Influencer Marketing 101: Trending within Your Influencer Network

Dear reader,

In today's installment, the Metatag Hag and I will be sharing a little insight on the right way to use hashtags and trends in order to attract more influencers to your net... I mean, network.

Metatag Hag: Just like in biology, our own nets are populated by spiders and flies. If you have juicy flies for sale, the web community will only be happy to hear all about them. You need to develop a little agility in surfing the #juicy #fly #trend wave.

Insight 1. Use hashtags in standalone trends but not in dialogue

When you are talking to an influencer - any kind of influencer, which means everybody - keep the text clean of hashtags unless a particular trend is the subject of your discussion. If he/she is a popular person, you are using their popularity as it is, whether voluntarily or not. Everyone who reads their feed will stumble across your name, so keep in mind everything the Hag and I had told you about presentation, and do not overload your personal message with hashtags. You are talking to a person in the first place... not using them to get more outreach for your own cause. This, however, is a matter of taste, so even if you slip a totally justified # into your conversation, no one will blame you, but in my humble opinion, it is not classy.

Insight 2. Use suggestions to add trendiness to your message

If your social media accounts are connected, which is highly recommended, then you will be hashtagging across your platform, which is good. When you share a thought or a bit of news, do this: type a # before any word you want to make a keyword of, then look at the drop-down menu of suggestions and choose the #trend which is most appropriate for your message.

Metatag Hag: Do not forget to check out the trend if you do not know what it's about. For instance, when you come across a trend like, say, #ThrowbackThursday, there is no point to adding it to your Tweet about the new app or gadget you are reviewing. Or to the selfie you've just taken, for that matter. It is a popular trend started by a NYC museum - every Thursday, they would exhibit an oldie-but-goodie, and the nets picked it up. So if you have a meme with something your top influencer did 20 years ago, just share it:

Note: Kelsey Grammer is not my own top influencer, technically - I am just a fan, but then, there is a major possibility that my own target influencers are his fans, too. Or his colleagues. Or friends. Oops, look out, the Hag is preparing to sing, too!

Metatag Hag: *singing* It's a small world, after all...

Insight 3. Research, research, research!

If you are a regular social media dweller, then you are bound to know what's hot and what's not. Still, if you decided you're all grown up now, stop trawling Buzzfeed and Huffington for cats and epic fails concerning bras and tattoos. Start following "grownup" resources like The Guardian, for instance, and look out for trends that have something to do with you or your influencers. If you want to comment on some trend, first do a little research on things that have already been said about or regarding this particular trend.

Normally, you can learn about a trend by clicking the respective hashtag in someone's Tweet or post. Yet if you still cannot figure it out by reading the first couple of messages, just Google it. Chances are, you will not only find a useful trend to join, but will also learn something new. Like, when I found out what 5SosDERPCon was, I a) was convinced again that I was doing the right thing - researching hashtags and recommending my readers to do the same, and b) found another reason to be happy about having reached adulthood.

Insight 4. Use the trends list

It is probably no news to you that it is not only you who is analyzing social media. They do this, too. For instance, Twitter knows who you are and what you like based on what you Tweet, so it is offering you a list of trends to follow and join. Part of them is totally off the mark, but some are very useful to learn new things and to announce your message in a feed read by so many people only because it is hot. And for other reasons - for instance, when I share my business-related ideas, I use the #leadership hashtag a lot, and it normally causes reactions, because it is followed by - yes, you are right - leaders.

Metatag Hag: Yeah. Every morning, when it is not the Queen of Nerds' but my turn to Tweet, I read the list of trends and think about some snark to say about the buzz of the day. After the Pitch Wars bummer, though, my sarcasm-filled comments leave Anastasia's brain only after some censoring. You want to be polite, but you don't have to be sheepish. Too bland = total "blah".

