It’s crazy out there isn’t it?

Over 2 million blog posts published a day…

Millions of products to choose from…

You wonder if you’ll ever be able to cut through all the noise.

Besides… you’d need a ton of money to get pushed to the front line right?

Yes, that was true years ago, but not anymore…

Going viral has become more achievable than ever and you can do it with a marketing budget of a six year old.

The way to do it is… all in this step-by-step influencer marketing mistakes guide with expert advice from both sides… the influencers themselves and those who reach out to them so you can get a behind-the-scenes insights of how this thing works.

Whether you want to promote your content, promote your brand, product, just passing by to see why everyone’s gone crazy about influencer marketing these days or you just love reading… you’re in the right place. So dive right in my friend, you’re just steps away from learning how to go viral…

(I’ve created a clickable table of contents so you can navigate to the parts you’d like, preferably read it in order. The question I asked influencers and experts was: What’s your biggest mistake you’ve ever made (or seen others make) in Influencer Marketing?)

Note: this post is over 32,540 words long and regularly updated, so you can think of it as your free online course to influencer marketing. What’s better than the influencers themselves telling you what to do and what not to do?

If 32, 540 words sounds so overwhelming, then I have a little thing for you…

Influencer Marketing! Whaaaaat?

Time to define it, show some data and clarify a few confusions…

Benefits of Influencer Marketing

The biggest mistake I’ve made in influencer marketing is not doing it sooner! I spent way too long trying to get traffic and readers through other marketing tactics like SEO and social media. When I started connecting with other bloggers and key influencers is when things really turned around for me. The more people I connect with, the more traffic I get. But, even better, I get even more people connecting to me because of the connections I’ve made.  

Corinne Kerston blogger at CorinneKerston.com @corinnekerston

So first benefit – Traffic and fame

Second benefit – more connections

As many experts say… the connections you make will be worth more than the little buzz you get from a one-off campaign. There are many other benefits too…

• You won’t need to fight for attention anymore
• Product launches will be a lot easier since all the influential people are helping you sell it
• You’ll be able to help and serve a wider audience
• Attract more opportunities and clients
• Grow your email list faster

I could go on and on… but to keep things short… the benefits of being famous will become yours to enjoy (since you’ll become famous too… gradually).

Sounds too good to be true doesn’t it?

Yes, it does.

But, it’s not.

It’s real.

It’s been done before, it’s happening now and it’ll happen again in the future.

But, here’s something I haven’t told you yet…

It’s hard work… yeah, if it was easy everyone would have done it.

But, the good news is, you don’t need any special talent. In fact, you’ve got this guide loaded with over 200 experts who have your back. Don’t give up now… you’re getting closer…

What is Influencer Marketing? (And What it isn’t)

I’ve certainly made some mistakes of my own, but the biggest mistake that I see being made across the board is approaching Influencer Marketing like it’s an advertising medium – one that you can just spam with emails or social mentions and expect results. How many times are influencers bombarded with tweets, asking them to retweet this or that… from people they’ve never talked to before. There are no real shortcuts to influencer marketing. It’s all about creating relationships and opportunities.

Mike Allton The Social Media Hat

Influencer marketing isn’t like buying PPC ads from Facebook… it’s a time investment… don’t forget an influencer is an actual human being and you need to stand out from the clueless crowd who pitch them every day.

Influencer marketing isn’t just a one-time campaign – it’s an ongoing effort. One has to put time to not only ramp up the relationship, but to maintain it in perpetuity. This takes a plan and a strategy, and you/your team has to build the habit of engaging and adding value, even when there is nothing to talk about. Like many others, I’ve had times where I haven’t heeded this advice, and let key relationships lay fallow.

Zvi Band (@skeevis), Founder/CEO of Contactually

It requires continuous effort. So if you’re a hit man, this won’t be your thing. You help them and get help in return – that’s how it works. There are two main components in an influencer marketing campaign.

1. Content
2. Influencer

If your campaign goes viral enough… it may get coverage from the press.

In fact, getting coverage from the press could be a way for determining viral success… at least for blog posts.

For products and services… only sales matter.

Does Influencer Marketing Work?

Let me ask you something…

Who would you trust more, an advertisement from the seller or an honest review from a customer with nothing to lose or gain from the sale of the product?

Obviously, the customer. That’s because a claim you make about yourself is an opinion, a claim others make about you is a fact. It’s nothing new… word-of-mouth marketing was always known as the most powerful form of marketing.

The only difference between word-of-mouth marketing and influencer marketing is that for influencer marketing you only need a few people to spread the word and then everyone else starts to talk.

You don’t need to impress thousands or millions of people get the world talking… you can just use handful of influential people.

But, now with the rise of social media and blogging influencers… it’s become more accessible, easier, cheaper, measurable and therefore more cost efficient – in fact, it’s become cheaper than Facebook ads (or at least it should be) and that’s why everyone is talking about it these days.

Data Time

According to a recent study…

• 95% of women find an online review more useful than a salesperson
• 89% of consumers do their research before shopping
• After they read the online review and decide to purchase, 84% of women will buy online and 16% will buy in-store.
• 70% of consumers do research from their smart phones while at the store to see if they can get a better deal or make a decision.

The consumer market is changing and consumers don’t like to be told what to buy.

Consumers want to make their own decision based the information they find from online reviews.

Imagine the first thing that comes up when they search on Google is a review about your product from an influential blogger.

Why can’t it be an ordinary blogger? Well, it can… but influential bloggers are likely to rank at the top results in Google.

How about the YouTube cooking influencer who tells her audience what ingredients to use and mentioning your product as one of those ingredients… therefore indirectly positioning your product as a requirement for a tasty meal (or meals). I mean, that’s the least pushiest way of promotion ever!

The point is, influencer marketing is extremely powerful and it works! It worked in the past, it’s working right now, and it will work in the future – as long as you select the right influencers and sell a good product.

If it ever does fail then it’s for the following reasons…

• Your reached out to the wrong influencers
• Your product is crap… yes I just said that
• You have unrealistic expectations

So now that you’re sure it works, it’s time to make a few clarifications so you don’t get confused…

Influencer Marketing VS Ambassador Marketing

My biggest mistake in Influencer Marketing is to mistaken Influencers as ambassadors to the brands I was serving. Ambassadors are invited but influencers are hired. I have mistaken the number of page views as power of influence. Influencers are meant to be for campaigns and not for long-term social conversation like the ambassadors.

Andrew Chow (@ideasandrew) Andrewchow.sg

Yes, many people use the term influencer and ambassador interchangeably. But, I think I know why… Because influential people are usually hired to become brand ambassadors – so people start to think that a brand ambassador is always an influencer.

Ambassadors will usually have the brand’s logos on their website, clothes etc. They will speak on behalf of the brand because they are the brand’s expert. They can either be both influencers and non-influencers. An example of a brand ambassador would be Scott Eddy for ZipKick (you will see his advice later on in this guide).

But, then again… even a non-influencer will have a bit of influence… so that’s why they’re hired.

Hopefully you won’t mix them up like the majority of people out there.

Who’s an Influencer? What are Influencers?

They are people (or brands) who have built expertise and trust with an audience. The larger the audience, the more influential. They can be…

1. Entertainment Celebrities
2. TV Personalities & Reporters
3. Podcasters
4. Popular brands
5. Social Media personalities
6. Bloggers
7. Political Personalities
8. Athletes
9. Thought Leaders

Do they have to be super famous?

No, the only thing that matters is how much they influence your target market. For example, Brad Pitt is famous but if you wanted to promote a self-development course… it would flop.

On the other hand, you’ve got Tim Ferriss who isn’t a worldwide known celebrity as Brad but famous within the self-development niche… if he were to promote it to his audience it would do much better.

I will go into more detail on how to select your ideal influencer in section 3.

Beliefs, Goals and Planning

Now let’s get started with the real thing…

Regrets

The biggest mistake I have made in influence marketing is not doing enough fast enough, often enough and didn’t collaborate with others to get the message out.  That is why I invested millions in creating GrantCardoneTV so I could collaborate with some of the greatest people on this planet and disseminate our content as much as we want, as often as we want as big as we want.

Grant Cardone (@grantcardone) grantcardone.com

Don’t delay influencer marketing for later… you’ll regret it. It’s one of the most important marketing strategies you should be harnessing.

The biggest mistakes that you’ll make in Influencer Marketing are the SHOTS that you didn’t take. – It’s a twist of Michael Jordan’s quote, but I love this because the biggest reason a lot of people (including myself for many years) made was that I didn’t even want to send those “outreach emails”. I was afraid of sending it and often think about things like, “what if no one responds”, or “what if the influencer gets pissed”. Too many “what-ifs” would be the biggest mistake of anyone who would do influencer marketing. I recommend that you follow what other people are successfully doing, add your personal twist and flavor to influencer marketing. Then send that “outreach email”. What’s the worst thing that could happen? You’re ignored. Email deleted… But, if the influencer says yes, that’s going to open up a lot of opportunities for your brand and business.

Ryan Cruz For no more “what-ifs” in online marketing, visit TrafficSalad and follow Ryan’s tweets on @TrafficSalad

You’ll get ignored, your email may get deleted… but, it only takes one yes (or a few) to change your business.

If you want an influencer to share a blog post or help sell your product(s), ask. Most people sit back and hope for an influencer to find their crap. Stop being a panzy and email them. Call them. Tweet them. Being intentional about my influencer networking last year made me more than $40,000 on single product launch (AFTER the 50/50 split), as well as multiple six-figures in client referrals. Dominate intentionally.

Josh Coffy Founder of flightmedia.co on Twitter/IG/Snapchat

Stop hoping for influencers to find you… go to them. If Josh made 6-figures from networking with influencers just last year… certainly, influencer marketing is the path to business success.

My biggest mistake when it comes to influencer marketing is being WAY too late to the party. When I first started my business I spent my time on traditional networking. I didn’t know about networking with influencers to reach my audience more quickly and with more impact.

Jessica Sweet (@wishingwellgift) www.wishingwellcoach.com

More and more people are jumping on influencer marketing… that means influencer’s inboxes will start to get more emails and if that happens… the likelihood of getting a reply will be much less.

I wish I had done more of it, more often. Influencer marketing has such a multiplication effect that every time we focus on it, we grow and expand. Yet, as entrepreneurs we like to make things hard on ourselves and not repeat the things that brought us success instead of new, shiny objects. The biggest mistake we’ve made is not making it a more profound part of our overall strategy.

Greg Rollett (@gregrollett) Ambitious.com

Hopefully, you won’t have to go through the regret all these entrepreneurs are going through. Make influencer marketing your main marketing strategy and you shouldn’t go wrong. Put it as number two and you’ll pay for it!

Doing it Only When Needed

Biggest mistake is that people only start trying to influence or help other people when they need something.  You need to dig your well before you’re thirsty.

Jordan Harbinger (@theartofcharm) theartofcharm.com

If you dig your well after the rain is over… then you’re too late. You’ll have to start digging and then you’ll have to wait for the rain again… then you have to continuously make sure the well is in good condition.

