Buzzsumo, identifying the people who are already sharing content on topics relevant to your niche is one of the first steps to a successful outreach strategy. You can do this by using several tools.

Buzzsumo, for example, is an excellent tool that will help you find influencers who have shared similar content. EmailHunter.com is another great tool that will make finding top bloggers’ email addresses much easier.

• Find Authors of Content that Is Heavily Shared

Go to Buzzsumo and search for top content. Look at the authors of the most shared articles and see what they are writing about. To see the most shared article on any author that appears in the list, you just have to click on their names.

2. Develop Relationships

Imagine a stranger walking up to you, asking for a significant favor. Would you help them?

Chances are you wouldn’t.

Guess what: when you send emails to influencers asking them to share your articles or your posts, you are that stranger asking for a favor.

Why should they help you? Influencers receive several requests each week. Wasting their time is a surefire way to get rejected.

That is why it is important that, by the time you contact them, you’ve already developed some sorts of relationship with them.

Ask yourself: what will the influencer get? What can I offer in return for this favor? Will you offer them access to a new audience? Would you offer him or her promotional discount? For example, if you run a small e-commerce store, offer them a discount.

3. Reach Out

So, you’ve created a list of top influencers that are relevant to your niche, and you made sure you’ve performed a favor before asking them to share your posts. Now comes the hardest part: writing the email.

A lot of small business owners ignore outreach because they are too afraid that they will be rejected.

So, how do you overcome this?

Learn how to write great emails. Whether you are asking for a link, a share or a mention, there are a few guidelines you need to keep in mind.

For example, personalize your emails. No one likes to get generic messages. That’s why it is important to create a personal message. Check their social media activity or read their latest blogs and try to learn something about their most recent interest. Use this information to connect with them and to grab their attention.

Another important tip is to keep things short and sweet. Don’t waste time with useless information – get to the point as quickly as possible.

4. The Real Challenge: Create Content Worth Sharing

The secret to ensuring content is shared is not a secret at all: create quality content people will want to share. It doesn’t matter who you pay to share your content – if it doesn’t add any value, people won’t bother engaging with it.

Do not write a blog post about a topic that people have seen a hundred times already. If you don’t have any great ideas, try to look at a popular topic from a different perspective. Try to bring something new to the table not just to reiterate what others already said.

If you are already creating awesome content but have trouble reaching your audience, then an outreach strategy can help you boost your social media engagement. The only problem is that outreach is hard to implement, and many small business owners shy away from it. But, with the right approach, you can get influencers to share your posts and increase your social media engagement.