Insight 5. When appropriate, saturate your message with hashtags

Sometimes, messages are so full of words that may be currently trended, it is a shame to miss an opportunity to hashtag the daylights out of it. Here is an example of my own Tweets of this kind:

#Happiness is the #exercise of vital #powers, along lines of #excellence, in a #life affording them #scope. -#Aristotle #leadership #thought

#I #amwriting a #hashtag #joke on #Twitter instead of #actually #doingitright & editing #chapter 5 of #Caelin #Transarcane #Fantasy #already.

Every hashtag increases your chances to be noticed by more top influencers.

Insight 6. If you come across a clever quote and want to share it, tie it to the hashtags that might be useful to you

See example of Aristotle quote above.

Metatag Hag: It does not mean the quotes must be necessarily highbrow. You don't have to be a Queen of Nerds to rule. Just quote your favorite TV show, if you like... I don't know, quote True Blood, if you a) are a fan b) design book covers. Just don't do it for the sake of showing your affection for VampireTV. Do it to be noticed by Richelle Mead.

Insight 7. Use random hashtags for wider net-casting

For example, when the Guardians of the Galaxy premiered, I made a joke about organic green body paint becoming popular. I hashtagged the word #organic. And what happens next? in a couple of minutes a bunch of "greenies" were Retweeting it left, right, and center. I got some organic follower growth with that little bit of humor, too.

Insight 8. See what your top influencers are trending

Read your top influencers' feeds and see what words they are hashtagging. Use the same hashtags to get into the same feed. It may seem a trifle, but for third-party influencers, seeing your name on the same page with a top influencer's name is creating an association between the two names, sometimes subconscious.

For instance, once, as I was in my Queen of Nerds form, I Tweeted a joke about Babylon-5. I said it would be nice to return to the Green sector and share some ailecococ with Ambassador Delenn. NB: Delenn is a main character of B-5 and belongs to the fictional Minbari race. And in Minbari, ailecococ means both a small fish and the pleasure of meeting someone for the first time. That joke caused quite a reaction in the #Nerdpride community, I tell you.

It was retweeted directly into the outreach zone of J. Michael Straczynski, who does belong in my own network of top influencers... Should I come to a point when I need to contact him, this joke will serve as a great ice breaker, because ailecococ was mentioned only once in a huge series, is not a buzzword, let alone a hashtagged trend, and creators love connoisseurs who know their work by heart. Which is another bit of advice, by the way. You may believe it redundant, but I think that the "know your influencer" adage bears innumerable repetitions, so here it goes. Know your influencer.

Insight 9. When appropriate, fill up your message with trends

If the message per se is short, and you have a character limit in the particular media you are using, do not hesitate to add a bunch of hashtags and trends to fill it up. For example, I have just Tweeted the manifesto of the philosophic movement, to which I attribute myself:

#Rand is #Alpha, not #Omega! #post #objectivism #philosophy #challenge #reality #amreading #amwriting #EDUCATETOMORROW #LiteraryTVIdeas

The actual message was the first four words. The rest are trends. Note that they are all, to a greater or lesser degree, related to the message.

Metatag Hag: Meanwhile, I am having fun with the #RuinAMagazine feed, Google stock images, and Paint:

Bottom line: under the right hashtag, do not deny yourself fun. Demonstrating your sense of humor around influencers is rather a good than a bad thing. But if you also have a haggish alter ego with a liking for black humor, be careful with jokes about serious stuff like religion or cancer. Even if you are in fact deriding, say, stupidity but not these topics per se, do not forget that many people like to jump to conclusions.

Insight 10. Be careful with acronyms and abbreviations!

When you are targeting a particular top influencer, make sure not to confuse him with someone else. For instance, the very J. Michael Straczynski is known in the fandom as JMS, but if you try to hashtag this acronym, you will actually land in the feed of #JMS aka Justin Michaels Sports, which is about American football. Not very good company for sci-fi talk, right?

Metatag Hag: For your benefit, and for the sake of experimentation, I just wrote this:

#Ailecococ is #good for both #diet and #social #life. #babylon5 #queenof #nerdvana #wordplay  #omegapsiphi #omega3 #hashtag #experiment

The hashtagging in this message covers many unrelated fields. In an update, I will share news about its impact. For now, it got favorited by an Australian starter-upper. Well, it's 2 AM here in Montreal, which is the cue for Insight 11. Upd: one more golden star from Nutrition Express - who must be following the Omega-3 trend... and followed by two people from my network.

