Effective Ways to Become a Better Influencer
We often see many influencers on TV, heard them on radio, and read their columns in newspapers, magazines, blogs, or even in social media networks. These people have the capacity to change other people’s views or opinions and can make their followers emulate what they are doing.
Influencers are important people who play huge roles in business marketing as they can impact or affect other people’s behavior. One of the most common examples of an influencer, especially in the SEO world is Matt Cutts, Head of Webspam team in Google.
Are you an Influencer?
After reading the first two paragraphs of this blog post, you may have asked yourself if you have the characteristics of an influencer. How will you know if you are one? How can your polish your ability to become better at influencing people?
According to WOMMA (Word of Mouth Marketing Association), there are 5 types of influencers. They are those people from formal position of authority (Government Officials, Company CEO, Military Commanders), those ones who have expertise or who are managing advocacies (Academics/scientists, Industry Analysts, NGO leaders, Consumer Activists), Media elite (Journalists, Commentators, Talk show hosts), Cultural elite (Celebrities, Designers, Artists, Musicians), and those ones you are socially connected to (Neighborhood leaders, Members of Community Groups, Online Networkers, Business Networkers, Bloggers, and the like).
If you fall in one of the types of influencers above, you may want to know howyou become an influential person. The following are basic signs that you are an influencer.
- Your friends and colleagues always ask for your advice every time they encounter problems or if they are having difficulty in making a decision.
- Your boss or the HR head in your company often ask you for new applicant referrals. They believe you can recommend good people to work in the company.
- You are asked by PR Companies to publish their press releases (if you are a blogger).
- You are flexible at work that you can do almost anything your boss asks you to do. You can multi-task and you can easily adapt to new changes.
- You can easily build long lasting relationships with your peers, colleagues, and even people from your acquaintance circle.
- You have a high Klout score. If you are a social media influencer, go to www.klout.com and determine your Klout score. If you have a very high Klout score, that means that you have considerable influence in the social media sphere.
Effective Ways to Become Better at Influencing People
In online marketing, especially in Social Media, the ability to influence people is one very important factor to gain more followers and website traffic. If you are already aware that you can influence people, you need to learn the effective ways to improve your ability to sway people’s opinions and also encourage them to become good influencers themselves.
The following are effective ways to become a better influencer.
1. Help and give without expecting anything in return – This may sound ironic, but this is one of the most effective ways if you wanted to become more influential in your field or organization. Though you literally don’t expect anything in return in whatever things you do, the law of nature always put a balance in all the things around us. The saying, “What you give is what you receive”, is a concrete example of this situation. On the other hand, in online marketing (business ventures), this kind of strategy is implemented with a “twist” wherein motives and goals are impossible to set aside.
2. Don’t be afraid to innovate – Innovation is the mother of all invention and those who are not afraid to innovate are effective influencers. Just take for example Lady Gaga. Her kind of music is not something new to us, but the way she innovatesit captures our attention and propels her to the top of the music industry. Her out-of-this-world fashion and music transform her from a struggling New York artist to a World Super Star, idolized by music lovers all over the globe.
3. Always lend a listening ear – Learn to listen more to what people say. Listening is a vital communication skill necessary to improve your influential ability. Lending your precious time to others by listening to their woes is a way of showing respect to them and it would give them an impression that you truly care about them.
4. Always initiate harmonious team work collaboration – An effective influencer is a good leader who knows that a group effort is five times better than an individual’s. A team’s effort can yield better results than a single person’s dedication. As an influencer, you should initiate team collaboration by maintaining harmonious relationship to each of your team members.
5. Improve your interpersonal relationship skills – This is definitely a basic foundation of being an influencer. If you wanted to influence more people, you should improve your interpersonal skills and learn how to deal appropriately with various types of personality.
6. Maintain a high standard principle – Authority and credibility are just two of the most important factors that affect your reputation and effectiveness as an influencer. Maintaining a high standard principle and taking a firm stand with your belief,is an effective way to gain more credibility, thus helping you become a better influencer.
7. Follow your most loyal followers– This is more appropriate if you are a social media influencer. Follow your loyal followers most especially if they are also influencers in their field. Influencing the influencers in the online marketing world is more preferable as this can result to higher network reach, more increase in referral traffic, and better social signals.
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Photo Credit:
Marionette puppet show for kids in Asbury Park, NJ under Creative Common License from Wikimedia.org by Jackie.
