online influence

Are you influential online?

Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of another”. Napoleon Hill

Lots of businesses ask me “what will my return on investment be on my social media activities?” We always explain that social media is not a sales tool it’s a communication and traffic generating tool that can be used in addition to all of your other advertising and marketing methods.

Instead of return on investment think of social media generating you your return on influence. Influence is where you have authority and credibility and seen as a expert within a particular subject or topic, and people look to you for that information. You therefore influence that community or group or people within that particular subject.

Building your influence online should be one of your initial goals in your social media strategy. The more influence you have online, the more successful your social media activities.

When we first start using social media no one will be familiar with who we are and what we do, and we therefore need to establish a “know, like and trust” factor before people will start to listen and check more about us.

To establish our “know, like and trust” factor we need to provide good quality information, tips and advice and not just spam selling our products.

To find out how much influence we have when we first start online and though out our social media journey, we can use a tool called Klout.com. Klout will give us a score out of 100, will tell us who we influence, who influences us, and if we rank from an observer to networked to specialist! The higher our score the more influence you have with your online community e.g. your twitter followers, Facebook fans, and LinkedIn connections.

The score is generated by the amount of retweets, mentions, likes and comments you have received as it means people are listening and engaging with you.

Your objective is to constantly increase your Klout score. The higher the score, the more influence you have, and if you have a high score you are achieving “celebrity status online”.

If your followers, connections and fans are liking, retweeting and mentioning your twitter name, messages and information, the more viral and popular you are becoming online, and the more your messages and brands are being seen by more people.

One of your main starting goals with social media should be “To build your influence and presence online”. Keep a monthly record of your Klout score to make sure you are continuously growing. If you do decrease have a look at the date of when it dipped and check your social media schedule as to what you posted, commented on or said?, did you engage as much that day or week? This will give you an idea of what people are engaging and not engaging with and how you can take this analysis forward to next month.

Become an expert within your field by increasing your influence online.

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