A crucial mistake I’ve seen others make is not to develop relationships with influencers before they need them. Relationships take time to develop and the best way to nurture them is by being helpful.

Mary Jaksch, WritetoDone.com @WritetoDone

Again, influencer marketing isn’t something you do when you need. It’s an ongoing process.

Thinking it’s an Overnight Thing

I think the biggest mistake people make is having the wrong expectations, specifically overestimating how quickly to expect results. We’ve been doing influencer marketing for over 1.5 years and we’ve seen our traffic grow substantially, but it wasn’t something that happened in a day, a week, or even a month. Instead it’s a process, of getting the word out there, writing content, building relationships, etc. Eventually influencer marketing transitions into more organic as you build up a reputation and people come to you, it’s worth the wait but it takes time. If you have the wrong expectations, you’ll probably give up too early.

David Schneider is the cofounder of NinjaOutreach an all in one Prospecting and Outreach tool that was created to streamline the process of connecting with influencers. You can find him @ninjaoutreach and his blog SelfMadeBusinessman.

Although there are cases where some people achieve “overnight” success… that isn’t the norm. But that’s not a bad thing… because in the end… whether it takes a few months or a few years… you’ll still be able to grow faster than everyone else.

The biggest mistake you can make with influencer marketing is thinking of it as a one and done project. You need to remember that relationship building takes time and effort. You need to put a lot in before you can expect an influencer to be your champion.

Amanda Maksymiw @amandamaks

Influencer marketing is a time investment so free up at least an hour for it every day depending on how serious you take your business.

Thinking It’s All About Influencers

Thinking it’s all about influentials.  The message is just as, if not more important than the messenger.  What will drive people to talk and share whether they have 10 friends or 10,000?  We to think beyond special people and starting thinking about crafting contagious content.

Jonah Berger, (@j1berger) Best selling Author of Contagious: Why Things Catch On JonahBerger.com

Did you think you could just write mediocre content and then get influencers to share it? You’re dreaming. Influencers won’t sell out their audience just for your blog post.

I am not so sure that Influencer marketing is not just a new term for a tried and tested approach of early adopters that Geoffrey Moore talked about in Crossing the Chasm. When I was involved in the launch of a new biotech product we followed that ‘influencer’ model to gain early attention and traction. We made two huge mistakes in doing this. Firstly, many of the influencers were more interested in the perks of being an influencer than helping us achieve our early recognition and secondly we spent so much time listening to the influencers and placing all our faith in them that we ignored what the wider market was telling us, the product was not right. Ultimately, we had to completely reconfigure and re-launch.

Paul Copcutt (@paulcopcutt) paulcopcutt.com

It applies to products too and not just content. Your product must be good. Both influencers and customers need to like it.

I think the biggest mistake you can make is to not think about what’s in it for the other person and not giving them value or helping them with their problems. You have to remember that the “influencer” is putting their neck on the line by backing you up, so you better have a good product, blog post etc… I get people approaching me for support and most make no attempt to think about my point of view or how it might appear if I share something that’s completely unrelated to what my audience is interested in.

Paul Minors (@paulminors) paulminors.com

Don’t be selfish. If an influencer says “no” or ignores your email all together, then it was probably for a good reason. Don’t ask them to promote rubbish. No one will read/buy it anyway.

No Goals and Strategy

Not having a clear goal. So many companies work on influencer marketing just wanting people to talk about their brands or products without really having a purpose behind it. Know what you want and be able to explain it clearly. I even recommend going one step further by saying that you should have an ROI behind everything you do. If it’s not making money, eventually you’ll have to stop doing it. Make sure you’re making a profit behind everything you do.

John Rampton (@johnrampton) johnrampton.com

I know planning is a headache but it’ll save you time in the long run. You could get away without planning for a lot of things but with influencer marketing… you need to make sure you’re making a ROI… not every influencer will be the right fit.

My biggest mistake in influencer marketing was doing it randomly without a strategy. As a result I was noticed by so many influencers but I couldn’t take any benefit from them. The only benefit I was getting in the beginning were shares for my posts. Once I came to know the unlimited benefits of influencer marketing like getting client referrals from them, I started enjoying its real benefits. So develop a clear influencer marketing strategy on how you’ll achieve your goals. This I think is the only kind of marketing that can be done both amateurishly and professionally both. So follow a professional approach while doing it.

Mi Muba Founder and CEO of Be A Money Blogger your go-to source to learn how to become rich with blogging gradually and surely.

If you want to get professional recognition and real results. Then Identify your goal and strategy.

Set a clear goal – I’ve seen companies that go into influencer marketing without a clearly defined goal of what they are trying to accomplish.  You need to start by defining the key performance indicators (KPI’s) you are going to monitor for your campaign. You can pick a single KPI or multiple but its best for you to think through what you are trying to accomplish with your campaign and select the most applicable.  Next, you need a way to measure them, you can use Google Analytics, Mixpanel, unique phone numbers, whatever. You just need to make sure you have things in place to measure that you are meeting your goals and defining success.

Rick Ramos (@ricktramos) rickramos.com

You can’t measure your results if you don’t have any KPI’s. I’ll tell you more about this in a minute…

Not being organised and consistent with my message on a daily basis would be my biggest mistake. Systems and strategies are a must.

Suzie Cheel The Heart Whisperer @suziecheel Facebook

I’d recommend setting time for it on your calendar. Don’t just hope you get a free hour or two in your day. Consistency is key. The last thing you want to happen is spend a month developing a relationship with an influencer and then disappear for two months… they may forget you and you’ll have to start from scratch.

I think the biggest mistake I’ve ever seen made in influencer marketing is just completely missing the target on the outreach. A previous client actually brought us on-board to deal with cleaning up a negative link campaign that came about after they naively thought they could buy an email list of “potential customers” who were avid users of a conflicting service and blast them with ill-targeted email campaigns to acquire new links, instead of even trying to entreat them as customers first. It all starts with the strategy, and if the strategy you’re using is broken and ill-conceived you’re going to waste a ton of hours and even risk extreme PR backlash from your efforts. In this case we had to literally repair the damages they did to themselves through these efforts first using some reputation management strategies and then follow that up with a good strategy targeting potential customers, past customers, current customers, and reaching out to them in honest methods, not through bought email lists that could and should effectively blacklist the party doing the outreach.

1. Make sure your target is a smart target
2. Make sure the methods you use to reach out to your target is going to be well received
3. Make sure what you’re offering is something they would be interested in and not repulsed by
4. Have a clear process for next steps based on their response if they’d like to move forward.

Sean Smith (@snsmth) simpletiger.com

If you follow this guide properly and put enough effort towards the work… you should get good results. Get the plan wrong and the whole thing topples over.

The biggest mistake I’ve made personally with doing influencer marketing for my business, is not setting clear enough goals. It took me some time to realize that I wasn’t able to measure or track my efforts properly because of this. I had to go back to the drawing board, set out my goals and objectives, rewrite my plan of action and start all over again from scratch. Anyone seeking quick results from influencer marketing, or expecting to get the most without setting clear cut goals, as to what they want to achieve, how much they want to achieve, and in what span of time, might as well not bother doing it at all.

Fabrizio Van Marciano (@vanmarciano) magnet4blogging.net

So, the first step to having a successful influencer marketing campaign is to have clear goals and a strategy (or plan). Common goals include…

• Increasing social media followers
• Web Traffic (Asking for tweets and social shares)
• Search Engine Ranking (getting quality backlinks)
• Sales
• Leads (redeemed codes, trial sign ups, giveaways etc.)
• Content engagement (shares + comments)
• Land a guest posting opportunity on a quality hard to get blog
• Awareness (this one is kinda lame for small companies and should only be done by large companies with 8-figure+ marketing budgets)
• Contribution to your round up post

Now get more specific…

What exactly do you want to achieve?

Example: Increase social media followers for @ZakMustapha (twitter)

How much do you want to achieve of it?

Example: 1,500 followers.

In how much time do you want to achieve it?

Example: 3 months.

Specific Goal: In 3 months I will add 1,500 twitter followers for @ZakMustapha. (make sure you record the day you’ll start and the deadline date).

Once you’ve picked your goal you need to define your KPI(s). How will you measure results? Here’s a table for guidance with only one suggested KPI (some may seem obvious) but here it goes…

Finally, create an influencer marketing calendar… setting aside specific hours in the day to work towards your influencer marketing. This really depends on the influencer, but it’s basically a plan on how you’ll develop your relationship, run promotion… offer value etc.

Here’s a rough example plan if I was targeting a top influential blogger:

Week 1: Get on their radar by engaging with them on social media and their blog. Buy their course.

Week 2: Reach out with an email informing them of a dead link on their blog or results you’ve gotten by applying what was written on one of their blog posts. While still engaging on social media and their blog.

Week 3: Offer more value by improving a piece of content. While continuing to engage with them on social media and their blog.

….

Week 5: Ask for something small that benefits both the influencer and yourself.

Week 6: Keep offering continuous value, help and engaging with them.

….

Week 10: Ask to talk or meet face to face and how that can help them. (Always tied to helping them)

….

Of course, you’d probably schedule what you’d do each day not per week. But, I just wanted to give you a rough idea on how a plan would look like.

Don’t forget that you’ll most likely have a plan for each influencer. So, lets say you target 5 influencers, you’ll probably have 5 individual plans. However, you’d do it all in the same hour… so that’s 12 minutes a day per influencer. You may want to do more than one hour a day.

As a busy blogger/marketer/entrepreneur like yourself you need to get your time organized. You have so many things going on in your life… if you don’t schedule a specific time for them they’ll probably never get done.

Anyway, let’s summarize the five steps…

Step 1: Identify Goal

Step 2: Make your goal specific

Step 3: Define your KPI(s)

Step 4: Create a step-by-step plan to reach your goal (of course… this step is done AFTER you’ve identified your influencers)

Step 5: Measure your KPI(s) to see if you’ve achieved your goal or gotten closer to it (yes, this is done in the end).

For now, you should do steps 1 – 3. Once you’ve completed them, we can continue (we’ll get back to the others later)…

Being Short Sighted

The biggest mistake I’ve ever made with influencer marketing was focusing too much on the short term goal (asking for a share, a link, feedback, etc) versus building a long term relationship. I quickly corrected this after a few conversations with the influencers.

Sujan Patel Co-Founder of Narrow.io & (@sujanpatel)

If you’ve already started with your influencer marketing and gotten a few shares (or whatever) from an influencer that you haven’t connected with in some time. Quickly go write up your strategy and engage with them.

Not developing relationships with influencers after the campaign is over. This is the biggest influencer marketing mistake I’ve seen and it’s made too often. The thing is, the long-term relationship with influential people in your industry is worth more than any clicks and conversions your one-time campaign may deliver. Imagine that for the next campaign you won’t have to start afresh. Or imagine 10% of those influencers stick around and promote you for free going forth. This is achieved by consistent relationship development (through constant social media interactions and touching-base). It’s the full-time community manager’s job!

