Social Media Marketing For Dummies®

Chapter 8. Accounting for the Influencers

In This Chapter

• Nurturing the social influencers

• Differentiating between influencers

• Harnessing a customer's social graph

• Discovering best practices for reaching influencers

In Chapter 1, I briefly introduce the social influencers and how they affect purchasing decisions. In this chapter, I discuss social influencers in greater detail and explain why they matter, how you can reach them, and what best practices to deploy in the process of doing so. I focus on the social influencers who reside within the social graphs of your customers and how you can account for them in all your marketing efforts. Some of the concepts in this chapter rightly seem to draw inspiration from influencer marketing, with its roots in the public relations world, whereas other concepts will feel very different.

Knowing the Expert Influencers

How influencers are defined is a controversial subject among marketers. Some marketers' focus on what they consider to be key influencers, whereas others place more emphasis on everyday influencers. Back in the Chapter 1, I introduced the three types of social influencers, which I believe accounts for all the types of influence taking place around a customer. Here's a quick recap of them.

• Referent influencers are in a friend's social graph, but they may not be tightly connected with the user.

• Positional influencers are that inner circle around the user and often have to live with the choices of the purchasing decision.

• Expert influencers ...