Insight 11. Watch the watch

If you are Tweeting or posting just for fun at 2 AM, that's fine. But when you are active within your social media platform, make sure to share your ideas when your actual and potential influencers are awake and active, too. There is no use or need to post wise words that just came into your head in the dead of the night when all the influencers in your area are asleep. If you have influencers in other corners of the globe... well, kudos for that. Keep Tweeting at any hour. Yet if they are concentrated in a certain area, keep an eye on that time zone's local time. Just make notes and Tweet or post your precious ideas at a more appropriate hour.

Insight 12. Create your own trends

For instance, I created #MakeAnInfluencerSmile. It's when you joke to or about your idols. Sadly, the "about" part is a bit harder because celebrities with joke-worthy lives usually have celebrity psyches, and that's a special field of discussion and study. And Level 2 influencers, the decision-makers, usually have healthy sense of humor but little time to enjoy it. Also, influencer marketing, influencer relations management, and especially influencer psychology are relatively new fields... so this is an example of the fact that not all hashtags become trends. Yet they are also a tool for expressing sentiment, so

Insight 13. Express sentiments with your hashtags

A mere #sarcasmalert or #joke hashtag can cast a totally different light on things you actually mean to say. Sentiment-expressing hashtags are not only the new black in the world of netiquette, but also a way to network. Say, if your potential influencer checks out the #bigbangtheory trend regularly, and you post a Sheldon-worthy joke under it, there is a chance s/he will like it and you will end up following each other, and sharing stuff, and then... who knows? Maybe s/he is the missing handshake between you and the producer to whom you would like to show your script some day.

Insight 14. Avoid the #influencetheinfluencer trend like the plague!

It is merely my advice, of course - if you feel you have something that requires this hashtag, it's a free planet. But I personally dislike this condescending and manipulative phrase. If someone tried to influence me this way, they would get the opposite effect. I would be influenced, but in a negative way... and I'd write them off completely.

Metatag Hag: And I'd dish out some snark about the subj, too.

Insight 15. Ask questions with your hashtags

Many top influencers are also knowledge sharers, and regularly feature on Twitter under the #ask hashtags. For instance, mentors in PitchWars, the initiative I described in previous chapters, answer questions of their mentees and other participants in the #askmentor feed. Literary agents follow the #askagent trend. Just research the #ask trends in your respective industry - and benefit both from precious insight and from the possibility to attract the attention of a potential node in your influencer network.


Insight 16. Beware hashtag fails!

Many of the situations described above can create or become the cause of a fail. In the situation where everyone is an influencer, you cannot count on things blowing over fast... of course, in such situation you can only count on being forgotten rather than considered not smart, but if your influencers are people with good memories, you'll need more reputational damage control than you can imagine... or afford.

Read about high-profile hashtag fails here. You don't want to be featured in this kind of list, do you?

Here's a classic that made the Hag chuckle for an entire minute, which is pretty much a record:

Courtesy of blog.proximate.com

Well, I hope you enjoyed the insight. Next, we will be discussing your homework you have to do to analyze your influencers, some simple ratios you can apply, and the many conclusions you can draw from just a little research.

Thank you!

Sincerely yours,
Anastasia Stratu and Metatag Hag

Influencer Marketing 101. Operate Your Influencer Network. Rules 4-5

Rule 4. In time, invest in a good influencer relations management software suite

For now, after I've done preliminary research before actually trying software products, my personal favorite in terms of influencer relationship management is Traackr. It focuses on nurturing relationships rather than capitalizing on them. All in all, a business tool with a human face. I will dedicate a separate IM 101 chapter to its features, but in terms of impact-measuring tools, let me just say this: Traackr measures reach, relevance, and resonance.

