How Do You Develop An Influencers Strategy To Attract And Engage Your Key Influencers?

INFLUENCERS
INFLUENCERS STRATEGY
How to attract and engage your key influencers

Influencers: How Have They Changed
the Public Relations Landscape?
Over the past few years, PR professionals have gone through a profound transformation in how
they manage their business communications and public relations. Not long ago they would
address clearly identified targets (the media, specialized publications, etc.) and the rules of the
game were well established. Now, PR departments and agencies have to direct their attention to
a multitude of potential sources, seeking them out using their names and their profiles.
Bloggers, Twitter users and even highly specialized digital journalists have succeeded at building
an audience and credibility completely within the digital realm, which today gives them a level of
influence perhaps greater than the mass media, on a wide variety of topics.
Have we been going through a power shift in favor of these numerous opinion leaders since the
beginning of the 21st
century? In 2001, the PR agency Burson Marsteller pointed out the enormous
impactofthesedigitalinfluencers intheirstudy“E-fluentials”. Duringthestudyperiod, influencers
had an effect on roughly 155 million consumers in the United States – both online and offline - in
their buying decisions. Since the population of the US at that time was 285 million, this means
that they influenced over half the population!
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INFLUENCE STRATEGY 01

Far from dying down, this phenomenon has continued to grow in importance over the past years,
reaching its peak, mostly for two reasons:
• Consumers have never been so connected. Today, most opinions relating to a decision to buy
(or not) begin online. These opinions take shape either during a Google search, while reading
a scathing post on a forum, while looking at a product test on a specialty blog, or even while
reading a tweet from a satisfied user. There is a huge selection of channels and media of
exchange in today’s world, and brands are no longer at the top of the information pyramid.
• Consumers want to be inspired by brands. Today, we’re entering an era of affinity marketing
where it’s absolutely necessary for brands to inspire the confidence, respect, and admiration
of their customers. In a global economy, it has become extremely difficult for a business to
distinguish itself simply by the superior quality of its products. On the other hand, a brand
may gain the preference of its customers (and even be capable of making them pay a higher
price) if it’s capable of instilling these aspirational values through its actions, and those of its
directors. Conversely, a blemish on a company’s reputation will have an almost immediate
effect on its sales, which wasn’t necessarily the case a few years ago.
In this context, digital influencers constitute the new center of attention for all PR strategies.
But how do we identify them among a population of over 52 million internet users, in
France alone?
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Who are the right influencers to look for? There are plenty of infographics on the subject,
highlighting 5, 10, or 14 types of influencers. There are effectively a wide variety of digital
influencer profiles and behaviors in existence. Below, we present you with a simplified version of
the influencer “pyramid”:
Category 1: THE POPULAR ONES
In this category, we find celebrities and icons. One example would be Justin Bieber. He has more
than 44 million followers on social networks, which is amazing! His every word and action is
closely followed by his millions of fans. Why place him in this category? At the end of the day,
Justin follows trends. More than his words, it’s his image that matters.
What influencer profiles
does my strategy need?
This type of target has no shortage of interest,
especially from marketers who use these targets
for product placement (generating attention
regardless of whether their personality is
relevant to your product). But they also present
a number of difficulties:
• They require a large budget: to enter into this category, you’ll have to pay up ($$$$)
• Risk of messing up: This tweet from David Ferrer is a perfect example: he praised the qualities
of the Samsung Galaxy S4 phone, but the tweet was sent from his iPhone! That’s the risk
involved with “buying” influence.
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Category 2: EXPERTS AND OPINION LEADERS
These could be connected journalists, bloggers, leaders in the business world or in
volunteering, activists, experts in their field, etc. Basically, they have a wide variety of profiles,
but they also have one thing in common: they have credibility within the community of their
specific field. A message from them in favor of your brand, if it’s in their field of expertise, can
generate an intense interest within their followers who share their interest centers and trust the
opinions of these influencers.
These are the primary targets of PR and communication professionals, which lets one brand
or business work on managing its reputation.