Ann Smarty (@seosmarty) viralcontentbuzz.com

After you’ve built the initial relationship and you guys are buddies… well… you won’t need to schedule an intense plan to connect with the influencer. He/She remembers you now… so you can give them a break… no need to email them daily… every other day should be fine or less. Don’t force anything… keep it natural… the frequency and way you connect will and should be different than how I would do it.   The good news… getting promotions from them will be free for the years to come!

I think the biggest problem with influencer marketing is not taking the time to build a relationship before reaching out and asking demands or favors. Influencer marketing is a long term strategy and it takes a long term effort to pull off.

Paul Back Founder of Earn a Living Blogging

The biggest mistake I ever made with influential marketing, and outreach, is the fact that I simply didn’t do it enough of it. I was more focused on creating than connecting. After a change of heart, the last few years I’ve been calling more, connecting more, and investing in people more than myself. The returns have been great and I’ve been connecting with the legends in marketing. I have a Twitter Strategy and it does well because my motive isn’t profit, it’s connecting like a mad man 🙂 You should do the same.

Luke Guy lukeguy.com

Ironically, when you help people… you end up gaining more. Don’t spend time creating content or products no one will even see… it’s 20% creation, 80% promotion.

The biggest mistake in influencer marketing is going for the kill too quickly when establishing relationships with influencers that can make a big difference in your business. Never meet someone and then immediately ask them for something (such as an introduction, or for them to hook you up in some way). Wait as long as you possibly can – months or even a year – so you don’t ruin the relationship by coming off as a user.

Dorie Clark (@dorieclark) dorieclark.com.

Again… depending on their influence… some will be cool with someone who asks after a month, some need a year… it all depends. The higher the influence… the longer time you need. Use your judgment.

Nothing can replace a genuine relationship with an influencer. Yes, you may score a link or two as a result of scalable outreach campaigns but organic approach offers benefits beyond immediate value. Visualise superficial influencer relationship as a single, short-lived ripple and then compare it with periodic but sustained rain drops of a deeply engaged influencer.

Dan Petrovic (@dejanseo) dejanseo.com.au

That’s an excellent way of putting it. If you only depend on one rainfall… the rain will dry up in a day or two and you’ll die. But, if you depend on a small rain drops frequently then you’ll have a consistent supply of water to survive.

Identifying Influencers

Pick the wrong influencer and your awesome product/content won’t get the exposure it deserves.

Not Collecting The Right Data

The biggest mistake I’ve seen others make in Influencer Marketing, is that it lacks the proper study in gathering data if a particular campaign would succeed or not. It is definitely risky depending on the niche one would be in, not to mention that it does not guarantee success (conversions) at all by (just basing on the influencers followers) compared to traditional marketing where data is king. Influencer marketing has its advantages but I really think data should come first before anything else in business.

Floyd G. Buenavente (@SEOphilippiness) marketingmanila.com

Don’t forget influencer marketing is still marketing. You need to collect data, analyze it, take action based on data… don’t work based on blind assumptions and feelings.

The biggest issue I’ve seen (and I’ve have been guilty of myself) is not doing due diligence in understanding WHO can have the biggest impact on your brand.  For instance, I’m focusing most of my time these days in the insurance niche. Reaching out to someone in the internet marketing niche isn’t going to reciprocate value to both parties.  Sure links are valuable, but ultimately when you’re trying to build a brand you want to reach out to an influencer whose audience is relevant and valuable to your industry.  The referral traffic/customer acquisition from a link is more valuable to me than the single link passing hyperlink these days.  I would much rather reach out to 5 local insurance agents getting their opinions/thoughts and potentially having them share/link to my site than 100 SEO bloggers who’s audience doesn’t likely care much about insurance and wont visit/engage with my site.

Nick LeRoy (@NickLeRoy) RideCoverage.com

You see… data like that doesn’t come easy. It requires research… but it’s worth it. We’ll get into how to do your research throughout this section.

Over the years I have noticed that too many “marketers” try to reach out to influencers that are simply unrealistic targets. This is especially true for new products and brands. It’s all about being smart when choosing your targets. While you want quality, you cannot expect a professional athlete or actor to endorse a product or brand (without a lot of money) that is relatively unheard of. It’s honestly one of the BIGGEST mistakes I see (and it happens all too often). I recently went through this training a recent college graduate on influencer outreach for a new brand. A lot of it is poor training. Some of it is unrealistic expectations and marketers wanting to “shoot for the stars”.

Michael J. Kovis tk421digital.com. @tk421digital

Good news for you, you won’t need to waste your time on any poor training.

Not Having a List and Writing Things Down

The biggest I’ve made when I started out doing influencer marketing is (1) not giving enough value, (2) not preparing an influencer list, and (3) not negotiating a “win-win” proposal.  For me, creating a list of influencers that you would like to outreach is critical because it makes the campaign efficient and measurable. I’ve also learned that giving opens the way for receiving and building relationships with influencers skyrockets success, it’s the main lessons we’ve learned back when I helped a customer become successful on their crowd funding campaign.

Roel Manarang is the founder of Enamtila. He helped more than 170 businesses around the world, from small businesses to fortune 500s. He writes about digital marketing, profitability, work, and growth. Learn more about him at roelmanarang.com or follow him on twitter.

Influencer lists are lifesavers. These are just lists of the influencer’s details usually sorted in an excel or Google Sheets document… think of it as the influencer phone book. Here’s how it would look like…

1. Get their name
2. Link to their blog preferably (otherwise their website should do),
3. Find their email from the contact or about page of their blog/site. You can find their emails using Pipl, emailhunter or VoilaNorbert… since email is the preferred choice. If you can’t find it then just put their contact page link.
4. Twitter handle
5. Facebook link
6. Open up Open Site Explorer or Ahrefs and check the blog’s domain authority.
7. Open up FollowerWonk and search for their twitter handle. You should find their social authority on the right side.

Generally speaking, the higher their domain and social authority… the higher their influence. So just to recap what we’ve done until now…

• You’ve identified your goal and KPI(s).
• You have a rough idea on how your strategy should look like (you’ll learn more later).
• You’ve created or downloaded the template you’ll use to collect influencer’s information.

Okay, now let’s continue…

Not Knowing Your Target Market

This where it all starts…If you don’t know your target market, then you won’t know where they hang out, and if you don’t know that then you won’t know which influencers are the right match for you. So, it all comes down to this…

Define your demographic and target market – aim for the bullseye. Not “everyone and anyone” (for example) who uses nail polish will want to buy your brand. Be meticulous about exactly who your consumers are. Then, do a thorough job of reaching out to the movers and shakers in, for this example, the beauty industry…. follow popular bloggers, check out their online reputation, their Klout score, their social media involvement, especially their consistent engagement online, reach out and make a connection. Once you nail your influencers, nurture them; mention them by name, ask their opinion, follow up, and have a conversation or exchange of comments online that is real! Ask them questions that your audience cares about and give them credit and kudos when they reply – in an authentic way, not canned answers. I recommend not automating responses, keeping them in real time and, most importantly, being genuine. Just because a brand has connected with an influencer, does not mean one has to kiss up to them; they are people just like you and, if your influencer really knows their stuff, they will respond well to a team member or social media manager initiating an on-going conversation. Give them credit where credit is due, but in a way that flows well and is not robotic.

Laurie Hurley TheSocialNetworkingNavigator.com Facebook

It would be awesome if everyone could buy our products, unfortunately that won’t happen.

More often than I’d like, I see a large gap between a company’s core audience, and the influencers that marketers are engaging with. For example, the retailer who predominantly sells to low-income, 18-30 year olds – but was courting influencers who are powerful on LinkedIn… that audience isn’t spending any time there! It’s frustrating because the missing step is so banal: talk to your customers! Find out where they spend time online, where they do research, and who they trust for information about products/services like yours.

Rob Ousbey (@robousbey) ousbey.com

Know the demographics for each social platform. Here’s an infographic that should serve as a guide…

The biggest mistake you can make with influencer marketing is misunderstanding the role the influencer plays in the buying decision. This all goes back to truly understanding your target market. It can mean anything from neglecting the influencers altogether to missing the mark with messaging. Take the time to do your audience research thoroughly – it’s worth it.

Lindsay Tjepkema (@blueprintmkt) blueprintmkt.com

This is the reason influencer marketing campaigns fail. They don’t know who their target market is in the first place and because of that they’ll target the wrong influencers. What’s worse, is that they blame the influencers for their poor efforts or they give up on influencer marketing because “it doesn’t work”. Influencers can tell you who their audience is… but they can’t tell you who your product/content is suitable for. Even if they could tell you, asking such a thing will mean extra work from the influencer… and it’ll make you look like a rookie. So this one is all on you. If you need it, here’s a quick guide on how to find your target market.

Picking Influencers for Followers

“The biggest issue with influencer marketing is confusing audience with influence. Just because someone has a lot of “followers” or can spread a message does NOT mean that person can cause action. Influence = action, not eyeballs. If you want to engage in influencer marketing, you have to work with people who are influential about the specific topics that align with you.”

Jay Baer is the President of ConvinceAndConvert.com. Check out his new podcast all about influencer marketing.

The number of people who look at your promotion won’t put any money in your pocket.

Identifying influencers based on reach. Just because an influencer has a big audience it doesn’t mean they are engaged. When doing influencer marketing you have to focus on influencers who are popular and have an engaged following.

Neil Patel neilpatel.com

A lot of times you’ll find influencers with 10k followers have a more engaged and loyal audience than someone with 50k followers.

When conducting Influencer marketing, far too many companies simply look for impressions. The problem seems to stem from the ease of measurement. But, a truly thoughtful campaign which seeks to find people with genuine influence, and the ability to impact sales takes more time to put together and may not have an immediate metric for a manager to talk about. For Influencer campaigns to work, this short-term thinking needs to be eliminated.

Tim Fargo socialjukebox.com

Don’t look at how many people see it… look at the number of retweets, shares, likes, comment they get.

The biggest mistake I see is overuse of the term influencer. There are very popular people online, but it doesn’t mean that they can have an impact on a purchase decision for an advertiser. Focusing on popularity is not as important as focusing on relevance and understanding the audience or community that the influencer has fostered. More often than not, a highly targeted influencer that has a smaller following can generate more awareness and purchases of a product or service than a widely popular person online.

Douglas Karr (@douglaskarr) Marketing Technology Blog

It’s common to find influencers with only 1,000 followers and non-influencers with 20,000 followers, so be careful.

My number 1 mistake when it comes to influencer marketing is to overlook someone who may be the perfect fit for my brand because they don’t have a huge following. I used to only want to focus on those who have top-tier communities; but I soon realized that the pay-off is not as good especially if they are not extremely targeted. Now I know that the focus should be more on the quality of their network and their relevance to my business instead of just the number of followers.

Nellie Akalp, CorpNet.com @CorpNetNellie

Don’t forget that top-tier influencers are top-tier influencers in their own industry – not any other. So don’t waste their time and your time reaching out to them.

