Using Key Influencers to Step Up Your Self Promotion Strategy
The Internet has only very recently opened up a new kind of opportunity for creatives and others, that hasn’t really been seen before.
With the web’s ability to link together people who can interact (key word here) in constantly growing online networks, the knowledge, expertise and support of people, along with their pre-established networks has never been more accessible.
Particularly through social media platforms like Facebook or Tagged, it has become possible to get through to ‘key influencers’ that may have been previously inaccessible, especially for creatives in the early stages of their careers.
Key Influencer: This is someone in your industry that has power; Power to lead, have influence, make change, inspire and support other people. This is through value created over the span of their own careers and through the value created by the number and quality of people in their own networks. They don’t have to be people you see on the TV everyday or who you read about in magazines, although these are ideal. These are also people who are active in their niches, industries and networks, are well connected and well respected.
Engagement with these key people and having access to their online networks holds the key to a substantial part of your self-promotional strategy. Any recommendation of you by such a person is very valuable, as is access to their networks, referrals, expertise and support.
Social media, for example, has allowed this engagement through the ability to ‘friend’ others, build relationships and become visible to these people, and subsequently their networks too. For example, the friends of people you ‘friend’ on Facebook will be aware of you on their newsfeeds whenever your primary contact interacts with you, joins your group, page, comments on a link, and so on.
Key influencers can be found using search engines, printed magazines, social media sites, popular YouTube videos, writers of popular blogs and online magazines etc.
Find people in your field who are key influencers, link up with them with an appropriate personal message on social media sites or an email that isn’t directly advertising anything and get them into your network.
Some Resources:
Popular People on Twitter
Tweepz / TweepSearch / Twellow / We Follow / Twubble
Popular Blog Searching
Technorati / Blogged / MyBlogLog / BlogCatalog
Popular sites search:
Delicious / Stumble / Digg / Reddit / Furl / Squidoo
Social Media
Twitter People Search / Facebook Advanced Search
Searching through groups and fan pages on Facebook using the standard search tool can yield results on active and popular members.
Comments and further suggestions are very welcome!
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