How Do You Identify Who is Influencing Who

Gaining respect, trust and social capital with digital influencers in your space is fast become the holy grail of online marketing.

But how do you identify who is influencing who?

Using a variety of web analytics and social metrics can help you map influence across social platforms and identify patterns with the key players in your market.  Here are four (note the absence of the word easy) steps to create your own target list of influencers in your space.

1. IDENTIFY YOUR KEYWORDS

Before you can figure out who is talking about you or your industry (or who should be talking about you!) it’s important to understand your keywords so you can identify who is using them. Many of us have already gone through this process when looking at advertising buys and SEO. If so, you’re in luck and can skip to Step 2.

Remember that influencers in your space might not be talking about you yet, so it’s important to identify who is talking about your competitors and other topics in your space in addition to your brand itself. For those of you who haven’t yet dipped a toe into keyword (and keyphrase) identification, here are a few popular tools to get you started:

• Google AdWords
• Keyword Discovery
• Wordtracker

2. IT’S ALL ABOUT RESEARCH

In the past, marketers and communicators have typically monitored media mentions and online conversations after a campaign for analysis. That process is flipped on its head in influencer identification: monitoring and research are one of the first steps before a campaign.

Monitor the web to find out who is talking about your brand, your keywords and your competitors. If you have the budget, the easiest way to do this is through a paid monitoring platform, like those offered by Cision, Radian6 or Moreover, to name a few. If you don’t have a big budget, there are myriad free tools available online, but you’ll be doing a little more legwork collecting the data. The below table lists my personal favorite free tools and what they monitor. 

This next part of your research is more intuitive, and less about the metrics and monitoring.

As you dig in to the content you identify through your monitoring, you will start to see which content producers (whether it be through Twitter, a blog, traditional media or another social platform) are posting most frequently, are getting the most comments and responses and are producing content that is being shared by others.

Those content producers will be the building blocks of your influencer list. Start to document names, handles and blog URLs to prepare you for Step 3.

3. DO THE MATH

Once you have a solid list of potential influencers (the size will depend on your brand, industry, organization and/or campaign, but a nice benchmark is between 100 and 500 contacts in this initial phase), it’s time to start putting the math back into your identification process. Unless you are a metrics nerd like me, this part may be a bit tedious, but worth it in the long run.

Choose five to ten web analytics and social metrics by which you will start to map your influencers. It’s best to choose a mix of metrics across platforms (so one or two for Twitter, a few blog metrics and so on). My recommendation is to play around with these until you identify the metrics most relevant for you to navigate. These include (but are definitely not limited to):

1. Unique Visitors per Month (or per Day)
The standard metric that we can compare to print circulation, UVMs provide you with a straight up gauge of the sites that get the most eyeballs. My favorite resource for this is Compete.com.

2. Other Web Analytics
These tend to cost money if you are going to gather them without the help of the sites themselves, but can give you a great idea of which sites readers spend the most time on, return to most frequently and more. My favorites are Page Views per Unique Visitor, Time Spent per Visit, and New Visitors versus Return Visitors. Again, I get my web analytics from Compete.com, but these additional features are only available with a Compete PRO account.

3. Twitter Metrics
Not just followers anymore, you can now measure Retweets, Authority, Follower/Following Ratio, etc. I find the best way to do this is to choose one or two Twitter graders like Klout (also includes Facebook) or Edelman’s TweetLevel. They all have different algorithms, but for the purpose of identifying your influencers, they will do the job and save you the legwork.

4. Inbound Links
Frequently dubbed “the currency of the blogosphere,” inbound links will provide you with a glimpse into which influencers other influencers are citing and referring back to as experts. You can get inbound links by going to Yahoo! Site Explorer (you just have to log in once with a Yahoo!, Google or Facebook account) and typing in the URL in the “Explore URL” search box. You will then return the number of “Inlinks” and can even exclude links from that domain back to itself to get a true picture.