Category 3: INFLUENTIAL CONSUMERS
Thiscategoryhastakenonconsiderableimportancewiththeadventofsocialnetworks. Consumers
can become true ambassadors for your brand, or conversely, detractors with a potentially
devastating effect. The recent example of the upset British Airways passenger, who created a
whirlwind of attention with his promoted complaint tweet (the tweet was picked up by various
media outlets, and the passenger was even interviewed by CNN).
You already know that influence is a relatively diffuse concept, and it’s difficult to give it a concrete
definition (we’ve worked with researchers at INRIA who focused on defining it). But the real issue
is recognizing what your real goal is in your relationship with an influencer. Is it visibility,
credibility or sales? The context is fundamental to implementing your influence strategy, and it’s
the core of the Augure Influencers project.
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The number of tools for detecting influencers has been growing over the past few years, without
really convincing PR and marketing professionals, many of whom still favor a “manual” approach.
This offers the advantage of being more qualitative, but it is also extremely time consuming and
only offers a partial vision, since it’s centered on just one channel in particular (Twitter,
Facebook, blogs, etc.).
1. There’s no one secret that applies to each person, there are numerous platforms that allow
users to acquire followers on Twitter. “Buy followers on Twitter: in our tests, we bought 50,000
followers”. That’s a title from the French Huffington Post news that was widely shared in social
networks. The editorial staff had the experience of buying 50,000 followers under the profile
@Oeuf_Post (“egg post“) created five hours earlier. And all for the modest sum of 33 euros.
How do I recognize an influencer?
2. Post frequency is also insufficient in determining influence. Today there are numerous
tools allowing you to automatically publish RSS feed updates, or even to program a series
of tweets to be posted at a preset frequency. Does that make the person behind the Twitter
account an expert on the subjects they post on?
3. Retweeting has become a relatively mechanical action over time. HubSpot, who took the
initiative to analyze more than 2 million tweets containing links to external content, observed
that most users retweet without looking at the content they are retweeting. Can we really talk
about influence when users themselves rarely even look at the content?
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It seems clear that digital influence can’t be measured based on a series of quantitative data. An
influencercan’tberecognizedbythenumberoffollowersobtained,orbyretweets.Butinfluencers
can be recognized by their ability to mobilize opinions of their followers within a given subject
matter.
Thisisthepostulateonwhich therankingalgorithmofourAugureInfluencerstoolisbased:people
don’t have absolute influence over everything; they are influential because of their connection to
a specific topic (cuisine, finance, technology, news topics, etc.).
We have compiled the elements that allow us to detect an influencer in a given field within these
three concepts:
• Exposure: the audience capital the influencer has built over time within his fields of
research (the number of unique visitors to his blog or media where he writes, etc.)
• Share of Voice: the level of participation of the influencer in the debate on the
topic in question
• Echo: theeasewithwhichtheinfluencergetshisopiniononthesubjectsinquestion
to spread and be relayed (via retweets or links to his blog articles, for example)
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Implementing an influence strategy:
an action plan
Constructing an influence strategy means weaving together sustained relationships with
Influencers. It’s nothing magical, it’s a project that requires consistency, invested time, assigning
a dedicated member of your team, and a permanent evaluation of the results obtained, using
criteria that are both quantitative and qualitative.
Here are the steps we propose for putting your influence strategy into place:
1ST STEP: IDENTIFY PERTINENT INFLUENCERS
A tool like Augure Influencer can be extremely accurate in establishing a precise target. Here are
a few practical tips for using it:
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1. Define the search topics
It’s important to define the subjects your target influencer writes or talks about, and their different
related variations, before you begin. Imagine for a minute that you work for the marketing
department of a French automaker like Renault. The key words that will help you to narrow down
the field of possible influencers can be classified into several categories:
• The names of the brands and products of the industry in question. In the case of Renault,
this request can bring up the brand “Renault” within the influencers already mentioned, but
also its competitors: “Peugeot”, “Citroen”, “Volkswagen”, “Fiat”, etc. Product managers can
also target their search more narrowly: “Renault Mégane”, “Volkswagen Golf”, and so on.
