5 Tips to Get Industry Influencers to Follow You on Twitter from Business 2 Community by Chris Horton

5 Tips to Get Industry Influencers to Follow You on Twitter:
If I said I could show you how you can connect with some folks who will share your online marketing content and promote your business message to thousands of people for free, would you believe me? Probably not. Well, I’m going to do it anyway by explaining how you can get industry influencers to follow you on Twitter.
What is a social media influencer, you may ask? A social media influencer is an individual or web entity that has a strong following and/or readership within one or more social media channels.¹ Just like in high school, social media influencers are the “popular people” that carry a large following and wield broad influence within your community or industry.
Given its broad reach, Twitter is an ideal place to form two-way relationships with these social media power brokers. For example, if you pal up with an influencer who has 10,000 followers, and this influencer likes a Tweet you’ve written, he or she can “retweet” it, forwarding your Tweet 10,000 people instantaneously.
Pretty cool, right? Better still, if this influencer likes a piece of content you’ve written and shared on social media, such as a blog post or an e-book, he or she can easily share it with their entire Twitter  following. This is one reason why Twitter has become an indispensable promotional tool for business.
But how do you find industry influencers on Twitter? One way is to look for influential blogs in your industry (use blog search engines like Technorati), subscribe to them, and start following their authors on Twitter. You can also use Twitter’s “who to follow” search tool to find companies and people relevant to your business or industry.²
Twitter directories such as Twellow or WeFollow are other resources to find high authority users.
Once you’ve identified which industry influencers you want to target, here are 5 tips you can use to start forming relationships with these Twitter heavy-hitters:

1. Be Subtle – One way to guarantee that nobody of influence will ever follow you is to keep publicly tweeting them and asking if they will follow you. Remember, discretion is the better part of valor in self-promotion as in war.  Start by following them. Once you do this, tweet about an article of theirs you enjoyed, or ask how they feel about a particular topic they like to write about.
2. ReTweet /Reply – Show your interest in an influencer’s Twitter content by retweeting their posts to your Twitter following. You can also comment on their tweets by hitting “reply.” Just make sure you add to their conversation with a well thought-out or humorous comment.
3. Share Your Best Content – Use your original content as an outreach tool. Connecting your business blog to your Twitter account not only helps boost web traffic from Twitter and search engines, it gives influencers a reason to follow you. Also try to reference content written by an influencer in one of your blog posts. Doing this will provide them with an inbound link, which will help their SEO and give them a reason to follow you.
4. Share Other Useful Content – Forward influencers any tips, information, or links to articles or data you think they would want to know about or be aware of. This will improve your relationship with them, even if the content isn’t from your company.
5. Strengthen the Bond – Once you’ve convinced an influencer to follow your account, you can send them a brief direct message (DM).  Here’s your chance to build personal relationships with influencers by interacting with them “offline.” Just remember that you can only DM people once they’ve followed you.

These five tips will help you to harness the exponential reach of Twitter to connect your business with thousands upon thousands of prospects. How’s that for free promotion?
Are you using Twitter for business? Have you been able to form relationships with industry influencers? If so, how?
¹ StartupSmart, “How do I find the key influencers in my industry, and get them following me on Twitter?”
² Hubspot, “How to Use Twitter for Business: An Introductory Guide.” 

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