Q: How does a business engage with social media influencers?
A: The first step to leverage social media influencers strategically, for either B2C or B2B, requires knowing which influencers matter to your overall strategy and what you hope to accomplish by engaging with those individuals. There may be a handful of influencers in your space, or hundreds.
Specifically defining who influences your target audiences allows precise use of your limited time and energy. If there are a small number of key voices, go ahead and work to establish relationships with them all.
Otherwise, look to concentrate your effort on building solid relationships with the half dozen that have the most sway with your most lucrative customer segments.
As with any media voice, you want to build a reputation as a firm that adds value to the content these influencers provide their readers.
You can't control what gets written, but you can establish a rapport with the writers. This happens through sincere interest in what the writer/influencer needs to keep being a respected voice on the subjects your target customers put first.
This means before your first attempt to engage the influencer, you need to know both that person's audience and the approach being taken to inform them through social dialogue.
In order to contribute to the conversation, you must first fully understand the conversation — not just the current conversations, but how those interactions evolved.