• Terms defining the sector where the business develops its products, or more specifically,
the targeted product category. In our example, the searches can bring up terms like
“Compact”, “SUV”, or “electric vehicle”.
• Current events within the industry: “Auto shows”, etc.
• Cross-connected subjects like “cash for used cars”, “CO2 emission″, etc.
• Now let’s imagine that our automaker wants to diversify by entering into a more “geeky”
population of influencers in order to convince them to opt for a connected navigation system
in their next vehicle. The company could extend its search parameters to include new requests
such as “GPS” for this specific campaign.
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2. Establish lists and categorize your influencer populations
• Filter in terms of channel type. Relationships created on Twitter are different from
thosemadeonablog.Byfilteringyourresultsbychanneltype(media,blog,Twitter,etc.)
youcanestablishspecificlistsforeachplatformandcreatedifferentapproachtactics.
a
• Don’t try to cover excessively broad populations. The era of mass messaging
is over. In most sectors of activity, there aren’t that many real experts
(and thinking of a personalized approach is necessary for each of them).
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• Categorize by subjects or subject groups. Influencers on subjects related to
social responsibility are just as important as those at the center of your field, but
you wouldn’t want to contact them with the same message.
2ND STEP: MONITOR YOUR INFLUENCERS
By now you’ve identified your influencers and defined a precise categorization scheme. But don’t
rush things! Before contacting them, get to know them a bit, by listening to them. There are many
benefits:
1. You’ll become familiar with the subjects these influencers talk about, discovering
the latest trends, staying up to date with the hottest news stories in your field and,
above all, taking advantage of their expertise on the subject.
2. It’s also an opportunity to identify the expression spaces of your influencers and
the best channels to transmit your messages: you’ll find that information isn’t
processed the same way on a blog as it is on social networks, and learn a few
necessary lessons about your engagement tactics.
This listening also allows you to refine your initial list: by monitoring the publications of your
targeted influencers, you can perhaps find out that some aren’t as well positioned on the subjects
you’re interested in as you first thought. On the other hand, you will probably discover new
influencers within the community your target works in.
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Example of a list of favorite influencers with Augure Influencers
Example of Influencer Newsletter in Augure Influencers
1. In Augure Influencers, tag your core targets as “favorites” to receive daily updates from
them in a newspaper with all of their publications (media, blogs, social networks, etc.)
2. If you don’t have Augure Influencers, you can also create themed lists on Twitter. To review,
you can create both public and private lists. Naturally, the trouble with this solution is that you
only get a partial view of what your influencers are doing, who are usually active in other fields
besides micro blogging.
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3. Another option: add your influencers’ blogs to your monitoring platform
Blog following in Augure Monitor
4. The same option, but this time with the social network accounts of your targeted influencers
Twitter and Facebook user tracking in Augure Monitor
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3RD STEP: MAKING CONTACT
Your influencers are identified and categorized, and you have taken the time to get to know them
with monitoring. Now it’s time to get in touch with them, but before you begin, here are a few tips:
• Don’t send any mass messages, always take a personalized approach. With the
information you’ve gathered through monitoring, visit their blog again and read their latest
articles. You’ll always find something interesting, but it takes a bit of time (that’s why doing
monitoring beforehand is important).
a
• Let the influencer know you’re following him or her. Sign up for the influencer’s
newsletter, follow social network accounts, share content posted to their blog with your own
communities (via retweets, Facebook shares or by establishing links from your site or your
blog to their content). But be careful not to follow or retweet too excessively, the influencer
might take it as harassment.
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• Comment and enrich their content (with pertinent information). This is a key step to
constructively demonstrate your interest in the influencer: give your take, enrich their post
by adding links to related content. If the information is pertinent, you’ll gain credibility.
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• Stay up to date with events in your sector: influencers are frequently involved with
current events, and you should be too! Take advantage of networking spaces for them to
get to know you. A meeting with the influencer means a lot more than a Like on Facebook.
