Are you building relationships or just sucking up to influencers?

Are you building relationships or just sucking up to influencers? Influencer marketing, has become a very hot topic and if you think about it, it’s not very difficult to understand why. Just on Instagram alone when you have over 400 million active users, it is by far one of the top visual marketing platforms and social media today.

Audiences or Influencers

Just because a person has a large following on many social media platforms or even a bunch of blog followers, that  doesn’t exactly make them an influential person. The audience might be there, but do they have the skills to build relationships? Whether it’s influencer marketing with traditional sales, that personal touch will always make a difference.

One of the most annoying things that a marketer could possibly do during their daily social media regimen is just constantly post, post, post about themselves and their business and fail to develop the utmost important skills on mastering how to build relationships with people that could possibly come back tenfold to assist in their ROI marketing efforts. And this isn’t because you want to suck up to them, no it’s being honest, appreciative, thankful and having the gratitude to say, hey thanks for being a real friend here- in a very… sometimes cold social media world.

One of the things that really blows my mind is especially in places like Twitter unless you mention somebody sometimes, it amazes me who your real friends are, and that will remember you and mention you even if you are busy and just didn’t get to it. It is an honor when an influencer marketer, follows you. However, to what value is it if they never interact with you? Not too long ago, I asked a very well-known marketer out there who wanted to connect with me across all platforms and THEN when he got to one particular platform, I asked the question to him – “Can I ask you why you want to connect with me here? We’ve connected on six platforms and I never hear from you, however, I have contacted you on many occasions, yet fail to hear back from you.”

Take a wild guess on the response that I got? You got it the big goose egg. You’re in a business building relationships, building trust- posting grade articles alone is not going to do it, even if you think it provides great value. Your audience is going to sense that. A true fellow Marketer would appreciate the relationship. Was I out of line asking that question? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

What some influencer marketers (some of them),  fail to realize is that you might agree on having a nice collaborative relationship and build on something wonderful. The opportunity is there for the taking, if they are willing?  By utilizing both of your strengths you could feed off each other and it could be a win-win situation for the both of you.

Some people out there are brilliant writers and communicators, however, they have no people skills, they might have phenomenal technical expertise, but, getting somebody to become a friend of theirs online seems to be a great challenge.

Your audience is not necessarily going to buy what you do, they will buy WHY you’re doing it!

Regardless of the term influencer marketing or key influencers, it all boils down to the same thing in social media terms. They perhaps are the absolute royalty of the social media world and have great influence in their niche industry, yet some might not be worth your time reaching. So choose wisely. When you do go out there and try to identify and contact some of them, let them know why? They might appreciate knowing your reasons why. A neat  tool to assist you and finding an influencer, is Klout. However, recently I got rid of my Klout account, due to the insipidness that is going on in their office with their never ending software issues, which do not work properly. For more sophistication, yet not a free service, one of the best tools out there available is something called Traackr. This tool will help you identify and begin the engagement process rather quickly.

I want to point out, that there is no guarantee that influencer marketers will necessarily follow you back all the time or even communicate with you. Regardless, if you have retweeted them who made a comment on their blog posts. They do like it when another influencer does that. But if you are not exactly a social media rock star, don’t be too offended if they do not contact you back. To me I think everyone, and I mean everyone should put the ego aside, and just take a moment and say a quick thank you or a quick hello. It doesn’t hurt. If you are going to make a comment on one of their blog posts, perhaps ask a question instead of just saying how wonderful the post is. This may increase your chances for a response. Be authentic, be real, that is key.

Let me ask you this, how did you feel when an expert in your field recommended you on any of their social media profiles or even yet that are a Blog of theirs? Pretty good,right? Influencer marketers should learn a lot from the Winnie the Pooh philosophy. You will definitely find out Who Your Friends Are. In our case it’s online.

In the years that I’ve been involved an online and social media marketing, there there are some people you just want to hug the stuffing out of. You wake up in the morning and you can’t wait to see you what sarcastic humor they said to you and how a recent or past blog article made their day. Is it really that difficult to be human and kind enough to basically acknowledge someone even if they’re not on your Twitter chat? I loved it when you would never hear people for three quarters of a week, and then when one of the chats were coming up they would email you and all the sudden you were your best friend. Hey, I think Janet Jackson said it best in her song, what have you done for me lately, right?

