• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Social Media Examiner

Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle

  • 🔥 Free Newsletter
  • ⭐ FREE Web3 Course
  • 🗓️ Our Events
    • Social Media Marketing World (Mar 13-15)
    • Other Industry Events
  • 💡 Society
  • ⚙️ Tools
  • 🎙️ Podcasts
    • Social Media Marketing Podcast
    • Social Media Marketing Talk Show
    • Web3 Business Podcast
    • Our YouTube Channel
  • 🎯 Partner With Us
    • Podcast Sponsorship
    • Email Sponsorship
      • Email Newsletter
      • Dedicated Email Blast
    • Event Sponsorship
      • Social Media Marketing World
    • Tools Sponsorship
  • 👋 About Us
    • Our Story
    • Articles
      • Web3
      • Instagram Marketing
      • Facebook Marketing
      • YouTube Marketing
      • LinkedIn Marketing
      • TikTok Marketing
      • Expert Interviews
  • Search
  • Social Media Marketing World10th annual. Biggest industry event. Get the recordings!IMPROVE YOUR MARKETING

    How to Network with Influential People Using Twitter

    by Jason Kosarek / January 23, 2014

    social media how toDo you want to use Twitter to promote your business?

    Are you looking for ways to build relationships that matter on Twitter?

    In this article, you'll discover how to build a strong Twitter community with influencers, which will benefit your business.

    Building Connections With Twitter

    Using Twitter to help your company grow isn't about the number of followers you have.

    It's about building a community of followers who are passionate about your industry and who eventually become passionate about your brand.

    The quickest and easiest way to develop a relevant Twitter community that grows your company is to find connectors and build relationships with them.

    Connectors are called many things: thought leaders, industry experts, etc. They are the people who already have a thriving community and your customer's ear.

    istock-image-find-your-connectors
    You can benefit from forming relationships with connectors on Twitter. Image source: iStockPhoto.

    By building relationships with influencers, you increase the chances of gaining your customer's ear and building your own strong community.

    #1: Find the Influencers in Your Current Network

    The best place to find connectors is in your current community; find influencers who are already following you.

    By using Followerwonk, you can see your current Twitter followers ranked by a Followerwonk statistic known as social authority.

    Followerwonk's social authority is based on the retweet rate of users' last few hundred tweets, the recentness of those tweets and a retweet-based model trained on user profile data. This number is by no means perfect, but retweets are so strongly correlated with a healthy community that they're a great way to identify relationships that you should pursue.

    Even if the person has a great social authority rank, they're not worth reaching out to unless they're involved in your industry. It's not just about having a community—it's about building the right community.

    social-authority-graph
    Find influencers in your network by selecting the higher numbers in the right column.

    #2: Know Your Competitors' Connections

    One of the great things about Twitter is transparency. From @google to @smexaminer, you can see everything everyone is saying. This makes competitive research super-accessible.

    3 Days of World-Class Training—Zero Travel!

    Social Media Marketing World

    Travel to Social Media Marketing World off the table? Get all of the great content at a fraction of the price with an On-Demand ticket.

    That’s full access to recordings of every keynote, workshop, and session—the ones people travel thousands of miles to see. Don't wait. Get your On-Demand ticket and enjoy actionable content that you can watch anytime, anywhere.

    GET YOUR ON-DEMAND TICKET NOW

    Your competitors have networks that likely include influencers who are directly related to your industry. To find these people, follow the same process you followed above, but use each competitor's Twitter handle instead of your own.

    Another tool that can help you find your competitors' useful friends is Open Site Explorer.

    Type in your competitor's URL and go to the Just-Discovered tab to see the recent inbound links your competitors have gotten.

    open-site-explorer
    Here are the recent links to Social Media Examiner. Use the Just-Discovered tab on Open Site Explorer to find the recent inbound links for your competitor's website.

    These are people who find your competitor's content valuable enough to link to. It's worth your time to build a relationship with them so they'll link to your content next time.

    Tools Resource Guide

    Looking for something to make your life easier?

    Discover the tools we recommend to drive engagement, save you time, and boost sales across your entire marketing funnel or business.

    Whether you need help planning content, organizing social posts, or developing your strategy, you’ll find something for every situation.

    FIND YOUR NEXT FAVORITE TOOL

    #3: Search for Influencers in Your Niche

    There are several tools you can use to do this, but Followerwonk allows you to drill down to a niche in your search.