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• Keep a record of all your interactions with your influencers. For example, if you decide
to send product samples to influencers (a common thing to do in the fashion or consumer
electronicsindustries),it’sextremelyimportanttokeepaveryaccuraterecordofwhatsamples
you send. This also goes for events and informal reunions: the record of your interactions
should be carefully preserved. During any future contact, making use of this information,
stored in the influencer’s file, will be extremely valuable.
More advice…
There’s no specific time to get to know an influencer: the time you need to gain their trust is
difficult to evaluate at first. Don’t skip ahead; be patient, the opportunity will always present itself
at some point.
Be one person, for one brand: contact with influencers should be made by one person from the
PR team. Bloggers, journalists and users of social networks expect to be contacted by people and
not by a business with exclusively commercial interests. Sure, with the right budget you can get
the attention of some influencers. But the objective of this guide is the creation of a long term
relationship rather than a temporary collaboration.
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4TH STEP: ATTRACT THE ATTENTION OF INFLUENCERS TO BOOST YOUR VISIBILITY
A fundamental rule for attracting the attention of influencers is to get their interest. For a brand
spreading an overly commercial message, it’s very likely that the only way to get visibility via
influencers will be through a relationship of an economic nature, with those who “monetize”
their influence. Though this approach can be completely respectful, and sometimes even
recommendable in certain marketing cases, it doesn’t work for building the reputation of the
company in the long term and it won’t let you create a real community of ambassadors for your
brand.
The first step to attract your influencers’ attention is to make use of the content created by
the brand, widely known as “brand content”. The range of possibilities and variation of this
content is extremely broad. Here are a few examples:
• Industry articles and videos: give greater value to your content by writing on precise
data related to your industry, which will make your company stand out and help you build
relationships with independent bloggers who don’t necessarily have this information.
• Studies and white papers: If you have the opportunity to compile several points of view on a
given subject and to present it in a visually attractive way in a white paper or infographic, you
may find yourself with a way to distinguish yourself. One example comes from Parsons, the
American design school. The school realized a study on women’s expression through fashion
and presented it in an attractive way with this infographic.
• Questionnaires: these give you a fun way to interact with your targets and obtain extremely
valuableinformationforyourmarketingteams.Takealook,forexample,at ourquestionnaires,
which let our representatives evaluate the management of their Public Relations.
In this webinar, what PR professionals should know about SEO, you can discover in greater detail
thestrategiesthatwillletyoucreateyourcontentstrategystepbystep, toboostyourvisibility
in search engines and, as a result, improve your chances of being discovered by your influencers.
Holding events organized by the company is another interesting form of content, as long as they
have valuable material to offer the audience and are correctly publicized in online and offline
media.
• Product launch events: the secret to success for these types of events is to go for a more fun,
instructive approach, rather than a purely commercial approach. Involve your influencers in
the event, bring them together, and make sure they understand how your product can be
used. Red Bull has done this during the launch of BPM, its app for DJs. The brand chose to
organize sessions with famous DJs from around the world, where participants could try out
the app to hear what it sounded like.
• Industry events: organize activities in collaboration with other notable figures in your sector,
or invite influencers to participate and give their take. Your event will gain credibility with the
support of these experts. You can also attend events likely to attract the attention of your
influencers that offer content likely to get their attention (white pages, product tests, etc.)
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• Product trials: offer your influencers the possibility of exclusive trials of your products: new
versions, new designs, updates, etc. The idea is not to offer everything for free, but to reserve
it for a few moments of exclusivity to create a feeling of closeness with the brand. This type of
test also gives you the possibility to get feedback for your product, to generate a conversation
with your influencers and invite them (why not?) to participate in the creation of your content.
• Breakfasts and informal events: the simplest recipes are often the best. By inviting one
(or several) bloggers to your company to see where you work, have breakfast, hear about
your production process, meet your employees and even have a look at your next project
before others get a chance are initiatives that can really make an impression. Be transparent
and authentic, don’t hide (hardly) anything and, once again, avoid an overly commercial
approach. The goal of these interviews isn’t to “sell” your products or information.
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5TH STEP: COLLABORATE WITH INFLUENCERS TO BUILD CREDIBILITY
Now it’s time to move on to the next phase of our influencer marketing plan: create an influencer
community.