I’ve seen business owners hire the wrong type of influencers to market their brand. This is because, a seemingly large network and a big follower count, are often their only qualifying metrics for what constitutes an “influencer”. Instead, business owners should look for the “influencers” who are creatively engaging their audiences and generating actual conversation surrounding topics in their niche. For example, a topical expert who responds to tweets from a wide variety of people (and not just from other influencers).

Melanie Nathan (@melanienathan) positiondigital.com

An influencer who engages with their audience will get more engagement and loyal fans in return. Imagine if your favorite celebrity sent you a person message or tweet directed to YOU! How would you feel? I bet you’d tell everyone about it… in return, the influencer gains additional loyalty – maybe some followers too.

The biggest mistake I see most people make is to focus on the influencer’s reach too much. If you want free publicity, “I want you to share this because you’ll love it” works a lot better than “I want you to share it because you have major influence”. People with a large reach can usually spot the influencer-equivalent of a gold digger from a mile away.

Wiep Knol (@wiep) linkbuilding.nl

Everyone hates a gold digger. Even if you are a gold digger – don’t show it!

Assuming that a large following will equal large conversions. Just because an influencer has a large following does not mean their following is relevant to your audience or it’s worthy of any influence at all. It’s better to find highly targeted influencers that have a strong brand associated with quality content and interactions that generate consistent ROI for themselves and others.

Cody McLain (@codymclain) codymclain.com

Does the influencer’s brand stand out? Does the influencer get exceptional engagement because of that?

“The biggest mistake I see in influencer marketing is selecting the influencers based solely on following and not because they’re influential with the audience you’re trying to reach. Example, you have a blog on child care and have an epic post on how to get your little one to sleep. Instead of connecting and building a relationship with Gina Ford, you message Mari Smith and ask her to share.  Mari Smith may have 250k more Twitter followers, but Gina Ford is MORE influential with that specific audience. Influence is about the connection with your target audience and not just about the numbers.

Sarah Arrow Sarke Media (@SarahArrow)

Target influencers who talk about your specific topic. General influencers will get less engagement on a specific post.

When it comes to influencer marketing it’s important to verify the engagement that influencers are actually getting. It’s very easy to purchase follows as well as likes for each post. A person may claim to be an influencer, but in reality is a fraud looking to take advantage of companies. We’ve been burned by that in the past, but if you start off with smaller influencers you can get the feel of what is legit and what is fake.

Eric Bandholz (@bandholz) beardbrand.com

Anyone can buy 100k fake bot followers right now and call themselves an influencer. There are tools out there that give you an idea on how real someones followers are and their engagement levels. Tools such as: Social Blade, Buzzsumo and Fakers App.

The biggest mistake I’ve made in the past was banking on the assumption that the influencer I worked with would have a big enough audience to compensate for the fact that they didn’t have the ideal demographic for me. Kinda like throwing mud and hoping something would stick. Influencers have relevancy to their specific audience and the best way to achieve success with a campaign is to match up with the right influencer and not get star-struck and assume their following will jump on board with something that’s disconnected from the very reason they are following their influencer.

Bob Jones (@bobjones) visible.com.au

If someone follows an influencer for dessert recipes, then they want to see content on desserts, they don’t want to see a hand bag. Even if those followers did want a hand bag, why would you think they’d get it from a someone who talks about tasty desserts.

I’ve seen a few of our clients work on their own and also with PR firms to enter the influencer marketing space. On their own, people don’t seem to know how to put a value on their “influence” and most rely on vanity metrics to prove their worth (rather than actionable metrics like engagements per tweet, click-through rate, etc.). And even those utilizing PR firms to help still seem to have issues with attracting the right influencer for their products/brand AND the intended audience. It seems there’s still a lot of maturity that needs to take place with this space!

Brooke B. Sellas (@madSMscientist) bsquared.media

Yes, a lot of influencers will use the bigger number (which is usually their follower count) in order to charge more. Then we’ve got the useless PR firms who can’t even help. Great!

Most influencer programs go for people with big social network numbers, with little regard for the influencers’ willingness or fit to help. You’ll see brands pay an Instagrammer $40K for a post. In many cases that post looks staged and stays up only a few hours and then gets deleted to make room for other sponsored content. It’s hard to call something so fleeting effective. The better alternative is to find super-fans, with smaller following but who will be loyal to your brand. Find 100 ambassadors, each with 2,000 followers, who repeatedly post genuine, real snapshots of their experiences with the brand. They will get you much more exposure than one 2-hour post on one Instagram account.

Mana Ionescu, (@manamica) President of Chicago Digital Marketing agency, Lightspan Digital.

A few advantages of going for small influential ambassadors are…

• They are easier to get onboard.
• They cost less.
• They are long term (that’s how ambassadors usually are).
• Their followers are usually more loyal. Large influencers tend to get followers who just follow them because everyone else is. (but that’s not always the case)

Disadvantages…

• You’ll need to get more onboard to make a bigger impact.
• It’s harder to manage 50 – 100 ambassadors.

In my opinion it’s an excellent route to go… it’s easier and cheaper. Great for startups.

Acceleration or Top Speed? (the risers)

The biggest mistake I have seen others make when it comes to influencer marketing is to ONLY target the top dogs.  Don´t forget to blogger outreach to the rising stars. The rising stars are easier to connect with and they will become the top players in the future. In my first 14 months of blogging I focused on blogger outreaching to the top influencers AND the rising stars. It has led to me getting featured on 158 blogs and being invited to participate in 5 books.

Tor Refsland Creator of How To Blog Outreach Like A Boss

Not all influencers are equal. There are 3 groups.

• Top-Tier Influencers
• Mid-Tier Influencers
• Low-Tier Influencers

Everyone wants to connect with the top-tier influencers. It can take years to build a relationship with a top-tier influencer… if ever.

They’ll usually have an agent or assistant making sure your email never gets to them. What’s funny is… usually mid & low-tier influencers will already know top-tier influencers. They could connect you with them and save you all the hassle.

What you should do is connect with mid-tier and low-tier influencers… even better… connect with mid & low tier influencers who are followed by the top-tier influencer you want to connect with. You’re not using mid & low tier influencers as ladders… you’re just increasing your chances to meeting more people.

Honestly, I would just connect with mid & low tier influencers and not worry much about top-tier influencers… they’ll be enough to get you on top-tier radars (if you have a group of them).

Another thing to remember is… a lot of these rising stars will become top-tier influencers at some point in their lives… they are working towards it. You never know… you could be meeting the next big celebrity.  It’s best to grow together.

The biggest mistake I’ve made with influencer marketing is dismissing the “word of mouth” (WOM) aspect, because of how difficult it can be to directly measure and scale. The truth is, it’s actually not that hard to encourage a small number of initial influencers to help you market to other influencers. I tried to start big, but with influencer marketing you can start small and it builds quickly (because of WOM).

Ruben Gamez (@earthlingworks) bidsketch.com

You’ll start slow but once you take off, there will be momentum. Word-of-Mouth multiplies… 10 people will tell 20 people… then 20 people tell 40 people… and it keeps compounding. That’s why starting with the small influencers is actually an excellent strategy to start with.

Making a large EGO bait piece of content where we included the top 20 financial Twitter users and only 1 linked back. We followed up with a list of 20 mid tier influencers on Twitter. and over 50% linked back.

James Norquay (@connections8) prosperitymedia.com

Generally low and mid-tier influencers will be more helpful than top-tier influencers. Not because top-tier influencers don’t want to help… but because more people ask for their help and they don’t have the time for it.

Of course, sometimes you may find a top-tier influencer who does help more than a low-tier influencer. It’s rare… but possible. I wouldn’t depend on it though.

The biggest mistake I see businesses make with influencer marketing is they are focusing on the wrong influencers. Your true influencers are your most devoted customers and/or community members whom are your biggest advocates. Focus on them and they will continue to be your biggest brand evangelists.

Melonie Dodaro @MelonieDodaro TopDogSocialMedia.com

A study by Oracle found that celebrity/athlete endorsements resonate the least with the audience. It makes sense since customers have gotten used to seeing celebrities in advertisements and we know they get paid for it. Their opinion holds less weight. Not to forget… we’ve seen them promote many products before… It’s very biased… so their promotions fall on deaf ears.

What’s worse is… celebrities get paid 6 figures for promotions and that is out of budget for most startups.

On the other hand you’ve got these small social media influencers who enjoy talking about certain topics, giving their honest thoughts and experience while reviewing a product… getting all the positive engagement and cost a fraction of what it costs to promote with a celebrity. In most cases, all you need to send them is a free product with a letter/note and they’ll start posting.

A good thing about small influencers is that their small following makes them appear more trustworthy. Small influencers are likely to communicate with their audience more, reply to comments, create content based on a few comments etc… it’s just a lot more personal… and the more personal it is, the higher the engagement and trust.

Personally, I don’t bother commenting on a mega influencer’s video or blog post, because I know they won’t reply to it or even see it. I’m more likely to drop a comment on something that’s likely to get a reply… there’s honestly no point spending time on something that someone won’t even look at. It’s like knocking on a door for an abandoned house.

But, when I see a small influencer who replies to comments (or even a big influencer who replies to comments), I will drop a comment… join the conversation… give feedback, suggestions… show gratitude and thanks… it’s much different. I feel like there is a human on the other side instead of a broadcaster… I’ll subscribe, watch, read, engage and buy from such an influencer because I know they are honest, truthful and… a friend too. And, I trust friends! I’m sure it’s the same with you too.

Not Knowing Their Audience

I think the biggest mistake brands make is reaching out to me and asking me to promote something to my audience that has nothing to do with my audience. My audience is all I got, and I respect the hell out of them. To think I’d sell them out for what? Never.

Peter Shankman shankman.com (@petershankman)

Influencers value their audience more than anything. They want to help their audience and they’ll never try to make a quick buck out of them. That is a true influencer. Influencers like that build the loyalist and most engaged audience ever.

The biggest problem is these companies (or agencies) do not do the proper screening to make sure that the demographics of the influencer matches well with the product being marketed….which is usually a disaster!

Scott Eddy (@MrScottEddy) and mrscotteddy.com

Before you decide on the influencer you want to target. Go through their feed. Look at their most popular posts, tweets… those with the highest number of likes, shares and comments. If you can find anything similar to what you want to promote earning high engagement by that influencers audience then you’ve got a potential winner… your product/content should do well with that influencer’s audience… they have a proven track record you can rely on.

Influencer marketing is incredibly effective, but too many bloggers and entrepreneurs make the mistake of choosing the wrong influencers. Yes, “Chuck” was a wonderful TV show. But, that doesn’t mean Zachary Levi and Adam Baldwin are the best fits for your how-to article on prenatal fitness.

To get the most out of Influencer Marketing, you need influencers who are good matches for your target audience. Those are the influencers who can help you in the short term, and the ones with who you can cultivate long-term relationships.

Kevin Duncan (@kevinjduncan) beabetterblogger.com

Go through their followers (if you can), do they look like your target market? Are those the kind of people you were planning to reach?