Metatag Hag: Next week, I will get a demo and do a test drive of Traackr's platform. Then, we will discuss it in more detail, but for now, from what I have gotten from their guides and manuals, theirs is a very thorough yet user-friendly approach to influencer relations management. For now, though, if you want to do your homework, follow the link above and download Traackr's free guides and ebooks. To rephrase a well-known school song, there's a lot of interesting stuff worthy of filling your head.


For instance, here is a quote from their Guide to Influencer Marketing:

In this highly social web, information travels like waves. These waves are created by people who generate content and build followings. A subset of these people create stronger waves than others. These wavemakers drive their audiences to believe, buy and care. So, what makes someone a wavemaker? Influence. 

Of course, the analogy seems accurate, but we always have to be careful with analogies. As you know, many things create many different waves. It can be a small stone (but, say, dropped from a high altitude), or it can be a tsunami reaching across oceans.

One should always have different approaches to things different in their nature. That is why my focus is mostly on influencer psychology - we have to understand how small stones work and what kind of butterfly wing's flutter it takes to stir a hurricane.

Re: influencer relations management software suites. There is also Onalytica, but it's way too serious for an individual - it's all about math and stats, brand awareness, sales conversions... it's worth spending money on it if you have a start-up or if you want to revamp your small business.

I'm telling you about all these corporate solutions also to point your attention to the fact that they offer lots of free ebooks and white papers, which is pure informational gold delivered to you on a platter. They also have blogs worth reading.

Metatag Hag: Yeah. You can start reading without wasting time on pawing through huge amounts of information online, 90% of which can be interesting but irrelevant or downright wrong. Or too complicated, but you have me and Anastasia to bring it to you simply.

Rule 5. Watch your presentation

Let us reiterate that the individual approach and the corporate approach have tangencies but are not the same thing. Corporations depend on buyer's decision a lot. You, as a young talent looking to be "adopted" by a corp, must also "sell yourself". But seeing as you're selling your current results AND, to a great extent, your potential/your future ability to create more product with high purchasing power, you must focus more on presenting yourself correctly rather than on pushing your "homemade" product at each and every corner. From the consumer's point of view, people prefer to consume something endorsed by a big name and loyal followers.

Metatag Hag: Of course, you can take a leaf out of Hugh Howie's book and become "the poster boy/girl" of your own niche or go indie, no one is stopping you. But trust me, now that you are still alone, you cannot build a brand. First of all, you need a team for that. Unless you are a web designer, but then, if you are one, you've probably found your niche. And if you are an aspiring songwriter to boot, you probably built your own site. But even if you're King Versatile, you as an individual cannot replace a team, even if you have a small niche brand in mind. 

But if you built a team of enthusiasts who are also the specialists you need, well, kudos and good luck! We'll write Project Management for Rookies for you next.

Be careful to present yourself well to top influencers and on building relationships with various influencers function of their psychology. Trust me, agents and headhunters keep their eyes peeled for hens who can lay golden eggs, so focus on:

- honing your skills,
- enhancing your potential,
- learning from peers and stars,
- improving your demo product,
- and presenting all this in the right light to your network of influencers.

As I said before, review and rethink what you said from time to time, and if you feel it was inappropriate or plain stupid, go back and delete it.

Among other things, focus on posting top quality content on your blog. If you cannot come up with something really interesting every day, post some of your old texts that seem good, quote some classics that have a tangency to what you do. Just keep it buzzing.

Metatag Hag: As for your Twitter account, keep in mind that you never know who may see what you chirrup about. And it's not so difficult to shine on Twitter where
- 80% is advertising;
- 10% are quoted platitudes and banalities no one really cares for, although they're all supposed to make you "learn";
- 9% is other various cr... er, I mean, content;
- 1% are things worth Retweeting and the occasional Keats line.

To be continued...

Thank you!

Anastasia Stratu and The Metatag Hag

Influencer Marketing 101 - Operate Your Influencer Network. Rule 2

Dear reader,

Today, we continue discussing your influencer network, namely, the social media platforms.

