Social media is prevailing as the biggest factor behind the individual and business’s success. When used with a defined strategy and understanding of the different platforms under its umbrella, social media gives way to the biggest stars and celebrities on internet in no time. People love to go on internet and connect with people who share same interests and passions as them. Sharing content and exchanging information is the easiest way to build a social media community of people sharing common aspirations.

The important thing to notice here is that you cannot just login on your profile on social media and expect people to read and share the content every time you post it. For that, you need an audience that trusts you and wants to listen to you, and you cannot have a following without recognition and s status among your community.

While building a profile on social media with an aim to be an influencer, you must have the motivation and ability to influence people, but apart from that, some very important steps need to be followed, if you genuinely want to make an impact.

Find your mojo and start a blog:

You will hardly find a fellow influencer on social media who likes to talk about anything or everything. The reason behind that is very simple… i.e. when you are willing to talk about varied and differentiated topics; you lose your credibility for being a specialist on one topic or field. This results in you losing your niche audience, because they are not getting the information they signed up for.

On social media, everyone starts from scratch. Gaining attention of audience and building your network does not happen in a day. You need to be patient and keep looking for the content in your specialty that will resonate. Start by setting up a blog on WordPress or Tumblr and share the content in form of text posts, audiovisuals and graphics. Tumblr is a great way to ensure your presence on social media since most of its users are also part of Twitter and Facebook family. Hence, it can also be used as a merge of blogging and social media presence, serving as an added bonus.

Share content you are interested and specialize in:

Focusing on your specialty area or something you are passionate about gives you confidence to appear as an expert. Always remember that on social media, where every second tons of content is uploaded, it becomes very likely to be buried in it. You cannot influence people unless you have authority and understanding of what you are doing. Once that authority is established, people will come to you and want to listen to you instead of the other way round.

Posting the content that only excesses in quantity is one of biggest mistakes new bloggers make on social media. Focus on quality of the content and the information that matters and then be consistent with it. Keep your blog around the relevant and linked topics so that it looks coherent. For example, if you are interested in social media marketing and feel that you have insights of the topic that you would like to share with your audience, write about topics that are relevant to social media marketing, like “How to devise social media strategy for marketing” or “Basics for starting business on social media”. This not only gives you a very specific and targeted audience but also keeps them interested and wanting more.

Follow and subscribe to the relevant blogs:

Following the blogs that write about the similar topics is a great way to understand the trends in market. It also provides you with advice without asking for it, not that it is wrong to ask. Commenting and sharing your own posts in the comment section of these blogs helps in increasing your online presence. Branding your personal profile properly will also provide you opportunities to connect with people who share the same interests as you. Ask questions from other fellow bloggers and influencers and follow the tips they share, but do not duplicate the content, since it takes away the authenticity of your brand.

Apart from subscribing to other blogs, make sure to share their content on your blog. Keeping tabs of other channels and bloggers helps you in navigating your own channel and plays part in business-to-business interaction. Keep track of case studies and new research published on the same topics that are reliable and worthy of knowledge.

Link building and finding keywords for better SEO is crucial:

Whatever the content you are writing, it should be direct and particular. Remove any extra content, which may give the impression of topic being dragged in a different direction, and add keywords that will help the blog being found easily by people looking for pertinent information. If you want to make an impression in google searches and boost your search rankings, write content that will make you appear in top search results by using search engine optimization (SEO)

A lot of people and businesses write exceptional content but have problem of getting views against them. The biggest reason behind that is making the mistake of writing content that is not search engine optimized. This keeps your blog buried deep down in the google searches, which in turn results in fewer or absolutely no views, and without viewership and readership of your blog, you really cannot become an influencer.

Once you have your keywords laid out for the blog, incorporate them specifically in the headline of blog. Repeat them in the paragraphs but do not overwhelm your content with the key words only. That way, you will lose focus of all the information that needs to be in the blog.

Setup Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram profiles specified for influencing purpose:

Having a blog alone would not help you in becoming a social media influencer, unless you have social media accounts to share the blog on. Twitter LinkedIn and Facebook are the top three and widely used platforms among common individuals as well as influencers. These platforms are mainly favored because of their customization options along with the in app features they offer. You can easily connect them and share links or embed posts based on your own preference.

Instagram is an image and video focused platform only so you will need to convert your text posts in graphics form, or you can opt for audiovisual and videos. Once you start sharing your content across all these social media channels, you will need the analytics to monitor your progress. Analytics are now mostly provided by the platforms themselves, or you always have the option of buying the services of software that will do it for you. The analytics are a great way to understand the dispositions of your audience and finding out which media one is top used among them. This way, you can focus on that one platform and use it as your primary channel for influencing, while keeping other as secondary tools for influencing.

Reply to the comments, follow back your followers: 

Do not just share the content and forget about it. Listening to people and reading their opinions keeps you updated about the current trends and help you decide the content you should write about in next blog post. Always stay active for an hour or two after you have uploaded the new post and reply immediately to any questions your followers post in comment and opinion section. Another way to keep your followers interested is to repost and retweet the additional relevant information they share. This methodology of interaction keeps them interested and encourages them to share and connect with you more, since you are valuing their opinion and inputs.

While answering the queries, make sure that you use the user name of the asker and tag them, so they receive a notification when you post it. It lets your audience know that you do not take them for granted and take their requests seriously.

Pay attention to what people want:

Going through the comment section of blogs and social media posts might be time consuming, but if you are committed to your cause and actually want to make in impact, ignoring comments sections can be one of the worst mistakes in building career as a social media influencer. Comments help you stay focused on the demands of audience so you can be efficient and informed about the wants of people. If you ignore what people want, while keep on posting your own favorite content, you are serving yourself instead of people. Now we know that an influencer’s job is to make people listen to him and persuade them with the information he is posting, but to reach that point, you first have to give priority to people and treat them as your primary driving force behind the content.

Cash on email lists and use them for increasing your influence on a personal level:

The best way to build personal connection and increase engagements on your blog and social media pages email marketing comes in handy. Create a pop for readers once they reach the end of article, so they can subscribe on email for further updates. Email lists provide the option to deliver content that is more targeted and needs to be delivered to selective audience.

Perseverance and strategy are the key to be a social media influencer, but without connections and content, planning does not work. Be well informed on the topic, which you plan to influence people on, and do not forget to check the analytics for your performance.

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