    You can use social authority as your guide here, but it's more important to zero in on the person's focus. People who are directly involved in what your company values will be a better fit for your community.

    For example, a digital strategy company that partners with HubSpot would do better to target an inbound marketing B2B HubSpot user instead of a general marketing user.

    followerwonk-report
    The more focused your search, the better your results.

    To start off, build a list of 15-20 people from these categories who would be great to nurture relationships with—people who aren't only influential, but also align with your company's value and vision. Five of these people should feel a little bit out of your reach and seem larger-than-life in your industry.

    #4: Follow and Interact With People on Twitter

    To build your community, you need to focus on the conversations you have.

    Quick tip: If you reply directly to a person, it will only show up in their feed and the feeds of people who follow you both. If you include your response in a retweet rather than a reply, it'll show up for all of the people who follow both of you.

    Don't be afraid to reach out to people you may not have the courage to connect with in real life. In my experience, people are surprisingly responsive on Twitter.

    Make sure when you do reach out, you bring value. Offer help, your opinion and a kind word. Don't ask for anything, including a follow-back. You're trying to build a relationship and you do this by being a giver.

    #5: Set Up Alerts to Track Where Your Influencers Are Mentioned or Post Online

    This can be done with Google Alerts, Fresh Web Explorer or a number of other tools.

    Use the alerts to find where your industry influencers share their thoughts on the web outside of Twitter.

    google-alerts
    Get an email every time your influencer is mentioned on the web.

    When you find a good article they've written or a place they're mentioned, share it on Twitter to shine the light on them. Again the key is to help them, not you.

    #6: Add Value Outside of Twitter

    Now that you know every time the influencers you follow are mentioned across the web, the number of ways you can promote them, point people toward their relevant resources and maintain relationships with them are wide open to you.

    Share events they're speaking at, books they write and causes they support. Comment on their blogs and help them in all ways possible.

    thank-you-tweet
    Use Twitter to say thank you.

    Each of these actions will help increase the likelihood that your influencers are receptive to your Twitter advances.

    Conclusion

    The goal of these tactics isn't to trick or con anyone into following or helping you. The goal is to build genuine relationships.

    Apply these tactics to your own strategy. As you identify influencers and add value on Twitter, you'll build a community that shows exponential results.

    What do you think? Have you found any great ways to jump-start an effective Twitter community? Please leave your questions and comments in the box below.

    Images from iStockPhoto.

    Get Your FREE Course: Web3 for Beginners

    Web 3 for Beginners

    Curious about Web3, but don't know where to start or who to trust?

    Introducing Web3 for Beginners, a course taught by Michael Stelzner, the founder of Social Media Examiner.

    Learn the basics of Web3 and apply it to your business with this FREE comprehensive course.


    CLICK HERE TO GET FREE ACCESS

    Tags: Twitter

    About the authorJason Kosarek

    Jason Kosarek, Digital Strategist at LyntonWeb, an inbound marketing agency and Gold Level HubSpot Partner focused on helping clients generate leads, thrill customers, and reach goals through inbound marketing programs.
    Other posts by Jason Kosarek »

    Get Social Media Examiner’s Future Articles in Your Inbox!

    Get our latest articles delivered to your email inbox and get the FREE Social Media Marketing Industry Report (39 pages, 50+ charts)!

    Industry Report Cover

    Worth Exploring:

    Facebook

    Marketing Help Explore More →

    Instagram

    Marketing Help Explore More →

    YouTube

    Marketing Help Explore More →

    Linkedin

    Marketing Help Explore More →

    Web3

    Marketing Help Explore More →

    Social Media Marketing Industry Report

    Get Free Report →

    Social Marketing Trends

    The data you've been missing!

    Need a new plan? Discover how marketers plan to change their social activities in the 14th annual Social Media Marketing Industry Report. It reveals what marketers have planned for their social activities, content marketing, and more! Get this free report now and never miss another great article from us. Join more than 400,000 marketers!

    Enter your email to get
    our free report:


    Footer

    Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle
    Copyright © 2023 Social Media Examiner®
    All Rights Reserved. Terms of Use | Privacy Policy.

    Helpful Links

    • About us
    • Our content via email
    • Our podcasts
    • Our YouTube channel
    • Our live show
    • Our industry report
    • Sponsorship opportunities
    • RSS
    • Accessibility