Ben Straley is the CEO of Meteor Solutions, provider of the leading word-of-mouth analytics and optimization platform that enables marketers to measure, manage, and monetize earned media.

Your brand has 10,000 Twitter followers and 2,000 fans onFacebook. Does that mean your social media marketing efforts are paying off? Maybe not. As the old adage goes, it’s quality, not quantity, that counts.

Recent data that Meteor Solutions collected from across more than 20 brand marketer clients shows that the type of friends, fans and followers a brand amasses on social media sites matters more than the number. On average, approximately 1% of a site’s audience generates 20% of all its traffic through sharing of the brand’s content or site links with others. And these “influencers” drive an even higher share of conversion. These very important Internet users can directly influence 30% or more of overall end actions on brand websites by recommending the brand’s site, products or promotions to friends.

As this data shows, successful social media marketing isn’t simply about amassing thousands of followers, but instead precisely identifying the most influential members of your audience and recognizing them for their value. By directly engaging one influencer with exclusive opportunities, special offers, and unique content, you are indirectly engaging thousands of other people who are part of this influencer’s social sphere.

Sounds pretty enticing, right? But the challenge in crafting a successful marketing program that activates influencers is two-fold. First, you have to use the right data and traffic analysis tools to find out who your most influential followers are. Second, you have to connect with these people in an authentic, “non-salesy” way, and truly build a relationship with them –- because if you overly “sell” to your influencers, you’ll burn a bridge and potentially turn your biggest fans into your worst detractors.

Here are a few concrete tips brands can use to get started marketing with influencers.

---

Find Out Who Is In Your 1%

---

The first step in creating a marketing program that activates influencers is to find out who these passionate people are and where they hang out online. To find out, you need to use a social media analytics tracking and measurement tool that goes beyond “listening to the conversation,” measuring website traffic, clicks on campaign links, or conversions. There are new social media analytics platforms, such as Radian6 andObjectiveMarketer, that allow you to pinpoint with precision which individuals are most actively sharing your brand’s links.

---

Find Out What Your 1% Likes to Share

---

After you’ve identified these individuals, use your social media analytics platform to dig down into the content they like to share most often. Do they tend to share deals and discounts? Or do they prefer to share links to your branded entertainment content, like YouTube videos, social games and contests, or informational articles? At this stage, you can separate your 1% into groups, such as “shopping mavens” who love to pass along deals and discounts; “experts” who love to share new research, top-10 lists, how-to articles, and other educational content; “gaming gurus” who like to share information about contests and games; or “entertainers” who like to share movie trailers, YouTube clips, and social media apps.

---

Find Out Where Your 1% Goes to Connect and Share

---

Now you need to identify which social networks, blogs, forums, and websites your 1% hangs out on, and which methods they use to share your content (e-mail, social updates, tweets, etc.). One thing you’re likely to find out is that while Facebook and Twitter undoubtedly play major roles in the spread of your brand’s content, major social networking sites are not where you’re likely to find and reach your 1%.

Think about it — if you are someone extremely passionate about cars, are you really going to bore and alienate your family and friends on Facebook? Some of them might (and lose friends and followers in the process), but for the rest, they have a blog, post comments on other blogs, and interact with niche communities of like-minded influencers, advocates, and fans.

Finding these sites and communities on the web requires some sleuthing. Aside from digging deep into the traffic data provided by your social media analytics platform, another way to find these niche sites is to follow a number of active “experts” on Twitter in your topic of choice. Ask them where they go to learn about and share the content that matters most to them.

---

Find Out What Motivates Your 1%

---

Do your influencers share content about your brand in pursuit of fame, fortune, or a bit of both? Understanding what motivates your 1% to share is key to finding out what makes them tick, and what types of content they will respond to favorably.

For most people that spend time creating and sharing content, it’s not about fortune, it’s about fame. They share links with friends and their wider social network because it makes them feel important, special, and useful. That doesn’t mean influential people don’t like deals as a rule — they’re just like the rest of us in that regard. But they respond most positively to the attention and recognition they get from sharing useful content and valuable information with others.

For example, we’ve seen on several marketing programs that the percent of incremental unique visitors to a site from shared links more than doubled when the names of the top sharers where posted on an online leader board, and top-sharers were given access to exclusive content.