I’ve had auto scripts calling me an influencer for their product for things like ‘Life Insurance’ when I have never had anything to do with it (I don’t even have life insurance!). A big mistake I made was trying to cast my net too wide, and not even reading up about the person I was trying to connect with and get attention from. My top suggestion, Research! Both the audience of the influencer and the best works of the influencer, so you have something to explain why they would be a great fit with your offering. It’s like ‘segmenting‘ but with max 100 people, who you drill down to get very personal and specific with.

Colin Klinkert

If you don’t research an influencer’s audience, your email will get ignored and that will leave a bad impression (if they remember you). “As with most marketing there is one big mistake that we see folks make time and time again: Not doing your homework.

With all marketing those who take the time to understand the audience and clearly define the proposition will have much more success. Great campaigns whether they are influencer campaigns or anything at all will grow out of a clearly defined situation analysis and strategy. With this backbone in place we can easily identify the right influencers and determine how we will make this worth their while.

Marcus Miller Head of SEO & PPC BowlerHat (@marcusbowlerhat)

Depending on how important your brand or blog is to you. You should try your best to dig into the audience AND the influencer’s likes and dislikes. If any of the two parties doesn’t like your product/content, then your outreach will fail. Imagine spending weeks or months building a relationship with an influencer only to find out later… the influencer won’t promote your stuff because it isn’t relevant to their audience or because they dislike what you’re offering… That would be a tragedy!

The biggest mistake I saw one of my clients make when going for an influencer was the fact that they failed to conduct a proper research first about the influencer they have chosen. An influencer may not always be the right person to do a campaign with, simply because the product or service you offer isn’t relevant to that influencer’s audience. So, to keep this short, make sure that when choosing an influencer… you choose the one that’s relevant to your topic/product.

Francisco Perez (@ditesco) Iblogzone.com

When planning a campaign don’t forget the reason why their audience followed them in the first place. I’m sure it wasn’t to see your product. Make sure your product/content helps the influencer’s audience to get what they wanted from the influencer.

Demographics Pro

Maybe you don’t want to do all the hard work. There must be a tool find out an influencer’s audiences demographics right?

Well fortunately there is… there’s a tool called Demographics Pro, that does the heavy lifting for you. Gives you an overall profile, ethnicity, location, occupation, interests, hashtags and much more.

In fact, here’s a screenshot of Michelle Phan’s twitter followers profile…

Honestly, that saves all the headache and doubt.

Think They Should Only be Online

A lot of people focus on the online influencers that have big social media accounts and large platforms to broadcast their messages. I made this mistake for many years. While the logic makes sense these influencers are highly targeted so there is a lot of competition for their attention. What I’ve realized over time is that this strategy also misses a huge segment of influencers that work and connect offline. Those that don’t have big twitter accounts have been spending their time developing their networks the “old fashioned” way and have their own strong platforms on which to connect and promote people they believe in.

Julie Gray profound-impact.com

People like Keynote speakers and other people who have wide networks offline… if your audience are offline then you should connect with such influencers and not those online – unless your audience are in both places.

Those Who Talk

A common mistake is to conclude that someone with many social profile followers who repeatedly uses a topic word or hashtag = someone whose recommendation of what you’re selling is likely to affect sales. A more reliable acid test is to search blogs and forums for the topic and see which names come up the most and when mentioned, the amount of replies their mention generates.

Saul Fleischman CEO ritetag.com (@osakasaul)

Don’t go to those who talk about a certain topic. Go to those who are referenced when a certain topic is talked about. Because the latter is the true influencer.

Going for Broadcasters

Can they resonate with what you want to promote, has there been something similar promoted in the past and the audience was able to resonate with?

I think the biggest mistake being made in Influencer marketing is looking only at the influencer, and not at the connection and relationship she/he has with followers. Too often Influencer Marketing is reduced to simple broadcasting of a message. Old marketing was dictation… new marketing is communication . It’s time to Change from Convince and Convert to Converse and Convert!

Ted Rubin (@TedRubin) TedRubin.com and ReturnOnRelationship.com

When an influencer joins the conversation… their fans will appreciate it and become more loyal to the influencer… therefore increasing engagement.

The only time you should go for broadcasters is when you’re only promoting content.

Picking Influencers Your Target Market Hates

The most common mistake I see when it comes to influencer marketing comes down to quality versus quantity. New entrepreneurs tend to try the shotgun approach, since they aren’t really sure which influencers they want endorsing their product. This ends up creating more work than it’s worth. A better approach is to really nail down your dream influencer, and create a dedicated and coordinated campaign to recruit them. When it comes to influencer marketing – it’s quality over quantity that wins.

The biggest mistake I’ve ever seen is recruiting an influencer your target customer dislikes. I’ve seen an organic brand, with liberal customers and a feel-good brand, recruit an aggressive internet marketing type. Although management loved the influencer, their target customers saw him as a scammer and wanted nothing to do with him. If you’re going to tie your brand to an influencer, make sure it’s one that your customers love. Influence is not ubiquitous – there are many types of influence out there.

One more thing…

People seem to think influencer marketing is as simple as a popular person posting on their instagram. While that is technically influencer marketing, it’s largely ineffective. True influencer marketing comes down to creating world-class products and a brand that your customers love. Create something that influencers like to support, and you’ll be winning influencer marketing without even trying.

A good example is Slack, which is an incredible company chat platform. The product is so good – even the inaccessible influencers are pushing it for free. Take me for example – I’m not a HUGE influencer, but I’m big enough to where you’d have to pay me $10-25k to push Slack the way I do. They are getting hundreds of millions of dollars in free ad-spend, just by creating an incredible product that influencers love. Influencers became influencers by spreading value to the word – so give them something worth spreading.

Will Mitchell (@startupbros) startupbros.com

Some key takeaways from Will’s advice:

• Make sure the influencer’s personality matches that target audience.
• Create an exceptional product and you’ll get everyone to talk about it, including influencers.
• Influencers must like the product before they promote it.

By the way, if you’re doing a round up post then you need to read Sean’s advice…

I’ve seen sucky campaigns where the organizer reaches out to so many “influencers”. Most of those supposed influencers are not even really influencers and are sometimes practicing unethical disciplines in regards to SEO. It’s such a huge fail when I’m part of a round-up post of “influencers” and some people in that same post is giving bad advice about SEO (which I’m mostly known for being against). That’s a really bad thing and I often don’t share the post because of that and I do not join future round-ups with the organizer.

Sean Si is the CEO and Founder of SEO Hacker and Qeryz. A start-up, data analysis and urgency junkie who spends his time inspiring young entrepreneurs through talks and seminars. Check out his personal blog where he writes about starting up two companies and life in general. @SEO_hacker – that’s my main twitter handle 🙂

Make sure the experts you reach out to are really experts and not scammy frauds… look at what other influencers or experts say about them. Do your research. Of course, that’s if you want to be in good terms with the real experts for future round ups.

How do you know your Influencer will Make you Money?

One way to find that out is to look at their track record… As Doug Karr says, do they have any sponsors who have been with them for at least three years or do they bail out?

Because if they do bail out in less than three years… that’s probably a bad sign. No one bails out from a successful campaign that makes them money.

One thing to have in mind before working with an influencer on a marketing campaign is, the length of the contract. Will it be 1 year, 3 months? 30 days? 1 day? Because even though an influencer may have an outstanding track record, it’s possible it may not work out for you.

The last thing you want is to get into a 1 year contract and then find out that it’s not working out. Before you get into a contract, ask them for a trial campaign… a blog post, video, tweet… just to test the waters. If your happy with the results… then you have a green light my friend.

Ignoring Small “Insignificant” Details

One key mistake in influencer marketing is that brands don’t take into account audience insights when selecting an influencer. The more information a brand can access on that influencer’s audience, the better job they will do reaching their target demographic. It might not always be the influencer with the largest audience – sometimes the best fit is someone with a smaller, more relevant and loyal following.

Many mistakes in influencer marketing come down to overlooking what seems like an insignificant detail, but in fact is key to a successful campaign. For example, when a brand is promoting a product, they can overlook what they’re delivering and how. One company accidentally scheduled a delivery of a new perishable product on Christmas Eve when influencers were not around to receive it, which resulted in the product getting spoiled and the campaign being delayed. Another brand tapped into influencers to reveal new branding, but delivered product with the old branding, which was a big fail.

David Cohen  tapinfluence.com

We overlook what seems to us like “insignificant” detail that actually turns out to be the most important. Usually because of laziness. This reminds me of this quote…

“The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra .” – Jimmy Johnson

It’s just that tiny difference that makes a huge difference… don’t take anything for granted.

Going After a Group at a Time

I think the biggest mistake I have ever made and see a lot of people do is to think that a single outreach template could work every single time. It’s just not true and using the “shotgun” approach, you will be ignored by the most influential people you outreach to and end up with low quality placement. The best thing to do is to reduce the volume of outreach you do and actually get to know who you are talking to. This approach consistently gets us high quality endorsement where other marketers struggle to get by.

Gael Breton authorityhacker.com

If you go after too many you won’t be able to build a strong relationship with any.  

The biggest mistake I’ve ever made is NOT first identifying the top 5 influencers that would’ve made the biggest impact. You don’t need 10 or 20 of them. Just a handful. When I did that, everything changed. I focused on ONLY contacting them, providing 10x the value, making myself useful in any way — and eventually opportunities came along.

Samuel Woods Growth Marketing Consultant samueljwoods.com @heysamwoods

Honestly, who said you need 100 influencers to do the job? Just 5 should do the trick. Just make sure those 5 people are actually influential and not a bunch of frauds or popular people with no influence at all.

The PRRR Formula for Selecting the Ideal Influencer

So now you know what not to do and gotten some valuable insights and advice from the experts and influencers. It’s time to get to work… but first… What does PRRR stand for?

• Personality
• Relevance
• Reaction
• Resonance

Personality

This one is a branding thing… What’s your brands archetype? If you don’t have one yet, you can pick one from the infographic below… Don’t know what I’m on about? Well here’s a short guide on brand personalities. Once you’ve chosen a brand personality… you need to target an influencer with a similar personality to keep your branding consistent. But, this one is really for brands selling products and services… blogs can pass on this one… YAY, less work to do!

Relevance

Not sure if you’ve realized this or not… but, the thing about influencer marketing is that you can’t make any decisions or conclusions at all before you look at both the influencer and their audience. They go hand in hand together.

Anyway, with relevance you need to make sure the product/blog post that you plan to promote is relevant to the influencer AND their audience.

Influencer: Is your product/article within the influencers expertise? Is it similar to something they preach?

Audience: Does your product/article get the audience closer to their goals or solve their problems? Did they follow the influencer to achieve that goal or solve that specific problem or did they follow them to get something else?

If you don’t know how to find out the audiences problems and goals then here’s a simple way to do it…

Step 1: Open the influencers blog, YouTube Channel, twitter… everything they have.

Step 2: Look for their top 10 blog posts, by using buzzsumo. For YouTube, you need to manually look at the videos and look for the highest viewed and liked video. Save the links in a word or excel document.

Step 3: Go through their social feed and save the link to all posts with high engagement. There’s a lot of labor needed here… try to go through at least 3 months worth of posts. Save the link to the most popular posts in a word or excel document… don’t overthink… you can refine your results later.