5. Comments & Unique Commenters
Great ways to gauge engagement, comments require, unfortunately, without a paid solution, legwork to quantify. Get in there and start counting!

4. MAP YOUR RESULTS

You are probably saying, “This is a huge pain! Why do I need to get ALL these metrics?”

Quite simply, digital influencers are as unique and varied as snowflakes, and they all influence others in very different ways.

By measuring across multiple outposts, you can begin to identify patterns of influence. Take this graph of influencers in the Internet Marketing space for example (note, I have no intention of leaving anyone off of this list, it is merely for illustration and includes some of my favorite Internet Marketing gurus): 

The blue highlights indicate the top 4 scores in each category. If we solely focused on Unique Visitors per Month for this list, we would never identify 3 of the 4 most influential people on the social web according to Klout. We’d also miss how much impact Jeremy Schoemaker has on Facebook, or how, along with Michael Gray, people are spending more time on his blog than on others.

Once you complete your mapping, you will have a clearer picture not only of who your influencers are, but which platforms they engage in the most.

A final note on influencer engagement: Paid media is one thing, but if you are looking to truly build relationships with the influencers in your space, don’t take the list that you’ve created and send a spammy-sounding email touting your merits. Read what your influencers write, learn their likes and dislikes and build a relationship with them the same way you would in the offline world. Happy influencing!

The Complete Guide to the New Facebook Brand Pages Redesign

As you may know, last week Facebook implemented a series of changes to their Fan Pages. We thought we’d share with you the blog post that we published last week that explains these changes and what they mean for you. Consider this your definitive guide to the new and improved Facebook Pages!

 The first thing you should know is that the new look of Facebook pages is currently available for voluntary upgrade. You can upgrade anytime between now and March 10, or you can wait until the upgrade is automatically rolled out to all pages on March 10. We’ve noticed a few bugs (that affect Facebook tab applications) associated with the new Page design so we recommend you wait for a few days to upgrade your Page. We’re confident that Facebook will fix these issues in the coming days.

Here is a comprehensive list of the changes you can expect— we've also provided greater detail on each change as well as marked-up illustrations in this blog post. 

1) Tab applications move to sidebar. READ MORE.

2) New photo strip at top of page. READ MORE.

3) Profile picture size reduced. READ MORE.

4) Information Box Relocation. READ MORE.

5) New Featured Favorites. READ MORE.

6) New Featured Pages and Admins. READ MORE.

7) Editable Page Category. READ MORE.

8) Push to De-Clutter the Wall. READ MORE.

9) New Mutual Friends and Mutual Interests. READ MORE.

10) Ability to Interact as your Page. READ MORE.

11) Enhanced 2-way communications. READ MORE.

12) Further iFrame Support. READ MORE.

All in all, the changes to the brand Pages, which you can read about in depth here and here , are designed to better integrate brand Pages users’ experience with the rest of their time spent on Facebook. The new features will help Pages to increase their exposure by enabling them to post on the pages of other brands and consumers (those who have public profiles) and will enable brands to be more responsive thanks to the new notification features. These are exciting changes that will help Facebook Pages to become an even more powerful marketing channel for businesses 

Newspaper Readers are Changing - They Want Real Time News NOW!

Newspaper and Magazine Content

Some 66% of Gen-Y affluents consume newspaper content online via desktop or laptop computer. Only 19% still read a traditional print newspaper and 12% access news content via their Smartphone/iPod.

When reading magazines, however, 71% of Gen-Y affluents read print, and 24% read digital magazine content via desktop or laptop computer. Fewer Gen-Y affluents access magazine content via Smartphone/iPod (2%) or e-reader/iPad (2%).

Daily online video viewing is commonplace among Gen-Y affluents:

·         56% say they viewed a video via YouTube in the previous 24 hours.

·         19% viewed a video via Hulu.

·         21% watched video online—other than on YouTube or Hulu.

·         13% used a mobile device to watch a video.

In addition, 42% of Gen-Y affluents watch TV shows online and 27% watch movies online.

