Influencer – During this time, we are spending a lot of our energy trying to avoid a virus. We wear masks, and we don’t go out much, wash our hands, disinfect ourselves, and everything. But in terms of marketing, it is quite the opposite. We want our content to go viral.
One of the books I’ve listened to recently is Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point. He’s by far one of my favorite authors and a great storyteller. In the book, he tells how things go viral. Viruses usually start small and then begin to gain momentum, but there is a critical point where the virus spreads wildly. And that’s generally through one of three types of people.
In social media, we have something we call influencers, but in his book, he talks about three different types of people and how they spread things. So, an influencer can have one of three flavors: a seller, a connector, or an expert. Today I want to talk about identifying and finding those kinds of influencers to make your content viral. Let’s explore each of these elements.
The Salesperson
The first type of person I want to talk about is the salesman. Influence salespeople through persuasion. They take an idea, and they try to make it sticky. They are trying to make things easy to understand, memorable, and accessible to people, and they try to involve a tribe of people. They try to increase their influence by letting a whole group of people know what they are talking about. They are storytellers, but they are also a master of persuasion. They might borrow something from you and resell it. They have a fantastic ability to get you to buy their concepts no matter what they’re selling or talking about, whether it’s an idea, plan, or product.
When trying to identify a salesperson in your audience, the main things to keep in mind, are they like to tell stories? Do they like that people agree with them? And do they become passionate about concepts and stick with it and keep talking about them over and over again? This is what a salesperson does. They sell things and sell them to influence. Salespeople are life-sized and can help people feel good and keep morale high. If you find a very positive influencer, they are probably a salesperson.
The Connector
The next type of person we’re going to talk about is a connector. They were influencing connectors through other people. They tend to bring people together. They are hubs. People tend to gather around them. People usually know them. It’s just the way they see the world. They see the world through their relationships with others. These are the kind of people who, every time you ask them a question, start flipping through their mental Rolodex to say, “You know, I know somebody who does this.” They are trying to connect you with these people. If you have a problem, they probably know someone who can fix it. And they like to be the kind of person who can give that kind of value to other people. They love to connect people because they are people-centered, and you are people. They love to network. They are people, people. It means they continuously surround themselves with other people they can refer to, which is the last item. They love to relate people to people. If you see someone who knows many people and enjoys building relationships for you, that is a connector.
The Maven
The third type of person is a bit quirky. Mavens influence through information and ideas. These are the people you ask if you need to know anything. And they know a lot about many things. They are mind sponges when it comes to concepts, ideas, products, and services. They tend to like building things, building systems or being the engineer of a process.
It all depends on ideas and information and how to make them useful. They can put complex concepts together and organize them in a way that helps other people. Now, experts love to learn. They focus on educational materials. Then they take it and synthesize it, and they like to share their opinion about it. The other thing about the experts is that they tend to be the first to adopt. They are the people who would buy their first DVD player or try a new concept. And they always know what information to share with others about what is good and what is terrible about everything.
Identify And Deputize
It would help if you started identifying people based on these concepts. If you can find a salesperson, you need to communicate with them in a way that allows them to sell your images. You may want to give them the features and benefits. When you find the connector, you want to understand how what you have to offer, your information helps them connect more people. How can your story help them build the tribe, solve problems, and create a united effort behind a diverse group of people? The mavens are the ones that want to understand the deeper side of concepts and want to be able to explain it to other people to get them to embrace the idea that they believe will benefit their audience.
This means that if you want to go viral, you need to identify people in your social network, in your sphere of influence, who match any of these three traits and try to communicate with them differently. If you can identify the sellers, if you can locate the connectors, if you can identify the experts, you want to share with them differently to communicate with their audience what you want to convey.
Final Thoughts
Ultimately, your concepts should be written and presented in three different ways. Now, it doesn’t make much sense trying to do all three at the same time, but what does make sense is to create these concepts, these blog posts, these podcast episodes, these articles, and to contact the people you know adapt to those particular traits and ask them to share them. But make sure you do it in an individualized way so that they have the best chance of taking your basic concepts and expand them, so they go viral across the audience to increase your reach.