This step lets you continue to refine your influencer pool a bit more; some of the people selected
previously won’t have the same level of interest about our brand.
Here are a few indicators to know if you’ve reached this step:
1. Active influencer participation in events organized by your company, and thus positive
returns.
2. More mentions of your brand in the blogs and social networks thanks to actions put into
place.
3. Interest of new influencers in participating in your events or content creation.
If up until now our objective has been to attract the attention of Influencers, the objective of this
step is to collaborate with them. Content is still the main tool for raising the credibility of our
brand with influencers, but here we prioritize the element of co-creation. This means bringing
together the expertise of bloggers, members of the networks within our industry and within the
company, to offer high quality content to our clients, users and communities.
Co-creation of content with influencers:
1. Create a defined editorial style: create content that has a uniform editorial style and
concentrate on what interests your business and your users. Don’t hesitate to make
modifications to your content if it doesn’t fit with your editorial style.
2. Facilitate influencer participation: for example, you can send a document to fill out that
they can use to give you their responses.
3. Associate your content with the influencer’s Google+ profile and other social network
profiles. That way you’ll have greater visibility on search engines.
4. Validate all modifications made to your content with the influencer you’ve collaborated
with.
5. Use every channel of social connection to distribute your content, and mention the
participation of the influencer in your social network messages.
6. Keep the influencer from publishing the content, so that the influencer can share the same
content on his social networks.
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7. Organize meetings: while conducting a study, for instance, hold meetings to determine
together the reach of the study, the sources used, the display format and the distribution.
Sometimes, a study made with other bloggers can serve as a reference and be presented
during an event where influencers participate.
Hold a company event
Another technique to build the credibility of your business is to organize an event (keeping in
mind the advice we’ve looked at in the “attracting attention” section) where the influencer will be
the moderator or featured guest.
• Do a cross-check of influencers and events linked to your sector, to find influencers and
events online with the same objective that might be interesting for your own event.
• Ask about any similar events the influencer may have participated in. There are plenty of
people who write well but are terrible speakers. Here’s a trick: check the influencer’s profile
to find out his last presentations and give you an idea about his capability as a speaker.
• Prepare a budget for the influencer to make an appearance.
• Hold preliminary meetings to define the objective of the influencer’s presentation and to be
sure everyone is on the same wavelength.
• Promote the event and the participation of the influencers
• If the format of the event allows for it, stream the event live online so that it will have greater
visibility.
• Measure the coverage before, during and after the event.
Encourage community participation
Influencers can encourage participation within your online communities, whether on blogs, your
Facebook page or your own site, by recommending the services of the products you sell.
A good example of the way a brand can appeal to influencers to encourage participation and
generate online discussions is the launch of the Citroën C4 Picasso. Before the launch, the
communications team, directed by Floriane Brisabois, had brought together 30 bloggers in
Cascais, Portugal, so that they could test the new car. The brand put this video online to spread
the word and be part of blogger feedback while the car was being tested:
But this action wasn’t just limited to the movement and feedback of bloggers during the test. The
company also created a website to collect all coverage related to this event, http://technospace.
citroen.fr/. The site hosts all articles published by the bloggers about this car, as well as a page
that picks up publications made by anyone using the hash tag connected with the release,
#technospace.
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6TH STEP: IMPROVE THE REPUTATION OF THE BRAND USING THE RECOMMENDATIONS OF
THE INFLUENCERS
The goal of this last step is for our brands and products to be recommended spontaneously by
influencers. There are four types of influencers to keep in mind for this last step:
• Connected: The influencers who are related to your brand. When you run a search on the
name of your brand in Augure Influencers, these are the influencers who come up first.
• Prescribers: Influencers who make recommendations freely about your brand.
• Users: Influencers who are frequent users of your products and services.
• Sympathizers: Influencers who identify easily with the objectives of your company: similar
profiles, similar interests.
At this point, the relationship with the influencers is much closer, much more personal.
• Close: familiarity with the influencer is more than just a file and database; you need to know
their interests, needs and the best way to get in touch with the influencer.
