Want to influence others?

Online Influencer?

Online influencers command massive audiences, however, earning that coveted title can be more difficult than it seems. We think the following strategies, suggested by Christopher Litster, a Small Business Open Forum contributor, can help you learn to increase your online presence.

Build Your Platform

Define your top three business goals. These should reflect where you hope to take your business as well as include the types of customers you’d like to attract. Next, research to discover what makes your business different from competitors. Find out how you can take advantage of that and use it to draw in more customers. Once you’re able to define what your business stands for and how that serves your customer’s needs, you’re ready to build your marketing platform. These communication pathways allow you to reach your audience through their preferred media outlets. Remember, it’s important to tie back to your business goals each time you reach out. This further builds the connection between your business, your platform and your audience.

Define Your Audience

Invest time in discovering who your real customers are. These are the ones who are utilizing your services and products and sharing your news with others. Connecting through authentic common ground will help you build a relationship based upon mutual interests enables you to create content that is more effective. This is what will engage customers and invokes emotions. In many cases this means there will be a need to keep up with the latest news and trends. Thus, you help them see the human side to your business.

Be Consistent

Be consistent. Ongoing engagement is critical to maintaining your online presence. You want your audience to expect, and even look forward to, hearing from you. Next, track where your target audience is most active. Here is where a variety of tracking applications and software can be useful. Sites such as Twitter and managing dashboards like Hootsuite are two examples. Once you know where and when they are active you can direct your efforts there. You don’t need to be everywhere. We encourage you to spend time with this process. It will be worth the effort.

Being an online influencer may be more difficult than it seems. However, concerted effort and willingness to engage with your audience can bring you closer to that desired goal.

Related Information:

5 Strategies to Help You Become an Online Influencer

Lovable Social Media