Other key mobile-related findings:

·         25% of Gen-Y affluents use their mobile phone to access social media sites.

·         Roughly one-third of Gen-Y affluents own a BlackBerry and slightly more own an iPhone; 71% expect to own an iPhone in the future.

·         Favorite mobile apps: The top 5 apps among female Gen-Y affluents are Facebook, Maps, Pandora, The Weather Channel, and The New York Times. The top 5 apps among men are Facebook, Maps, Pandora, Angry Birds, and Twitter.

·         Apple is the top Prestige Brand among both male and female Gen-Y affluents.

About the data: Findings are based on a October 2010 survey of nearly 1,000 high-achieving and high-earning Gen-Y adults, refined to a panel of 535, age 27 on average. Overall, the sample set is on a trajectory to earn more than $100,000 in the short-term and double that income within the next five years; 75% expect to earn more than $80,000 in the next 24 months.

Email is Being Overtaken by Social Media for Communicating

Email usage rates are declining sharply among teens and young adults as email is increasingly supplanted by text messaging, including social media messaging, according to comScore's Digital Year in Review. The data suggests this is part of a broader downward trend cutting across most ages.
Overall Internet-based email usage declined 8% from 2009-2010, according to comScore; the decrease is especially noteworthy considering that the total U.S. Internet population grew 4.4% from 211.7 million to 221.0 million over the same period, according to figures released by eMarketer last year. There were even steeper drops among specific cohorts, with email use plummeting 59% among 12-17-year-olds and 18% among 25-34-year-olds. A smaller (but still substantial) drop was also seen among 45-54-year-olds, where email use dropped 12%. The only increase came among 54-64-year-olds, where email usage rose 22%, reflecting growing Internet adoption by this age group.
With email use declining, and online social networks booming, it's only reasonable to assume that social networks (and overlapping channels including mobile text messaging) are substituting for email to some degree. The real question is whether email is simply stuck in a long-term secular decline, which will see it dwindle indefinitely, or whether usage rates will stabilize at some point based on, say, life-stage patterns or professional context.
While social networks can handle all kinds of communication, including casual and business-related, email could hold on to its turf in business-related and official contexts where social networks are judged unsuitable for whatever reason. It's worth noting that regular "snail" mail still carries a large number of official, business-related information, despite the advent of a succession of alternate channels like the telegraph, telephone, the fax machine, and email -- and messages received through the mail still carry a certain weight which messages delivered over those other channels simply don't (at least to me).
Proceeding from this analogy, it doesn't seem beyond the realm of possibility that email could retain its usefulness as a marketing channel -- because a message delivered to the individual's email inbox continues to carry greater import than one received at their social network profile. Or maybe not: maybe social network messaging will become so ubiquitous that it functions as both a formal and informal medium, suitable for delivering all kinds of messages from all kinds of senders.

LinkedIn Groups are Powerful Lead Generators

LinkedIn groups are by far the most powerful aspect of LinkedIn.  Hands down.

I have seen people build their entire business, market a number of products and services, sell out their paid events, and become thought leaders in their niche all around a single LinkedIn group.

Most people who have created groups on LinkedIn know the benefits. However, for those who have not created one yet, or don’t think it is valuable to do so, here are my top 10 reasons that you must start one today (before someone else beats you to it):

1.  Builds Thought Leadership

I have several LinkedIn groups.  One has more than 1,000 members, and two of them have 300+ members.  Each group has (one of) my websites as the featured site for the group.  This is one of the first things people see when they join the group.  My name is also featured as the owner of the group.  Based off of perception alone, the owner is a thought leader for that group’s niche (until proven otherwise).  The more you back this up with quality content, and positive group management, your community will support you and anoint you a leader in that niche.

2.  Connects a Thriving Community

People love to belong to a community.  The more you are able to connect like-minded people together, the more they will appreciate you for doing so.  Create an opportunity for passionate people to come together because the leader that does this “usually” reaps the benefits.