• Personal: the relationship isn’t just online, but in person too (regular meetings).
It’simportanttonotethattheobjectiveofthebusinessisn’ttorunacampaignoranyspontaneous
action; it’s to develop a relationship in the long term.
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Ambassadors of the brand
To get recommendations from influencers, you also need to put in place a brand ambassador
program that encourages participation and also rewards it. This kind of program should be
organized around the following guidelines:
• Choose the ambassadors of your brand carefully. Someone who’s very popular on social
networks, with a certain level of followers on Twitter and blog visits, isn’t necessarily the best
representative of your brand. At this stage, you need to choose someone who really knows
your products. And yes, if your ambassadors aren’t really interested in your products, how
are you going to get them to get other people to be interested and excited? To sum it up, it’s
better to have less ambassadors who are really passionate, than more ambassadors with a
limited interest in your products.
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• The best way to recruit ambassadors is simply to ask. In the monitoring phase, it’s
essential to find people who have the essential characteristic of a good ambassador:
passion. Sometimes we have reservations about contacting people on social networks, but
if you’ve identified someone who is really passionate about your brand, don’t hesitate to get
in touch and ask if he’s interested in a role as ambassador. Offer to let him participate in your
events, to create content and to visit your offices. It’s the best way to turn an influencer into a
true ambassador.
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• Once you’ve assembled your ambassadors, don’t hesitate to show them your gratitude,
whether by financial means or with material elements, such as membership in a small group
of users who can test your products before everyone else.
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• You also need to reward the “technological activity” of your brand’s ambassadors by
offering them greater visibility through your channels. Social networks are an immediate
means of communication and having an ambassador who can use social networks to
communicate about your brand is an essential factor for building visibility. Some of the
actions you can take to reward the loyalty of your ambassadors are giving them interviews
on your blog or responses to their posts on Twitter.
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• Think of influencers as members of your team. Let them participate in your product tests
and launches and ask for their opinions in your next campaigns, etc. This will strengthen
the relationship between the ambassador and your brand and allow them to be up to date
on the activities of your company, which is essential in making them “good” ambassadors.
When you define your PR strategy you have to think in terms of “us” (the ambassadors and
their brand) and not them.
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• Keep your ambassadors in mind while planning actions for your marketing strategy.
An influencer attracts many followers online, and many of those are opinion leaders.
Using influencers as a voice and a leader for your events can be the key to success, which
will also strengthen relationships for future actions. Don’t forget that when we talk about
brand ambassadors, we’re talking about influencers who are already closely linked to your
business; they trust it and are ready to associate themselves with your actions.
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Case study: the Content Marketing Institute’s
Influencers strategy
Tell me, What Content Marketing Institute is?
Content Marketing Institute (CMI) is the leading global content marketing education and training
organization; our mission is to advance the practice of content marketing. CMI teaches enterprise
brands how to attract and retain customers through compelling, multi-channel storytelling. CMI’s
Content Marketing World, the largest content marketing-focused event, is held every September,
and Content Marketing World Sydney, every March. CMI also produces the quarterly magazine
Chief Content Officer, and provides strategic consulting and content marketing research for some
of the best-known brands in the world. CMI is a 2012 and 2013 Inc. 500 company.
The key question: Are Influencers
necessaries for content marketing
strategies? Why?
For us, influencers have helped on several
fronts:
• They are the people who contribute
to our daily educational blog as well
as to Chief Content Officer.
• They speak at Content Marketing
World and other CMI events.
• They provide interviews for us and
participate in things such as our video
roundtable (eg): “How and When to
focus your efforts”
• They help spread the word about CMI.
Chapter 3
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Do influencers strategies spend much time? When did you say: “Right, it is working!”?
Building relationships in a genuine and useful way takes a lot of time, but the benefits are huge.
Joe is truly one of the most generous people in terms of sharing his time and knowledge. As
Joe also mentions in his post above, even once those relationships are established, it takes
a substantial time to edit the editorial that comes and in and continually follow up with our
relationships.
