Webinars give you the power to be an authority in your industry and influence others. However, in order for you to achieve “authority” status, you need to identify and connect with relevant influencers to co-host your webinar and/or promote your webinar.
Influence is described as “the capacity to have an effect on the behavior of someone.” Of course, the end result is that you need to affect the behavior of your customers and potentials customers to make sure your marketing efforts result in increased sales.
However, getting to the point where others view you as an influencer yourself requires association with respected ones in your industry.
Linking up with the right influencers for your webinar has 3 main benefits:
- You get your message to the right audience
- You get your message to a wider audience
- An influencer accelerates conversations
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Why Invite Relevant Influencers to Speak at or Promote Your Webinar
Before looking at how to find the relevant influencers to speak at your webinar, it’s important to realize the influence an industry authority figure can have for your webinar.
Influencers who speak at your webinar
Apart from the 3 main benefits already mentioned, having a relevant influencer speak at your webinar makes the content much more exciting. The experience and knowledge that they bring can do a lot to enhance your presentation. They can look at your product from different angles and add a new perspective to the presentation.
Your own authority will be enhanced when your audience sees you in association with a leader in the industry. This automatically throws more weight to what you have to say. In the end, it can do a lot to influence their behavior.
Influencers who promote your webinar
You can also identify the relevant influencers to help promote your webinar. This can bring your product to a new, wider audience. It will also attract more people to attend your webinar when they realize that it is endorsed by an industry influencer.
How to Find Influencers Relevant to Your Industry
Now that it’s clear why you should engage with authority figures from your industry, now comes the difficult part – how to find influencers relevant to your webinar. Here are 4 effective ways that you can use to find authority figures to boost the success of your webinar:
1. Know the needs of your audience
First and foremost, you need to know the needs of your specific needs of your audience. This is the first step identifying the right influencer for your webinar. After all, if you fail to recognize your audience’s needs, how can you find someone relevant to them?
To identify the needs of your audience, you can ask yourself the following question:
- What does my audience already know about the product?
- What is their level of experience?
- What issues are the facing?
- What solutions do they need?
2. Find and follow as many influencers as possible
You can use keyword research to find influencers who are active on social media. There are various online tools to help you identify potential relevant influencers. These tools allow you to find experts who are active on Twitter. Results can then be filtered by 4 relevant categories:
- Reach
- Authority
- Influence
- Engagement
Once you find relevant influencers for your webinar follow them and stay connected with them. This will keep you up-to-date with the latest trends and help you foster relationships with each influencer. It will also give you an insight into the most relevant influencer for each of your webinar topics.
3. Build relationships with influencers
The third step in identifying relevant influencers for your webinar is to build relationships with them. In fact, influencers are only where they are today by building relationships with others.
The easiest way to build relationships is by reciprocity. Everyone naturally wants to reciprocate good deeds; however, the influencer needs to see some benefit to them from the relationship. How can you do that? Here are some of the best ways:
- Mention them in a tweet about something you liked about their blog or their product.
- Send an email saying what you liked about their quotes, ideas, or tips that they have posted.
- Send them an offer to collaborate on some of your projects.
- Offer them to be a guest host on your webinar where they can get more exposure to your audience.
4. Understand the principle of influence
The fourth way to make sure and identify only relevant authority leaders for your webinar is to not confuse the number of followers with the power of influence. Even though a marketer has thousands of followers doesn’t automatically mean that they have influence over others.
To find out the kind of influence they have, ask yourself these 3 specific questions:
- Are they truly relevant to your product? The connection between what your influencer shares and your products should be obvious.
- How many engage with their posts? So, what are their top posts and how many social shares have they got? The most relevant influencers for you will regularly interact with their audience.
- Do they post quality content? You want to be associated with high-quality content marketing, so make sure that they post original content. Avoid spammers and influencers who just post for the sake of posting.
Finding the right relevant influencer will help boost your marketing efforts and in the end, others will be searching you out as an authority figure who has the power to influence others.
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