---

Make ‘Em Famous

---

If your data does indeed show that your influentials are more motivated by fame rather than fortune, then it’s time to recognize and reward them with incentives that are aligned with this motivation.

Use your company’s Twitter and Facebook pages to call out public achievements, like funny or useful YouTube videos on relevant topics posted by your top 1%. Blog about an interesting article, post, or tweet an influential member of your customer base has written, and let them know what you’ve done. And make sure to extend special offers or direct access to top company executives to your influential users. A big part of making these people feel special involves granting insider access to people, deals, or information that is limited to a select few.

---

Conclusion

---

By finding and reaching out to your brand’s biggest fans, you’ll get access to thousands of customers for the price of engaging a few. But remember that it’s a two-way street. Early on, engage these folks in a dialog around what they like about your brand and products, why they like it, what they’d like to see improved, and what types of opportunities and offers they’d be most interested in receiving. Give, and you shall receive.

A major challenge advertisers face in the context of this massive change is how to adapt their ad budgeting, planning and execution to remain effective in an age of “many-to-many” communications.  Networks of engaged people are the advertising media of today and tomorrow and to make them work, advertising content and messages need to be relevant and useful.

Take the time to watch the long version.

Many marketers have an influencer marketing strategy in place but are faced with a new challenge: taking those influencers to the next level and turning them into persuaders. This mirrors how we at Meteor look at influencers. To us, an influencer is someone who actually affects action in their audience, with that action hopefully involving conversions. According to Schott, there are 5 key steps to make this happen:

Step 1: Identify

• Use data to find influencers on social networks where your brand is present (Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and Foursquare are good places to start).
• Separate true influencers from fair-weather fans — the most active fans are not always influencers.
• Separate fans into “groups of influence.” Remember that users gravitate to those who share information that’s pertinent to their interests.
• Use social analytics tools such as Meteor Solutions to see who is sharing the most. People who actually share your offers and promotions make up a small percentage of your fan base and can usually make the jump to persuader easily.

Step 2:  Customer appreciation

• Send personalized emails, DMs, hand-written notes, phone calls — make them feel special.
• Send special offers thanking them for being loyal customers.
• Offer recognition badges and/or a special “club” status that comes with discounts. [editor's note: you can easily create a recognition or loyalty program using Meteor Activate]
• Invite them to publish guest posts/videos on owned properties; let them have the mic for a minute.

Step 3: Ask and listen

• Many influencers don’t just share because they want deals and discounts, they actually love your products! Ask and listen to their opinions on how you can improve your products.
• Reward influencers who share opinions with a personalized response and recognize their contribution.
• Take their ideas seriously and notify them if changes are made to your products based on theirfeedback.

Step 4: Socialize

• Use the information you’ve learned from the influencer outreach and create a  call-to-action to improve your products.
• Specifically target influencers with information gleaned from their insights; this not only gives them a sense of being part of the business process, it gives them a chance to share these changes with those they influence.

Step 5: Measure

• Use tools to see how sharing impacts bottom-line sales. Find out which persuaders are the most active, and which influence the highest percentage of sales — and reward these “top sellers.”
• See which outreach programs work the best to turn influencers into persuaders, and which fell flat with your biggest fans.

If you need help turning your influencers into persuaders, contact us at Meteor Solutions. We help big brands with this very problem each and every day.

by Dani Blanchard, Meteor Solutions Intern and UW Student

Since the first time I played on a sports team, adults have been screaming at me to “communicate!” Years later, and now off the field, it seems as though the whole world is yelling at me to speak my mind in any form I can, most prominently on the internet. My name is Dani Blanchard and I have been an Intern here at Meteor Solutions for the past month. I jumped at the opportunity of a social media related internship after having just finished my freshman year at the University of Washington in the Foster School of Business. Social networking has become the most integral part of our relationships, our education and our businesses. Even as I sit in the Seattle Meteor office I send questions and share info-graphics via instant messenger instead of any physical or audible form of transfer. While this may sound as if we are becoming a very impersonal society, I believe the opposite, in that social media actually allows us to create deeper pinpointed conversations thanks to a vast set of resources (search engines), extensive hubs of interaction (social networks), and a new sense of urgency for knowledge and response (notifications/alerts).