Joe Pulizzi tells how you developed your own Influencers strategy on this post:
http://www.copyblogger.com/influencer-plan/ Was this the key to your success?
“CMI started to see positive traffic
patterns almost immediately simply
because of the amount of social
sharing from the network “
Joe Pulizzi, founder of Content Marketing Institute,
Copyblogger.com
Absolutely. CMI was built on building
and leveraging influencer relationships.
What’s the profile of the influencer you
work with or are you interested in?
As Joe mentions in the post above, we define
an influencer as a blogger, competitor, or
media organization that was creating content
of interest to our target audience.
Have you ever organized events
with your influencers? How
did they contribute to your
communication?
Content Marketing World has
featured approximately 120
speakers since its inception, many
of whom are influencers.
We offered suggestion to
speakers on how they could
spread the word about Content
Marketing World. We also
provided customized discounts
codes that they could share with
their communities. “While the numbers don’t have to be exact, it’s
the philosophy that makes this work. When you
share influencer content, they notice. And you
share, without asking for anything in return …
so that when you do need something someday,
the influencers are more likely to say yes. “
Joe Pulizzi, founder of Content Marketing Institute, Copyblogger.com
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What is the first benefit of working with Influencers that are supporting your brand?
The benefits of working with influencers are many, and what you want to get from your
influencers will vary depending on your strategy. For CMI, one of our initial benefits was putting
together our list of the Top 42 Content Marketing Blogs. Not only were the influencers needed as
a source of content, but they were essential in sharing the list.
What’s your advice for a company that wants to start an Influencer strategy?
You need to identify both your core target audience as well as your mission statement. Then,
look for influencers who “live” in the intersection of these to areas: Are they influential to your core
audience and do they support your mission?
“The CMI blog platform has enabled
us to launch the largest content
marketing event in the world, a
magazine, two webinars per month,
and every other revenue-generating
activity we have“
Joe Pulizzi, founder of Content Marketing Institute,
Copyblogger.com
I think this makes a lot of sense as you want people who share information with your specific
audience. If you want to be more granular, I would also make sure the influencers are also
supporting your company’s mission.
For instance, at CMI, we have many audiences,
but our sweet spot is brand marketers at
enterprise companies. Our mission is to advance
the practice of content marketing. Therefore, our
ideal influencers are those who are relevant to
an enterprise audience who want to help them
advance the practice of content marketing.
For Augure, the Influencers are defined
based on three elements: Eco (propagation
level), share of voice (level of participation)
and exposure (potential audience) and
everything related with a topic. What do you
think about this definition?
WWW.AUGURE.COM

www. augure.com | mail. info@augure.com | Tel. +33 (0)1 70 98 24 00
IDENTIFY INFLUENCERS ON YOUR
KEY TOPICS
RANK INFLUENCERS REGARDING
THEIR RELEVANCY
BE WELL PREPARED FOR YOUR
INITIAL CONTACT WITH YOUR
INFLUENCERS
Make a simple search to access an
influencers list (journalists, bloggers,
internet users…) about subjects that
matter.
Do not only trust the number of followers.
Access an influencers ranking according to
their relevancy and their influence about
your topic. Our ranking is based on the 3
following criteria:
Exposure: potential audience.
Echo: ability to create awareness and
be relayed on your subjects.
Share of voice: level of participation/
interaction within their community.
Access all their information contacts
(email, social accounts), discover their
collaborations and visualize all their
publications in order to prepare your
pitch for the better.
Saving time searching online
information.
A relevant and unique contextual
ranking system on the market.
An improvement of the
relationships with influencers
thanks to a one to one approach.
If you are fed up with …
You are reading the right document !
… spending hours on Google, Twitter or
Klout looking for “influencers” who are
not really related to your topics.
… launching products or events that are
total flops because you did not invite the
right persons.
… sending tons of message in case of
crisis trying to smother the fire.
01 0302
INFLUENCERS

www.augure.com
www.augure.com/blog
@AugureRepMgmt

How Do You Develop An Influencers Strategy To Attract And Engage Your Key Influencers?

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