3.  Drives Traffic to Your Site

Looking to drive traffic to your blog or company website?  Look no further, a LinkedIn group is a great way to do this.  Here are a few ways you can drive traffic to your site from your group:

• Put your website link in the group profile
• Add the site RSS feed to the News Section
• Send a weekly message to you group, and include a niche related article from your site
• Add your site in the group welcome message (more on this below)
• Create a discussion and include your link

4.  Builds Personal Network

I get roughly 15-20 new invites to connect (as a 1st degree connection) every day.  Most of them come from my groups.  Why?  People love to connect with the community leader.  Since I run a number of “communities” within my LinkedIn groups, I am looked at as someone to connect with.  This is almost true for all group owners, they seem to rack up bonus points from starting the group, therefore having more connections than the average LinkedIn user.

5.  Sending Weekly Messages

This may be the most powerful feature within the groups.  A great example is Robert Flemming, who runs the eMarketing Association group on LinkedIn.  It has almost 200,000 members.  Instead of having to spend thousands of dollars each year on email marketing you could simply create a group, and send them a weekly message for free.

The downside to this is you can’t brand your emails they way you could from a custom email marketing provider (affiliate link), but you can still do some damage in terms of getting your message out there to your members.

The upside, Robert has events with ticket prices of over $1,000 and he sells a ton of them because of his group.  His LinkedIn group helps him achieve his event marketing goals, and it doesn’t cost a dime.  Tough sell, eh?

6.  Create Auto-Responder Email

This is a no-brainer.  Who wants to send a message one-by-one to someone every time they join a group?  Not me, that would take hours of management time every week.  LinkedIn was wise enough to make this easy for the group managers by enabling a welcome message.  Every time someone joins, you can send your own automatic message that delivers to their email account (not their LinkedIn account, but their actual email provider).

This means that you can create a decent sales funnel by first welcoming people to the group, telling them a little about how the group can benefit them and where they can go to get more information.  Hopefully you have them sign up for your newsletter, or connect with you on other social networking sites.  This will help you generate sales in the long run… if you set it up correctly.

7.  Lead Generator

The more you give, the more you will receive.  Dr. Robert Cialdini talks to us about the proven power of reciprocity in his bestselling book Influence, and it holds true within a LinkedIn group as well (on LinkedIn, or any other social networking site for that matter).

Connecting people, providing job leads, referrals, and valuable content to help them achieve their goals: these are things that you can give to people, and by doing so they will give you an abundance of leads (or whatever it is you need in your business) in return.  It has happened to me, and a number of other group owners who are “doing it right”, and it will also happen for you.

8.  Creating Sub Groups

Want to target people in various locations around the world, or sub niches within a niche?  LinkedIn allows you to create up to 10 subgroups.  It’s a great way to throw events all around the country and only have to send a message out to the subgroup, as opposed to the entire group about a regional event.  Make sure you take advantage of this feature (in an ethical manner of course).

9.  Managing Content

If people are posting MLM type content, or someone is using foul language or attacking others in an unproductive way, you have the ability to remove individuals or delete inappropriate content.  Simple as that.  If it isn’t helping the community, you have the power to make it better.

10.  Helping Others

Ultimately, every good leader helps his team or community rise to the top.  I’m sure 99% of group owners have their own agenda when creating a group, but the more they focus on helping it’s members achieve their goals, that group owner will achieve their goals as well.  It feels good to have the opportunity to help others.  LinkedIn helps us every day by letting us see how we are connected to one another, and allows us to build stronger, more meaningful relationships.  Let’s face it, business (and life) is about all about the relationships we have, right?

In closing, LinkedIn is a powerful platform to help you achieve your business goals, and the groups aspect is a vital part to helping you achieve those goals faster and in a more meaningful way. Be willing to take some time to better understand them, as you may find a new way to help yourself, or others, by using them each day.