As a member of Generation Y, I was born in the middle of a technological revolution. When it comes to social sharing I can proudly say I was an original MySpace kid, an avid Xanga user, and am currently a Facebook connoisseur as well as a zealous poster of Tweets. As of today I can also claim to be a member of the Google+ trial group, which I am already a big fan of. I was destined to network through the web. While my parents may have originally looked at my social media addiction as a distracting problem, interning at Meteor has proven to me how valuable my knowledge of online interaction will be to my future. Meteor technology allows businesses to track the sharing of their content and see who is sharing what information and where sharing occurs. At Meteor I help create reports on these sharing trends to help clients navigate through the data Meteor provides. For example, I compare word of mouth visitor rates, click through rates, conversion rates, share tool rates and the popularity of sharing via specific networks such as Facebook or Twitter. While at first I only viewed my work as data entry, within the first week I acknowledged that I was actually helping to deliver extremely valuable information to some top companies. If a business shares content, they will have more potential customers; but if a business can share content and measure where/how successfully that sharing is happening, they can know exactly where to focus further efforts of advertisement.  Marketing analysis reminds me of peer editing essays in high school; getting a paper back with a grade on it isn’t helpful for your future unless detailed comments, observations, and recommendations are included. If Company A puts content on Facebook, X number of people will see it and the sharing ends there. If Company A puts content on Facebook and adds share buttons for Twitter, Tumblr and Email however, that X number of viewers can be greatly multiplied. Further, if said company adds these share tools and then receives a report on how successful each network was at sharing, Company A can adjust their efforts accordingly to promote even further sharing and success.

Years down the road if I ever dream to run a business it will be imperative for me to be up to date on everything in the world of social media. I will not only need to stay connected, but also know why each connection is important and how I can use my networking to boost my success. So I commend my parents for looking out for my technology infatuation, but I commend myself and my fellow internet progressives even more for ignoring them, (for the most part) because social media has truly taken over and implanted itself into the lives and businesses of most all adults who feared it in the first place. Meteor Solutions urges online exposure and from what I can see, is helping all clients become more accessible and successful through the promotion of social networking.

As a recent high school graduate scrambling for work experience in a competitive, fast-paced world spotlighting technology, I deeply appreciate the experience I’ve had at Meteor Solutions. I took a software development class in high school, made PowerPoints for fun as a 10 year old, and am absolutely mesmerized by the evolution of technology and how it has changed the way we think, interact, and create. But I couldn’t touch an avid tech enthusiast, nor a communications or business major – I am in fact quite undecided. So what can I possibly contribute to the world of business/technology/social media, and what does it serve me? More than I could have imagined.

Despite my noncommittal existence (induced, perhaps, by the receptive, malleable nature of adolescence), I have reaped immeasurable benefits from being exposed to the enterprising, buzzing office of Meteor Solutions. Meteor is a vibrant, ambitious operation that embodies a slice of the future as it unfolds before our eyes: collaborative, accessible, progressive, and thriving at the heart of social communication. Coming in as a high school intern with limited knowledge of internet-software, data analysis, or tech “lingo”, I played the sponge as my new coworkers enlightened me. Being in an unfamiliar environment that required me to breach my comfort zone and test my strengths and weaknesses, I learned a lot about the professional world and even more about myself. There are no small parts, only small actors. Be adaptable. Maintain that positive attitude. Trust one’s instincts. Ask questions. Appreciate every aspect of an experience – the good and the bad – because the worst of times are the times in which one can grow for the best. All of these qualities (and more) will remain illuminated and reaffirmed in my mind as I further my way into the world.

I’d like to think my presence in the office has bore significance, not only in my work but also in the way I’ve worked. It is my hope that my colleagues recognize from my experience that the entity to which they belong offers something even more valuable than just internet-software experience to an aspiring tech guru. In addition, it offers a venue for any student of the world to encounter teamwork, compassion, inspiration, and perhaps a sparked interest in commiseration of our humanity through perpetual development together.

So, let this be the humble beginnings of a sincere “Thank You” to everyone at Meteor, for welcoming me into your community open-mindedly and putting me to work. At the conclusion of my term here, I walk away with more confidence in my ability to work hard and grow in a new environment, a great respect for you all as people and as agents to the advancement of communication, and a sense of responsibility to further understand and contribute to the progressive evolution of human beings as synergetic creatures. Above all else, I’ll be carrying the universal lessons of my experience here at Meteor into any endeavor I may pursue in my life. To my Meteor mentors and friends – thank you so much for this opportunity.