Comments on the first post in this series made me realize that I needed to expand on how to enable your influencers.

The first step I listed was to ‘Identify your Influencers’

  • Who are they?
  • How will you recognize that they promote your product?
  • Why do you want to engage with them?

First off, I don’t think that you can know who your influencers are if you’re not involved & interacting with them. To identify them, you must be an active part of the community. Otherwise, how can you really know the people there? This is the beauty of the role of Community Manager – we’re involved & interacting.

A quick example that’s specific to my work as a Community Manager:

  • In my listening I noticed someone posting beautiful abstract images created using ACDSee effects. The collection kept growing while I watched
  • I contacted the person and asked if they would consider having their work featured on the ACDSee blog & talk about how they created their art from their photos.
  • The response was an absolute agreement.
  • This person is an influencer thru their art & tagging the images with ACDSee

My blog is an abstract example. I have a little community here that’s growing.

How do I know?

  • I’ve been ‘listening’ & know that my blog is on a number of blogrolls by other people’s choice (thank you for that!)
  • My comment to post ratio is 3:1 so people are interacting

But you may ask, what is your product?

  • It’s the information that I share on community management & networking.
  • The resources that I link to
  • People are asking for mentorship – this tells me that they trust my advice

How do I know that they’re promoting my product?

  • Linking to my posts & commenting are good indicators
  • New niches are connecting with me on Twitter & Facebook
    • a contingency of youth ministry people (isn’t that a great obvious profession to use social media?)
    • an artist connected & asked if artists create their art for themselves or their customers/community? What a great thought provoking question!

And speaking of that artist – I’m going to reprint Komra’s comment from my other blog post here. So is that a potential evangelist? It sounds like she’s promoting building community, so I’m glad to have her as a part of mine! She gives me the highest compliment (in my opinion) of having printed my writing.

As an artist with a website ;) I am learning from you how to interact with my audience. From what I see most artists have websites geared toward galleries and shows, they don’t engage in a conversation with their viewers. But to do so is a new way of interacting… so there is much to learn. Thank you for this post. I printed it out! and will be referring to it often.

Now think about who your advocates are? Even as bloggers we have our influencers (frequently referred to as friends). And I’m thankful for all of you!