Do you use Twitter for business?
Interested in ways to get more exposure, influence, and credibility?
Getting noticed and building relationships with influencers on Twitter will help you increase your online influence within your industry. With influence comes leverage, which is the foundation to growing the business.
I share the five actionable Twitter strategies I have used to get noticed and have my content shared by a variety of key influencers to help me become No. 12 on the list of Most Influential Digital Marketers on Twitter in 2016.
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1. Feature influencers in a blog post and reach out on Twitter
I tried a whole host of things to get relevant influencers to notice me and share my marketing-industry-related content to their large online audiences. In January, I had a lightbulb moment. I decided to use BuzzSumo to find and curate the most viral marketing content created by the influencers in 2015. I put together a round-up post, 15 Most Viral Marketing Posts From The Pros in 2015.
I then reached out to those influencers on Twitter, letting them know that they had made it into the “most viral marketing posts of 2015” post. I got an awesome response. Three of the influencers I featured shared the post to their audiences of 683,000-plus on Twitter and Facebook. One influencer even wrote about my post.
15 most viral Marketing posts from the Pros in 2015 – KPS Digital Marketing https://t.co/OQNc6nnSD0 via @Dknowlton1 — Jeff Bullas (@jeffbullas) 6 January 2016
Bookmark this! @dknowlton1 shares top marketing posts from @moz @marketingprofs and more. https://t.co/P9dYkb8WDc pic.twitter.com/igdih2UG6F — Content Marketing (@CMIContent) January 9, 2016
Would you like to curate a similar piece of content to get noticed by relevant influencers in your industry on Twitter? Follow these simple steps.
Select targeted influencers to feature. If you know your industry well then you should be able to reel off key influencers. If you need help, you can use a tool called Followerwonk from Moz.
On its site, click the “Search Bios” tab, enter a keyword related to the type of influencer you seek, and click “Do it.”
With those results, click the “Social Authority” tab to review a descending list of the most influential Twitter users around your keyword(s).
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Source the influencers’ most viral content. Now, copy and paste your influencers’ blog URLs into BuzzSumo and click “Search.” Filter the results based on a date range (on the left). You can see their most viral content from the past 24 hours, week, month, six months, or past year.
Create the viral round-up post. This is simple enough. Put together a list-style post, including a link to the most viral piece of content from each influencer, an image, and a short description (see an example from my round-up post below).
Reach out to your featured influencers on Twitter. Let the featured influencers know the post has been published. Sending them a personalized tweet with a link to the post is a great way to grab their attention.
@Rogercparker Hey Roger, your serialization post on @CMIContent made it to number 10 of the list – great work 🙂 https://t.co/76iviZ7orw — Daniel Knowlton (@dknowlton1) January 5, 2016
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2. Send influencers a direct video tweet
Influencers receive a ton of “likes,” retweets, and tweets on Twitter every day — some human, some from bots. To get noticed you really need to think outside the box.To get noticed by influencers on #Twitter, you need to think outside the box says @dknowlton1 #contentmarketing Click To Tweet
I recently executed an outside-the-box engagement strategy with an influencer on Twitter and it worked well. I read an article that I thought was well-written on Social Media Examiner by Aaron Orendorff.
I tweeted Aaron a personalized video letting him know how much I loved his article.
@iconiContent Loved your latest @SMExaminer post pic.twitter.com/mFCoJoPkcX — Daniel Knowlton (@dknowlton1) July 6, 2016
I made Aaron’s day.
@dknowlton1 @SMExaminer Wow … Thx so much! And what a clever way to get noticed. Made my day. 🙂 — Aaron Orendorff (@iconiContent) July 6, 2016
I also went one step further and noticed it was Aaron’s birthday a few days later so I sent him a personalized tweet wishing him a happy birthday.
@iconiContent Happy birthday Aaron pic.twitter.com/BHyhZXkCLb — Daniel Knowlton (@dknowlton1) July 12, 2016
It’s going these extra miles that will help you get noticed by influencers on Twitter. To execute this strategy yourself, follow these simple steps:
Download the Feedly App, use the search bar to add relevant influencers’ RSS feeds, and check it daily.