Rule 2. Optimize the social media platforms inside your influencer network

As you will grow as an influencer and a public persona, your presence on the social media arena will grow to a hundred social media networks. You will be able to afford a proprietary social media management platform and your own social media coordinator. But while you're still working on building your presence - and on honing your talent, which, if I may add, should take the lion's share of your time - just link your existing four or five accounts together. It will work just fine. You'll only need to hang out in one of them.

For instance, my own Twitter and Facebook accounts are only closed when I write. For the rest of my waking hours, they're on the background of my life, and every time something interesting, witty, or simply worth sharing comes to my mind, I'm there chirruping about it. I'm not much of a photographer - word is my sword. I add the occasional photo or infographic to illustrate my point, but I use free stock images - always mentioning the author, of course. I don't waste my time creating content that is not my specialization.

Metatag Hag: And one more time for the cheap seats in the back! I know it's an old adage, but Tweeting about what you ate and who you met is a) old b) ineffective. People don't care - unless you're Beyoncé. In a later installment of the IM 101, we will talk about types of top influencer psychology, including celebrities whose flow of mundane happenings is treated like gold by their fans, but we're not there yet.

And I can't say it often enough: be relevant to your own positioning. If you're a musician, 90% of your talk should be related to the industry and what you can do for it - in line with the respective trends and accompanied by the relevant hashtags. Etc. Leave the rest for your personal accounts - if, after reading three chapters of IM 101, you still think you have time for those!

Also, if you have an Instagram or Pinterest account, and something curious gets into your field of vision, click on! Just don't do cats/flowers/food/your own beautiful body parts - the nets are so full of it, it's almost bad form. Filter everything you photograph through these four filters:

- interesting;
- unusual;
- funny;
- worth sharing.

Of course, in my book, there is an exception to every rule, including personal comments and observations. If you insist on informing the world that you're going to eat lunch or go for a walk, a) make it funny or witty b) connect it to a trend, a current affair, and a hashtag, and do it smartly, not just for the sake of hashtagging a bunch of random words.

For example, once I saw someone Tweeting about drinking their morning coffee, and I responded with a little interjection poem - on a personal note, yes, I love writing interjection poetry:

A Friday of an Office Shrimp (this is my euphemism for "office rat" because I find the word "rat" offensive)

Yawn-vrumm-gulp-gulp!
Click-click-click!
Click-click-click!
Nom-nom!
Click-click!
Vrumm-yikes-vrumm-vrumm!
Yee-ha-ya-hoo! Umtz-umtz-umtz! Clink!
Ooph-ooph!
Ooph-ooph!
Yea!
Zzzz....

The person did not react, but other people did, so I made it one of my staples. I add the #poetry hashtags, and post it from time to time - with variations, of course... I try never to repeat myself. I even changed the poem for this chapter, although I'm sure you never heard it.

Sometimes people react, even if it's just a smile, sometimes it's just a Tweet in the Wilderness. My advice is to do the same - make people smile, no matter what medium you use to dress up your ideas. Moreover, make influencers smile. People will associate your name with smiling, and that is a very, very good thing.

Metatag Hag: Even if you think we wandered away from our topic of tools, we didn't. Your wittiness and sense of humor must shine through everything you do. They are your tools as well, even if you photograph cats or write a blog about blue orchids.


Incidentally, HootSuite is good for saving templates, that is, old but good messages you may want to recycle some day. I personally rely on my memory, and social media accounts normally contain archives of whatever you say or post. As for memory, which is also an important tool, you can rely on it only to a certain extent.

Metatag Hag: Right. When the numbers of persons and personalities in your network will reach thousands, trust me, you will have more than enough on your mind, if you're serious about promoting your talent.

If you're present in at least top five, it's enough to build your influencer network. Larger presences are needed in the next phases when your fandom must gain momentum... but that's different.

To be continued...

Thank you!

Anastasia Stratu and The Metatag Hag

Influencer Marketing 101 - Operate Your Influencer Network. Rule 1

Dear reader,

Today, the Metatag Hag and I would like to talk about the tools that will help you operate your influencer network on your way to your a mountain top sitter chair. This will not be a list of analytic apps or a rating of software products - you can find a wide array of those online, well-described and explaining what to do with them. I don't think apps will help you be a one-of-a-kind, highly sought-after product creator. They can only help you optimize your work. When I say tools, I mean the things that will help you get the most out of the influencer network you started building.