Me personally, I never really cared if someone was super successful marketing online, it doesn’t take much to respond back to somebody on a tweet or a Facebook comment or whatever platform you choose to be on and say a simple “hi”. Yes we all know that we need to be relevant and provide value with the content that we put out there, but one of the things I definitely notice is the lack of attention, that goes way over some markers heads, when it comes to building relationships. They absolutely do not have a clue.

Now there are some of the people out there that have terrific success stories, yet they choose not to follow more than one person. Why? Oh well, that is your prerogative,however, not the best tactic I would say to building a long-term relationship with people.

My advice is take the time to identify and try to make friends with influencer marketers in your niche market. See how they respond to you even when you introduce yourself to them. If they continue to ignore you, move on and go on to somebody else. I don’t think you need to be on stage constantly and be interviewed by Forbes Magazine, to make yourself worthy of being a good reliable contact or friend.

This isn’t necessarily about looking for monetary returns, it’s about sharing your passion, the thoughts and your character values with others that appreciate you and vice versa. Show people some love in return and retweet an article of theirs, or tell them how much you admire them how they made your day. The basic human emotion that we all have as human beings, is the need to feel wanted and loved. Some people would know how to do that if they got hit over the head with a brick.

This leads me to another wonderful person by the name of Susan Gilbert. Susan has been friends with myself for years now, and she has been a wonderful inspiration to many, and just downright a wholesome caring person. Regardless of where or when I contact her on any social media platform, she is always there to say hi and offer a kind comment. How wonderful is that? VERY- I never asked her to do it. She did it out of the kindness of her own heart. Is that difficult to do? I don’t know, for some perhaps, quite.

The bottom line is, if we just put our ego aside and realize that we are all marketers here, and we should be available to help and support one another, it should be to your best interest to do so – time permitting of course. Yes, I know we are all busy at times. But acknowledgement in this industry is crucial for one market to another- period,  it’s how we keep build relationships, it’s how we drive the support home and let people know that we were true influences, and not just a promoter.

This is a win-win situation for everyone, as long as it comes from the heart, and you take the monetary aspect away from it. People will know when your phony and not real, and will pick up on that. I rather have five phenomenal friends, that I could call a true friend instead of 1000 that are just casual acquaintances. Which brings me to another cool friend Neal Schaffer  who is very well known and respected in the field of Social Media. I always enjoy hearing from him, and when I least expect it he retweets my articles out of the kindness of his heart. The beauty of a real friend is priceless, and I am truly blessed to know them and have them be a part of my life.

A solid piece of advice that I may also give you, is perhaps to conduct an interview with somebody that you admire online as an influencer. This may allow you to start building that relationship and reach a greater influence and audience. I love nothing more than making a new friend online. One that I could keep in touch with a few years down the road. It Thrills me to have them as a true friend and to be able to give back some love, and help them promote themselves and build trust in the relationship. Remember, it is all about building relationships.

Linking content back to influencers content in your own promoted content is a fantastic way to begin a dialogue with them. If your content is applicable, and it adds value towards why you are contacting them, then by all means do so. Again,  I cannot stress enough, that it’s always about engaging and building relationships. Your efforts should be spent mostly on engaging with influencers. Stop sucking up to influences. Let them know exactly why you perhaps like their posts or have used this to guide you to take action towards something that you were working on. Hopefully, they will appreciate the compliment.

Yes, let’s respect those who have gotten to Great Heights as an influencer marketer, but never forget that almost like being the fan of a famous rock act, the fans are what has gotten you to where you are. Stay grounded and do not forget where you have come from, when you started to get involved in social media marketing. Don’t neglect others, break the mold for a moment and share some love with your audience.

The beautiful thing about this industry is that it allows you to make friends – if you will… All over the world. I love that so much.

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Enjoy Life & Live the way you’ve always Dreamed of!!!

Create a Great Day,

Carl Ramallo, Success Coach

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