Greg Bewsh

Social Media Consultant

416-305-7344

Overcoming the 5 Barriers to B2B Social Media Marketing Success

Today, many marketers look to jump on the B2B social media bandwagon while expecting a simple integration with current B2B marketing efforts.  Although many think this, it’s simply not the case, as most run into barriers along the way.
Barriers to successful implementation include simple, and sometimes complex, problems to resolve for many marketers. To break through these barriers, marketers will have to evolve and oftentimes change the organizations way of thinking. Once they do this, they will reap the rewards that come from successful B2B social media marketing practices.
To help you navigate social media waters, we give you the five barriers to B2B social media marketing success and how to resolve them:

1. It’s difficult to go viral – Many marketers dive into the B2B social media tank looking to reach as many prospects as possible with the first or even second piece of content and sometimes set unattainable goals in a quest to ‘go viral’.  Although getting in front as many eyes as possible seems like a viable goal, it’s not always easily achieved and not always the most productive when considering an ultimate goal of building relationships and generating leads.
Jumping into social media should be more strategic and planned out than the creation of one or two campaign elements in the hopes to attract thousands of visitors.
Leveraging social channels involves creating unique and informative content for your audience over a long period of time.
Will one of your creative campaigns go viral? Maybe. But as marketers we have to ask ourselves the question of volume versus quality.  A video, let’s say, that attracts thousands of views may seem like a solid win. But how many of those visitors were from the target audience as opposed to irrelevant visitors just interested in seeing a novel creation?
2. Engagement failure – Although many marketers strive to maintain engagement with prospects, over time, it may falter. To correct this, consider making it easier to share content that’s fresh and relevant.
Begin to use channels including blogs, content curation, micro-blogging and other activities that make it easy for people to respond and easy to share.
Creating and distributing quality information is only half the battle.  Equally as important is the fact that someone needs to be there when your visitors respond, comment or share your content.
You can’t expect to build relationships if you are not responding to your audience. Be sure to allocate resources for follow-up.
3. Difficulty to measure results – One of the hottest marketing topics of the past year was how to measure the ROI of social media efforts.
To become effective in social media, marketers need to adopt different methods to measure and analyze data to show a return like blog stats and third party Twitter dashboards. Create milestones such as number of Facebook “Likes”, Twitter followers and shares of content.
Then, connect the social metrics to already established metrics such as website visitors. Doing so can help upper management see the influence building social relationship has on metrics already known to be an influencing factor to lead generation.
To take measurement to the next level, consider using a powerful backend for management of marketing data. This includes leveraging marketing automation or CRM solutions to transfer data into useful statistics.
4. Creating a winning reader experience – Building the right experience for readers takes time and effort. From creating valuable content to tracking results, marketers utilize many different tools.
The best way to achieve this goal is through a serious commitment to researching and writing.  Oftentimes writing is the easy part if you do your research well.  Become a master at using Google and similar tools to find information to inspire your writing and help you put together winning content.
Develop a content plan that outlines concepts that will be covered throughout each month and then stick to your plan.  Don’t over commit to your writing goals as everyone is already busy.  But do make a plan you can live with such as devoting 20 minutes a day to research and writing.
If you can produce just 4 relevant pieces of content each month, you will be pleasantly surprised at the results.   You will also see the benefits growing over time as each new post is a new, unique page on your website that will get indexed in Google  and eventually show up in the search results.
5. Scaling follow-ups – Many marketers have difficulty scaling their follow-up procedures which may result in lost leads and wasted resources.
To resolve this, marketers should consider adding lead scoring and lead nurturing processes to their B2B social media and lead generation practices for maximum results.  This will not only make it easier to follow up with large numbers of leads but it will also improve the quality of the user experience leading to higher quality leads and more sales.
Achieving B2B social media success doesn’t require large amounts of funding or resources, it simply requires careful planning and addressing the right solution for each issue. By encouraging relevant action, making it easy to deliver fresh content, using powerful backend tools, utilizing turnkey solutions and implementing lead scoring and lead nurturing processes, marketers will find themselves on the path to social media success and real ROI.


Greg Bewsh
416-305-7344

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