Step 4: Now go through the popular content, read/watch them and then read the comments and ask yourself… What problems does this blog post/product solve? Or what goals does this blog post/product solve? Don’t just look on the surface, you need to dig deep.

For example, If the most popular post is: How to Get Your First Paying Client. Then the goal/desire isn’t to get a client. The true desire is to make money.

By now, you should know what’s relevant to the audience since you know the audience’s problems and desires. You can now answer the question… Is your product/article relevant to the influencer’s audience? Also… if location matters to you… Are the influencer’s audience in your ideal location?

Reaction

This one is about engagement and activity… Do fans engage with posts? Or are they dead? Does the influencer engage with at least some of their fans? Or do they post and bail out?

Does the influencer post frequently or are they inactive?

Stay away from a graveyard. Make sure both the influencer and the audience are active and engaged.

Resonance

Even though a lot of influencers and their audiences will have the right personality, be relevant and have decent reaction… some influencers will still do better than others. Because there are too many influencers who’ll be a suitable match for your campaign… it’s best to filter the good from the great – to maximize results.

Sounds great. But, how do you do it?

You compare your target market with the influencers audience and find out if they truly are the same. This is the part where you use your final judgment. You’re the judge now. Out of all the 20, 50, 100 influencers that you found suitable… it’s time to pick the ones you believe will resonate the most with what you have to offer. You’re the judge now…

Do You Really Need All Four?

In my opinion the most important two are relevance and reaction… you can’t succeed if these two aren’t right. But, you could get away by ignoring the others… in fact, it’s very likely you will succeed without the others. But, wouldn’t it be better if the influencer and the audiences personalities matched your brand’s personality? And wouldn’t it be better if you could target influencers who have audiences that resonate with your product/article more than others? Your choice. But again… Relevance and Reaction are needed. Personality and Resonance are added luxuries/recommended.

How to Find Influencers

You can find influencers at…

• Events
• Expert round up posts within your niche
• Search on FollowerWonk, Buzzsumo and SocialBlade
• Referrals
• Top X Influencers Lists

Not Using Tools & Technology

Not using available tools and resources to their full potential. For example, Triberr is a great platform for getting more shares or tweets on Twitter, but it can also be used for connecting with influencers in your niche (and get them to share your blog posts).

Devesh Sharma (@devesh) wpkube.com

Here’s a list of some tools for finding influencers (other than Buzzsumo and FollowerWonk)…

• Ninja Outreach
• Group High
• traackr

If you were following through, then you should have completed Steps 1 – 3.

Now it’s time to work on Step 4.

Let me remind you what it was…

Step 4: Create a step-by-step plan to reach your goal.

Okay… maybe you’ll want to come back for this after you’ve gotten some ideas from the next chapter “Building the Relationship & Trust”. If that sounds like your plan then keep reading and I’ll remind you about Step 4 in the end of the next chapter.

Building the Relationship & Trust

The biggest mistake I’ve seen in influencer marketing is brands not taking the time to actually build a relationship. I get pitched by numerous brands every day, but very few ever take the time to build a relationship with me, and more importantly think about what I want – rather than just what they want from me.

Sean Ogle  (@seanogle) Location 180

The biggest mistake I’ve made with influencer marketing is to skip the “trust building” step. Be generous, initiate reciprocity, expect nothing in return and the rewards will flood in down the road.

Will Blunt (@WillBluntAU) bloggersidekick.com

A mistake everyone seems to make is establishing a foundation before asking for something. The reason most asks never succeed is because the size of the request is far greater than the trust that has been established. I wrote a blog post on this called Please Don’t Ask Before You Say Hello and Another 9 Don’ts.

Liz Strauss

The biggest mistake I’ve ever made was being too aggressive in my initial influencer outreach email to brand new connections that I was trying to establish a relationship with. The best advice would be to start with the basic fundamentals and reach out discussing something that you both have a passion for, or similarities with. Then as time goes on, send them over a link to your content to see if they’d be willing to share it.

Matt Banner onblastblog.com @blastyourblog

I see two glaring errors that are often made in influencer marketing. The first is not taking time to build value and a relationship prior to approaching influencers. Just like in “real life” you don’t jump right into a new friendship asking for favors. You give first, and develop mutual respect and understanding. The other error I see is marketers spending time in the wrong location – guest posting, or soliciting influencer support within a sphere that is not reaching their own ideal audience. This amounts to wasted time and energy on the part of all involved.

Deborah Tutnauer deborahtutnauer.com @itsallsuccess

I found this one funny because it’s true. People treat online influencers like they are in a fictional movie or something. This is the real life!

If you don’t build a relationship, you’re basically walking up to a stranger in the street and asking them to promote your link to their twitter followers.

In fact, that could work with an ordinary stranger. The only problem is… we’re not dealing with ordinary strangers… we’re dealing with influential famous people who get asked the same thing hundreds of times by a ton of other strangers and a tiny amount of friends.

I’m sure you can guess who they’ll respond to… (Spoiler Alert: It’s their friends).

Not Understanding Them

Biggest mistake: Do you truly know who you are dealing with? Most people don’t do enough research to know enough about the influencer to have meaningful conversation. When you only know the superficial details about an influencer, it’s very difficult to have a deep and layered conversation. Let alone to build a relationship – fast. If you plan to have an influencer on your podcast or you will appear on theirs, do your research. Read their book(s), go through their content and get to know them better than anyone else they will get in touch with. You’ll see the time investment pay off and you’ll build a relationship much quicker with that influencer.

Thanh Pham asianefficiency.com (@asianefficiency)

Far too many people think that, simply because they read someone’s blog, view their social media posts, watch their livestream or listen to one’s podcast, they ACTUALLY KNOW the Influencer and their likes, dislikes, core values, etc. Fact is, what one sees is almost always a filtered version of who the Influencer actually is. Before reaching out for an Influencer, dig deeper to make sure that there is true alignment and you actually LIKE that person and would want to bring them home to meet your mom. Avoid being blinded by the Influencer light of mass visibility as this happens frequently. And, remember, an Influencer is just like you and me — they’re just able to reach more people with the push of a button.

Steve Olsherwww.SteveOlsher.com  (@steveolsher)

Pestering a speaker at an event after they have just spoken – bad timing. Not researching speakers and analysts at an event beforehand. Adding comments to blogs that are blatantly selling with littler regard to blog content.

Glen Westlake (@GlenWestlake)BrightTarget.com

Not reading more than their About page before pitching. Many influencers have a very specific point of view. If you don’t understand it, you could easily find your brand with very negative coverage.

Nate Shivar (@nshivar) shivarweb.com

Failing to Give

Often times people go into sales mode. Influencer Marketing is meant to drive engagement that is authentic and creates a two-way dialogue with potential customers. Relationships create value and ultimately success. Our team preaches, give give give!

Jason Will (@JasonBWill) Zipkick.com.

As simple as it sounds the biggest mistake I see in influencer marketing is not giving before you ask to take. Heck. I’ve made this so many times it’s not even funny. I’ll ask Big Name So-and-So to promote Product X without so much as asking how I can help them, actually helping them, or even giving them a preview of the product. Give first, then give again, and again. Then you are in a position to make an ask.

Matt McWilliams  Affiliate Launches Made Simple  (@MattMcWilliams2)

Reaching out to influencers with an ‘ask’ without having anything of value to give in return.

Carla Johnson (@carlajohnson) www.TypeACommunications.com and www.7thEraOfMarketing.com

No value = No reply from influencer .

There are a few different avenues you can take with influencer marketing: 1) Pay an influencer for some form of endorsement 2) Leverage an existing relationship for some form of endorsement 3) Participate in joint venture with an influencer where mutual promotion occurs 4) Try to build a relationship from scratch and later utilize it for some sort of endorsement. I’ve focused on the latter, and for this scenario the issue very often people are too forceful. You need to take your time and form a true relationship, otherwise you’re going to bother the influencer. I’ve taken this approach with growing my Twitter following using influencer marketing, by targeting the friends of the influencers.

Paul Shapiro searchwilderness.com

1. Paying the influencer is the fastest and easiest way. But it doesn’t work always.
2. If you already have influential friends then you could get a promotion from them.
3. Some influencers don’t do JVs with strangers and some do.
4. If you don’t have any influntial friends then you can always build a relationship… then once you’re friends, they may promote you for free… (depending on what you want to promote).

The biggest mistake I’ve ever made and I see others make over and over again is not providing value. For example, asking someone to promote your stuff is a pretty big ask, so make sure to first establish a relationship with the influencer.

Camilla Hallstrom (@c_hallstrom) 99smartideas.com

The biggest mistake I see people make in Influencer Marketing is pitching their product or service on the first outreach. True Influencers are bombarded by “opportunities” every day. To stand out, always begin by adding value to the Influencer first , before ever asking for something in exchange.

Ryan Hanley (@ryanhanley_com) ryanhanley.com

You’re not the first person to offer opportunities. 9 times out of 10 ignoring your opportunity would be a better opportunity for the Influencer .

One of the most common mistakes I see people make when attempting to work with influencers is forgetting to give before asking. Without a relationship established prior, requests for backlinks, social shares, introductions, and so forth, tend to fall on deaf ears. Much like in-person networking, reaching out to influencers should first be focused on what you can do for them — not what you want them to do for you.

Brent Jones is a freelancer and blogger who recently published the expert roundup post, 70 Freelancers Reveal Their Best Source of New Business.

Buying Influencers

The biggest mistake I’ve seen is thinking every influencer can be bought with money. So many marketers approach influencers and try to buy their attention. They don’t try any other strategies. And worst of all, some of the biggest and best influencers cannot be bought – so you lose out twice!

Jim Wang wallethacks.com

You can pay for a promotion if they like what you’re promoting. But, you can’t buy influencers with your bad producs/content. Their audience mean everything to them.

Forgetting They Are Humans

The biggest mistake I made was thinking that I was too small to matter, and that no one had noticed my efforts to be unique and vocal in my niche, which is technical SEO. I was very surprised when I was applying for my “dream job” that the times I had interacted with the founder of that company stuck with him, and helped me land the job. It’s easy to forget that it’s people who utilize social media profiles for brands , so developing relationships by sharing & engaging with their content is also building a relationship with a real person.

Jeremy Rivera the SEO consultant for Tennessee Contracting Services a Nashville roofing contractor I’m working closely with currently.

How many times to we tweet or comment online… something we’d never say to that person if he/she was standing in front of us? Before saying anything online, imagine that person is sitting on the other side of the table.

Offering to Help

A lot of people send generic emails that look like this.

Hello Influencer, My name is John Doe, I really enjoyed the speach you gave last night. I’m a marketing strategist for blah blah company. I would really like to help you. Let me know if you need anything. Best, John Doe

Okay, it’s a nice email… but it’s not specific. Influencers get plenty of emails that look like that. Everyone wants to help, but what can they help in? Do you expect the influencer to sit down and think of ways you can help? Of course, not! He’ll most likely delete it and move to the next email.

