How to find and target influencers on Twitter (now X) to increase your audience reach

Why do I need to try influencer marketing?

Word of mouth marketing is by far the most effective marketing. Influencer marketing is the equivalent of word of mouth marketing on the social web. Influencers are trusted by people in certain niches and their recommendation carry heavyweight with your target customers.

We like what Neil Patel says about influencer marketing:

“The true power of Twitter is not to reach your own followers, but to reach the followers of influencers in your market.”

Influencer marketing + X (formerly Twitter) = a perfect match.

X’s realtime micro content core PULLS in audience (vs TV and email, which PUSHES to audience), making it perfect for fast endorsements and sharing.

Will influencer marketing work for me?

Influencer marketing will give you great results if you below to one of the following categories of businesses:

its perfect for you if you have a Product business. Influencer marketing gets your message/content out to your ideal potential customers, who are concentrated in small pockets and often follow a certain group of influencers. Having these industry influencers mention you is essential for brand awareness and can elevate your brand to top of the mindshare list. Oh, there’s also this piece of data from Influitive: “Word of mouth influences 92% of all B2B purchases.”
its perfect for you if you have E-commerce business. Since potential customers can’t see or touch the physical goods, having a trusted source use and vouch for your product can make a big difference. When confronted with multiple choices (as digital shoppers always are nowadays), a recommendation from a credible source can single handedly win the purchase decision in your favour.
its perfect for NGO/non-profit/special interest groups that need to have their cause championed. Tapping a high profile influencer to broadcast your message is a signature move in traditional media (since PETA’s campaigns with celebrities). The only difference of doing it on social media is that and the call to action can be responded even faster

How do I define my segment and find influencers that match with me?

Define your segment VERY specifically, because specificity = win.

Age / Generation specific – generations differ hugely in how they respond to marketing messages. What works for boomers will be shunned by millennials and vice versa.

Persona/worldview specific – people’s worldviews drive their formation of identity, which drives purchases.

Location specific – the more local the better. People ALWAYS weigh the opinions of those that are in the same language/culture sphere as them, since those opinions are more applicable.

How do I find influencers in “New York, US” that are talking about “#Leadgen”?

Use Fedica for X to locate influencers that are talking about the subject of your interest.

First, use the search on Hashtag / Keyword Tracking and run a report on the keyword “Lead Generation”, and this will give you an overview of the conversations surrounding this keyword

Next, after clicking on the Interactive Map, switch to “Analyze by Cities” and zoom into New York. Click on Who Are They

Pro-tip: analyzing your competitors is a short-cut to finding influencers in your niche

What if you already know who is the market leader in your niche? You can potentially save hours of search by just looking at the influencers that are connected with your competitors on X.

Pro-tip: find even more influencers in adjacent markets to your own niche by looking at keywords that come up often with the keyword you are targeting

E.g. if your target keyword is “social media marketing”: Type “social media marketing” into the Fedica keyword search. Zoom in on the conversation in a specific area to narrow your focus.

keywords/niches built from this list: social media, content marketing, SEO, infographic, social selling, digital marketing

Recommended Tools

Topsy: search social media for influencers (Update Jan 2016 is no longer available)

Fedica: search and geo-target X influencers by topics ; analyze influencer handles on X

Buzzsumo: shows social media shares and link for a certain type of content, and find influencers to promote those content