Pick between one and three articles to read every morning.
Choose the most interesting article and use Twitter search to find the author’s Twitter account.
Send a selfie-style video sharing meaningful comments about the piece of content and thank them for creating it.
Share the piece of content on Twitter and tag the creator.
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3. Send influencers a boomerang
Similar to the second example, sending influencers a personalized boomerang on Twitter is a great way to engage and get noticed.
As TechCrunch explains in the video below, Boomerang is a funky free app made by Instagram that lets you shoot a burst of photos then turns them into a four-second, looping, animated GIF.
I recently sent Kristi Hines a boomerang and somehow managed to make her day too.
@kikolani pic.twitter.com/jk1qtH9fia — Daniel Knowlton (@dknowlton1) January 7, 2016
If you’d like to use Boomerang to create some cool GIFs to engage with influencers online then follow these steps.
Download the Boomerang.
Create a Twitter list of influencers (I show you how to do this in the next example).
View your influencer Twitter list every day and find interesting tweets/content they have shared.
Go to the Boomerang app, create a boomerang (e.g., you putting your thumb up, waving, high-fiving, smiling, etc.), and save it.
Go back to the Twitter list and send the chosen influencers a direct tweet with the boomerang image and add a meaningful comment.
4. Create and engage with an influencer Twitter list
The noisy nature of Twitter makes it difficult to consistently keep up and engage with the right people. One highly effective way to get noticed by influencers on Twitter is to consistently engage with their content (every day is ideal).Engage w/an influencer’s #content every day on #Twitter to stand out from the crowd says @dknowlton1 Click To Tweet
However, this can be time consuming, which is why you will love Twitter lists. They make it super easy and efficient to find and engage in a particular group of Twitter users’ content. Think of it as a customized Twitter feed that removes the noise.
I spend around 10 minutes a day engaging with influencers in my lists and it has helped me build long-lasting relationships with some big influencers.
Follow these steps to set up and engage with your influencer list in Twitter:
Create your list in Twitter. Go to your profile icon (top right), click and pick “lists” from drop-down menu.
Create a list name and description, and decide if you want the list to be public or private. I’d stick to private, as this means people you add to the list will not know you’ve added them. Click “save list.”
Note: Make sure the list name is not too long, as this can stop the list from saving.
Find relevant influencers to add to your list. Use the influencers from your round-up post. If you don’t write a round-up post, follow the same process in Followerwonk to identify target influencers.
Add the influencer to a Twitter list. In Twitter, click the profile of the influencer. Click the settings icon at the top right, click “add or remove from lists,” and add the influencer to the appropriate list.
Engage with your lists. Now this is the easy bit. Every day go to your lists and “like,” retweet, quote retweet, and reply to the content the influencers post. Make sure you add meaningful comments and ask questions — this will help you get noticed.
5. Share influencers’ content and tag them
Tagging influencers on Twitter when you share their content may sound simple, yet so many Twitter users still don’t do it. Tagging an influencer involves using their @ handle within a tweet when you share their content:
This strategy helps you get noticed because every time you tag an influencer on Twitter they receive a notification. If an influencer consistently sees someone supporting their content, the influencer is likely to remember that follower and have a positive opinion of the person.
Conclusion
The main thing to remember when trying to get noticed by influencers on Twitter is to be different and add value consistently. The strategies outlined in this tutorial will give you a head start on achieving this. I’d love to hear any effective strategies you have used to get noticed on Twitter in the comments.
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Please note: All tools included in our blog posts are suggested by authors, not the CMI editorial team. No one post can provide all relevant tools in the space. Feel free to include additional tools in the comments (from your company or ones that you have used).
Looking for more guidance on influencer marketing? Download our complete toolkit, Influencer Marketing: The Latest Strategies, Templates, and Tools, for a simple 8-step process – including templates.
Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
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