Two of the big mistakes I see are: 1) Asking someone that you’ve never connected with for help.  These requests are usually ignored, for good reason.  You have to do something to create some semblance of a relationship with the person before asking for a favor.  2)  Asking the other person how you can help them.  If they don’t know you well and don’t know how you can help them, you’re putting the burden on them to figure out how you can help them.  You should do your homework and figure out a way, even something small, to help them.

Paige Burkes (@PaigeBurkes) SimpleMindfulness.com  Facebook

Every influencer needs help. You just need to find it.

I’d say the biggest mistake I see in Influencer Marketing is blasting out an unpersonalised message to too many people rather than focusing on a smaller number of just the right influencers and personalising the approach and message. The other mistake is making it too much work for them – so asking them how you can help them (which creates work for them) rather than suggesting one specific thing you already have figured out they need. Or asking a really complex question which results in them thinking about it for 2 minutes then giving up as it was too much hard work. Make it easy for Influencers to help you.

Ian Brodie To get a copy of Ian’s ’21 Word Email That Can Get You More Clients’ go to ianbrodie.com/21words

So how can you help? Can you improve a resource such as a web page, an ebook or any other piece of content (maybe by adding visuals to their text based content such as infographics)? Can you get them targeted traffic? Help them with sales? Improve their skills or employee skills in something? Improve their employees workplace environment?

How to Get Influencer Attention

I cringe when I see people treating influencers like a commodity, forgetting to help first before asking for something.  Influencer marketing falls down if you don’t build a relationship first and when influencers are getting dozens of requests to help someone out every day, it’s time they need, not exposure. Share their content, engage, comment, reach out, buy their programs if you have to, in order to to get to know them. The more you help them the more you stand out and get their attention.

Donna Moritz (@sociallysorted) sociallysorted.com.au

1. Share results for what they taught you as a case study (be specific and unique)
2. Ask relevant questions after their webinars and talks
3. Share results you learnt from their blog posts, books or other material.
4. Offer to write a testimonial (won’t be very effective if they have enough of them from other influencers and experts)
5. Volunteer to their upcoming event or whatever else you can volunteer for
6. Offer to improve a piece of their content
7. Give them links and exposure to your own audience in your email list, podcast listeners or social followers
8. Tell them about relevant data, stats, research that they seem to care about but may have not heard of… maybe because they were your personal findings or the news didn’t go viral.
9. Comment and share their blog posts (if you do it regularly and comment well, they will remember you and make sure you tag them when you share)
10. Make them laugh through your interations with them (if you’re good at it).
11. Educate them or share a helpful resource they may need.
12. Offer to provide free work on something you’re an expert at (be specific)
13. Give them feedback and answer questions they ask to their email subscribers and social followers. Yes, that means you should follow them and join their email list.
14. Point out a broken link. (blogger don’t like broken links).
15. Correct typos, mistakes and errors in their courses and other material
16. Refer business to them.
17. Impress them with some outstanding results
18. Reply to every single newsletter email they send you (if they’re the ones who read it, rather than an assistant)
19. Add value to their blog posts by offering valuable feedback/insights in your comments.
20. Introduce them to a potential new hire (if they’re hiring) or anyone they look up to.
21. Send them an unexpected surprise gift (something valuable… like ceramics or something they’ll see daily instead of use and throw away)
22. Create a product/tool that would make their lives easier (they’ll sometimes publicly talk about their frustrations and things they wish existed online)
23. Send them creative ideas they can use to improve their current products. (Maybe suggest a few features)
24. Just show genuine appreciation.

Most importantly… don’t expect anything in return.

Keeping it Online Only (Face to Face is Better)

If you can meet them face-to-face then it’s a lot better. People remember visuals more than they remember text.

So letting them see your face will be more memorable than a text based email.

Are they going to an event where you two can meet up? You could go out to the local café or something? Do they live nearby? Invite them to your house for a tea or coffee… or even better, you could go to theirs and bring lunch/dinner with you so they don’t have to cook or worry about hospitality (nothing better than lunch brought right to your door and someone to eat it with, huh?)

Not Becoming Their Valuable Asset

The biggest mistake I’ve seen others make in influencer marketing (and I get this all the time) is assuming we all have endless time, and not bothering to think about what’s in it for the influencer. I know it can be hard to think of ways you can “help” an influencer, but even influencers like to reach new audiences (thus why Zak’s approach is working), to learn new information, and even to guide and mentor someone if we see that they’ve put some effort into getting to know about us and not simply sent a form letter.

Tema Frank (@temafrank) frankonlinemarketing.com

Imagine being the most valuable thing an influencer has? The least you’ll get is free promotion from them. The trick is to help them in things they truly care about consistently… until you become an important person in their lives.

• Every week you’d point out 5 dead links in their blogs
• Offer them the most valuable feedback
• Gather data for them
• Help improve their blog posts with infographics and other visuals
• Refer business to them
• Much more

The best part? You won’t ask them for a thing! At some point they’ll want to help you. They’ll be waiting for you to ask for a favor. Or even ask you if you need anything. Here’s what I would do…

• 2 – 3 days a week of helping with something they value.
• Don’t ask for anything for 1 – 6 months.
• Join their conversations, share their posts, reply to comments on a daily basis.

Action

Okay, so now that you’ve identified your goal, influencer and you know how to build a relationship… it’s time you get started with step 4.

Here’s a reminder of what step 4 is…

Step 4: Create a step-by-step plan to reach your goal.

Complete step 4 before you move on to the next chapter.

Outreach & Collaboration

I know most people will jump right into emailing, so here it goes…

My biggest mistake with influencer marketing is jumping in to send emails too quickly.  It’s important to follow a process and build the relationship and by doing this it takes more time but you get better results.  I follow my 6 stage process for influencer marketing which helps a lot.

Ian Cleary (@IanCleary)

One more…

Not having the relationship built up before making the ask. I always tried firing out a bunch of e-mails with no prior relationship, and that didn’t work. It’s hard to keep track of dozens of relationships, so it’s easy to forget what my relationship with someone really is. For myself, I’ll build those up and provide more value before making the ask.

Dan Stelter (@dansteltercopy) freelancewriterinchicago.com

Another one…

The biggest mistake I’ve seen people make in influencer marketing is massive cold-contacting. Build a relationship first! Tweet/comment/like, then reach out! Much more effective that way.

Brandon Doyle (@travelintweeter) wallaroomedia.com

And one more…

Do you start a first date by asking the girl/guy to come home with you? No. It doesn’t work. Then why start influencer marketing by asking the girl/guy to give you something? Why would a stranger…

• Read and review your book?
• Write a great guest post for you?
• Give you feedback on your startup idea?

Slow down. Be nice. Give something first. Warm them up. Collaborate on something. Then when you ask for help, they’ll be happy to come over spend the night… Take your time and go get ’em, romeo!

Andy Crestodina orbitmedia.com (@crestodina)

This one too…

I’m pretty aggressive in general, and one of the things I learned in influencer marketing is the critical importance of patience. I learned this lesson the hard way. I made the mistake of pressing some of the original influencers I approached too hard to fast. I came really close to burning some important bridges that way, and had to work a long time to overcome it. Remember, what you are looking to build with influencers is a relationship. That means first discovering their needs, and working hard to serve their needs first, well before you put your asks of them on the table.

Eric Enge (@stonetemple) stonetemple.com

And this one…

When reaching out to industry influencers, it’s very critical in the first-hour connection as it only leads to two end results: build trust or burn the bridge. Here are some cases where connections lost due to aggressive influencer marketing:

• Asking influencers to link to a particular page without building the relationship in the initial pitch – content can speak for itself but it’s better to start to build trust.
• Pitching spam-like email messages that are likely to get deleted by influencers (opening lines are something like – Hey Webmaster).

Venchito Tampon is the CEO and Co-Founder of SharpRocket, a link building company that provides link building services to local and international clients. He is also a Filipino motivational speaker that inspired thousands of youth across the Philippines.

And this…

Influencers are busy people who are successful at whatever they are doing. Getting them to support you is always a challenge due to the fact that they bring a lot more to the table as compared to you. This is where you work up your way to make sure that you are in a position to make a request that stands a decent chance at getting accepted. Pitching early, without doing the actual ground work is the biggest mistake that most people do. I too had been guilty of this and as a result most of my pitches early on weren’t getting approved. This way, I wasn’t just losing the pitches – I was making sure that the influencers won’t ever want to hear from me again.

Uttoran Sen (@uttoransen) guestcrew.com  LinkedIn

Last one…

Going in for the ‘ask’ too quickly. Can you romance a guy/girl a little?! If you want to get an influencer’s attention and time, you should be prepared to work for it. I recommend looking for a way you can provide them with disproportionate value first. That’s the best way to stand out above the fray.

Adam Steele (@AdamGSteele) magistrateinc.com

Are you sure you still want to reach out before building trust? I’ve done both cold pitching and warm pitching and I can say both work… the only difference is warm pitching works better. So if your plan is to cold pitch get ready to increase the number of people on your list.

Outsourcing and Automating Outreach

Most people get into the mind frame of trying to optimize their outreach process and hire someone to do it for them.  If you really want to build a relationship with an influencer, then you better do it yourself.  There is nothing worse than receiving an email from a VA saying so-and-so really likes your website.  I’m like, “if he or she really did like my stuff, then they would have reached out to me themselves.”  Thanks but no thanks.

Dave Chesson Kindlepreneur.com (@DaveChesson)

Seriously? People really do that? Yeah, that’s what I thought too.

The biggest mistake I see people make is in outsourcing their outreach. I once had a guy (who will remain nameless) have his assistant pitch me to have him on my podcast to discuss his book about effective networking. It was the ultimate irony! Plus it didn’t help that neither he nor his assistant had any idea who my audience was — it was “me me me” all the time; very self-serving and not even worthy of a reply.

Nick Loper SideHustleNation.com

 Must be very common… I guess that makes it easier for your to stand out.

The biggest mistake companies make when doing influencer marketing is outsourcing the process to an agency. It’s the influencers who are doing the real work and producing results, while agencies are middle men, the fat that should be cut out of the process since agencies contribute minimally to the outcome. Of course, since companies don’t have in-house expertise in influencer outreach, they have to outsource it to an agency. So, the company ends up paying the agency to learn how to manage influencers, the results are minimal for the company, and agency enjoys long-term benefits from the whole process. My recommendation to any company that’s doing influencer marketing is to develop its own in-house team whose job is to build long-term relationships with influencers.

Dino Dogan dinodogan.com (@dinodogan)

You heard. Don’t outsource. Learn!

The biggest mistake I’ve ever made in influencer marketing is trying to use too much automation. Sure, there are great tools available to help send outreach emails, or connect on Twitter, but use them carefully. Influencers can smell automation from a mile away. Put in the extra effort to be authentic!

Nicholas Scalice (@nscalice) earnworthy.com

The biggest mistake we have made in Influencer marketing is not dedicating a specific team member toward outreach. Imagine the friendships and contacts we could have made in last year with 2,000 hours of authentic relationship-building. A mistake others have made is putting too much information in email or direct messages, and having an influencer share that message on social media as “what not to do”. A phone call or in-person meeting holds significantly more long-term value.