By the way, don't think influencer network building is a process limited in time. Once you started, you have to dedicate time and efforts to your old and new influencers all the time. And when you have many, this must be part of your daily routine.

Metatag Hag: For instance, I just Followed a gluten-free network. It has a great follower-to-followee ratio, and who knows? Maybe someday, one of those 12 thousand gluten-shy people will buy this book. God works in mysterious ways, while the ways of social networks can be put to your service.

I will mention a few software products, though, as actual parts of your influencer relations' toolbox.

We will be discussing all sorts of instruments in that toolbox, from personal qualities you need to enhance, to impact measurement tools, presentation and reputation-building, the content you create and distribute as you promote yourself, and  many others.

First and foremost, there is:

Rule 1. The personal approach: do not entrust a machine with something you can do by yourself. For instance, Michael Hyatt, a notable public speaker and leadership expert, recommends this:

"Don’t use an auto-responder. I used to use SocialOomph to thank everyone who followed me and provide a link to my “Beginner’s Guide to Twitter.” I thought I was being courteous and helpful. As it turns out, I was being annoying. This is just more clutter in people’s Twitter inbox. Avoid it."

My point exactly. SocialOomph may be good when you, say, have a quirky greeting you send out every morning. It is also more convenient for auto-scheduling messages than HootSuite, but do you really want to annoy people with the same robotic messages, day after day? I personally use it to do a little one-day-per-week shout-out about my new book or article, every two-three hours, but no more than that.

It's particularly annoying when a certain account spews out a pageful of Tweets - granted, one of them is bound to get your attention, but normally, this automatically makes you want to reach for the "Unfollow" button. Who knows what important Tweet they could bury? I Follow two such spewers, so I know how it feels, and the only reason I don't Unfollow them - please don't laugh - is that both accounts are SEO firms. They also follow me, which is important in my case. So I just sigh and switch windows when I see a spew-out.

Metatag Hag: I also get to read a couple of those spew Tweets, but what's the point? I don't have time to follow links to detailed reasons that make brain tumors more common in men. And if I consumed content for needs other than research, I'd Unfollow everything that annoys me. Just like so many of us do, otherwise we'd drown in seas of information useless to us.

(For those of you who need a bit of explaining on SEO: it's search engine optimization. Plainly put, it's an entire industry dedicated to making your site appear on the 1st page of Google results - and having your ads bring more customers, too). As a friend's friend who works at Media Experts says, "I make those annoying little ads you see on Google."

In a word: don't be a robot. Be spontaneous, be original, modify your signature or staple Tweets/posts. Imagine someone, a top influencer maybe,  who's curious enough to click on your Tweets archive and sees a row of identical messages! There are myriads of such wannabes online, who load their Tweets with "please listen to my songs" or "check out my videos" repeated with the insistence and frequency of a woodpecker torturing a tree.

Don't be Woody. Be Tweety - talkative but demure, and so charming people just stop and stare!

 Always answer with personalized messages even when you receive the standard automated "hi, thanks for following, please like my Facebook page".

Metatag Hag: Right, it can annoy the wits out of you. But hey, you ain't wearing no crown yet, so don't be too proud. Haul butt to the respective page and like it even if it kills you! Then respond with something like "I just liked your page, my name on Facebok is, say, Metatag Hag", if it differs from your Twitter name. Then include the link to your own page. Granted, you'll probably never get your favor returned, but at least you won't look like a pushy door-to-door marketer. Again: you're not hunting followers, you're hunting influencers.

And when you respond in a nice and polite manner, complimenting the other as you go, you won't even have to do the asking - the link is an implied invitation to repeat the nice thing you just did for your fellow influencer. 

That's right - fellow. Never forget you are an influencer, too. And re: "probably never return the favor", my own statistics say that four likes render you one "back-like". 

To be continued...

Thank you!

Anastasia Stratu and The Metatag Hag