Steve Wiideman (@seosteve) wiideman.com  Facebook

Do it all in-house and get a team for it.

The biggest mistake that I’ve made in the past with influencer marketing would have to be over-automation. It’s very tempting to try and automate as much of your processes as possible in order to scale up the activities you’re working on, but the more you automate, the less personal you become. Influencers are real people and they like talking to real people. If you’re reaching out to 50 different influencers, take the time to craft personal emails to each of them instead of sending a blanket email – trust me, this small extra investment of time will go a long way.

Matthew Barby (@matthewbarby) matthewbarby.com

One of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen recently involved an outreach company that was looking to get their clients mentioned on a top online publication as a part of their influencer marketing strategy. Their mistake was they contacted dozens of the authors at the publication at the same time. So naturally, several of the authors told their editors, and the company was outed pretty quickly.

Kristi Hines Freelance Writer

From Kristi’s story, we learn several things…

• Most outreach companies are idiots.
• Most outreach companies don’t know what they’re doing.
• Most outreach companies enjoy spamming.
• Don’t email more than one person at a time in a company. Only reach out to another person when the first person doesn’t reply within the first 2 weeks.

I’ve heard a lot of stories about how spammy and dumb most outreach companies are. If you ask me… that’s not a bad thing. It’s actually very good. Makes it easier for yourself and the good outreach companies that know what they’re doing.

Reaching Out with No Purpose

Don’t just reach out to say “Hi”. It’s just useless and worthless. influencers know too many people already. They don’t need anymore “Hi’s” from people.

One of the biggest mistakes that people make in influencer marketing is not having a valid rationale for why you are reaching out to each person, and what the purpose of the outreach is. As a result, you might spend time interacting with influencers who are not really a great fit for your niche, or would not be able to help you with your goals.

Peter Banerjea Co-Founder, SuccessIsWhat

Many people will reach out to influencers, go back and forth with emails… only to find out later that the influencer can’t even help them! It could have been all saved if you were clear from the beginning.

Thinking that Influencers are Your Employees

An influencer is not a journalist. Most of them have no idea about the social contract that typically exists between journalists and corporations. They don’t really care about it. The biggest mistake that brands make with influencers is trying to control them or treat them like journalists, instead of peers, partners or friends. Influencers will – typically – say and do what they feel, which may be in contrast to what the brand wants. If you can’t swallow that, don’t attempt to use influencers.

Mitch Joel – President, Mirum – Author, Six Pixels of Separation & CTRL ALT Delete – @mitchjoel – www.mitchjoel.com

Influencers are most likely entrepreneurs who work for themselves because they hate taking orders from a boss. So for brands to come and think they can control the influencer… they must be crazy. Let the influencer do what they do best. They’ve built a huge audience… let them talk to their audience like they usually do.

Always Settling on a Handshake

Usually when there’s money involved and it’s a big campaign you should try to get something in writing. Don’t just settle on a handshake. Make sure you have proof on what you’ve agreed. Especially if you’ve paid them. Obviously if you’re a blogger asking for a tweet then you can’t demand anything.

Trusting that people will commit and do what they say they would do in a joint venture scenario. Always have a written agreement even if it is your mother or cousin or family member. Don’t ever leave any business dealings to Chance.

Kenny Andam (@kennyandam) scarletminor.com

I totally agree with Kenny. There should always be a written agreement between both parties. The good news is, that with email you have everything written and saved… your email client (i.e. Google) can retrieve your conversation even if someone decides to delete it. But still… try your best to actually get an official document especially if you’ve paid them.

Being Stingy

There are a few things that I think people could do better in regards to Influencer Marketing. The first is this – pay the influencer. You’d pay for Adwords, so why expect access to their community for free? The second is to seek long term partnerships, not just going for a hit and run campaign. The third is to set outcomes in relation to activity. Know what you want to achieve, add numbers to it, and get ready to adjust your content/approaches for next time. This should give you happy influencers, and tangible results.

Martin Shervington (@martinsherv) www.plusyourbusiness.com

The biggest mistake I see people make is people who pursue influencer marketing but give it little or no value. They will spend a ton of money on a marketing agency, but then budget no money for influencers. They assume that people are waiting and willing to promote their for-profit company for free.

Gary Arndt Everything-Everywhere.com (@EverywhereTrip)

There 3 types of Payments that Influencers take…

1. Money – Yes, of course…
2. Traffic – help them reach a new audience.
3. Social cause – attach them to a social cause by donating a portion of the profits to their favorite charity or something they care about.

Thinking the World Revolves Around You (What’s In It for Them)

The biggest mistake I see in influencer marketing is not offering value. Don’t just think about what’s in it for you. Always position it to what’s in it for them.

Evan Carmichael (@evancarmichael) evancarmichael.com YouTube

For 2-3 years a very well-known brand kept inviting me into their influencer program, but it was easy to say no thanks each time, because they never explained a benefit to me, the influencer – their pitch was all about them! Eventually they wore me down enough that I asked a friend who had been in the program, another top-Forbes-ranked influencer. “Look out, they’ll try to take advantage. That’s why I dropped out.” Yikes. I asked another friend, a very-high-profile speaker who had spoken at one of their events. “Oh, they’ll use you if you let them. Steer clear!” This perception is almost universal among top-tier influencers – and guess what? The “influencers” in their program today? Nearly all are people you’ve never heard of, with small followings, who have no sway in the B2B world this company sells to. Suffice it to say, I’ve never had an easier time saying no in my life.

Ted Coiné Check out Ted’s post on influencer marketing. It has a very good looking presentation.

See, even the famous brands don’t know how to do influencer marketing right.

“Not answering the question of “what’s in it for them?” The biggest mistake I’ve seen companies make with influencer marketing is making it all about themselves. Effective influencer marketing seeks first to do something for the influencer, often in the form of exposure for their own thought leadership. That’s why round up posts like these are so effective: you’re curating great content in the form of influencer expertise to an important question, while attracting readers and shares on your brand content platforms. My number one rule for influencer marketing: make it all about what you’re doing for them.

Michael Brenner is CEO of Marketing Insider Group, and co-author of The Content Formula. Follow Michael on Twitter @BrennerMichael.

People don’t participate in round ups just for the sake of it. They do it because it’s an opportunity to gain exposure to a new audience.

Whenever you approach an influencer you need to remember they are busy people who get a million requests. Ensure communication to them is short, easy to answer and clearly explains the benefit THEY will receive by fulfilling your request.

James Reynolds seosherpa.com @FollowJames

  Here’s a classical one…

The biggest mistake I see (and use to make myself) is focusing too much on what you want and not how it will benefit that the influencer themselves. As the godfather would say “Make them an offer they can’t refuse” .

Ben Beck benjaminbeck.com @ben_beck Check out his link building class.

The biggest mistake you can make is to fail to offer something of value to the influencer before asking them to put you in front of their audience. And it can’t just be something you think is valuable, like your infographic or blog post on a relevant topic. It’s critical to be generous first – share the influencer’s content, comment on their blog, or otherwise improve the reach of their content first. Once you’ve shown that you’re not just in it for you, it’s a lot easier to get an influencer on board to help you expand the reach of your own business.

Jessica Oman (@renegadeplanner) renegadeplanner.com

The biggest mistakes I’ve always made in the past is being more focused on the sale, rather than helping the person. To effectively influence someone, you need to identify and address THEIR needs, not your own. Having your needs met is always secondary – your focus should always be on adding value first.

Stefan Pylarinos (@prolifemastery) projectlifemastery.com

You want to know “what’s the biggest mistake you’ve ever made (or seen others make) in influencer marketing” is? It’s assuming that strangers who have influence will listen and support you. Even though I know it I tend to forget it very often. I’m so excited about the things I popularize that

I often forget that other people, especially influential ones who don’t know you couldn’t care less.

Outreach is literally begging for attention. You get a few seconds at best but most people aren’t altruists so that you need to give them something bigger so that they give you a share, link or quote. While I get it wrong sometimes, most of the messages I receive get that wrong.

People assume that I have nothing else to do but to write about their products

They want me to give them links or spend time writing for them for free. I’m not even a huge influencer, just a guy who happens to blog about a few topics and who curates content on a few more on social media.

You can imagine then how real influencers are inundated with requests.

It’s Peak Outreach in my opinion. Influencers are the new lurkers most of the time. They stay silent too. It’s better to socialize with like-minded individuals who are not influential on large scale yet but who are supportive or at least listen.

Tadeusz Szewczyk Founder of onreact.com. You can find him on his blog.

Influencers aren’t just sitting waiting for your email.

The biggest mistake I’ve made in influencer marketing is thinking that influencers would care about our content just because they were mentioned in it. I would include quotes from influencers in my shareable content and cold pitch them to the influencers asking them for shares on social media. I didn’t understand that these folks were getting hit up by other marketers 24/7, all vying for their very limited time and attention. If their inbox is getting blasted with asks – it’s unlikely that a cold pitch about one of a dozen press mentions for the day is going to make them take pause. There’s an aspect of “social selling” that comes with influencer marketing. If you start interacting with them on social, commenting on their blogs and actually take an interest in what they do online — influencers are much more likely to respond to emails and co-marketing requests.

John-Henry Scherck (@JHTScherck) Marketing strategist at DocSend

If you’ve mentioned an influencer, remember that most likely you weren’t the only one.

Now from the Head of Marketing at Ahrefs…

The biggest mistake one can do in influencer marketing is: “Reach out when you don’t have anything to offer.”

Let me explain what I mean. There are only so many “influencers” and a ton of people who would like to get something from them; be it a tweet, a link or just a piece of advice.

Well put yourself in the shoes of these influencers. Why would they want to help thousands of random strangers?

They probably have a ton of stuff on their plates and if they try to help everyone who’s seeking for their help – they’ll never have time for their own priorities.

There are tons of articles published on the topic of “connecting with influencers”. And all these articles re-hearse the same advice – “MAKE IT ABOUT THEM”.

But, looks like people misunderstand that simple advice. And they send outreach emails like:

“Hey Influencer,

You’re so fine, you blow my mind.

Now tweet my article, because I told you that you’re fine.

Here’s the link: unknown-website.com/lously-article/

Cheers,

Tim”

You know that this email is not about influencer – it’s about you. And the influencer knows it too. So he deletes it.

So why don’t you try something like this instead:

“Hey Influencer,

I’ve read your article about XXXX.

Then I immediately applied your tips and it WORKED!

My results are YYY and ZZZ.

Thanks a lot for the free advice!

In fact I wrote a post with my case study and I credited the advice to you (with backlink and all that stuff).

Here’s the link: unknown-website.com/case-study/

Let me know if you need a testimonial or something.

Cheers,

Tim”

I’m not saying that this email will work 100% of time. All I’m trying to say is that it will work 10x better than the previous one. And then it’s up to influencer to decide if whatever you’re showing him is worth his attention.

Tim Soulo is the head of marketing at Ahrefs and you can get more great marketing tips from him on his personal blog called BloggerJet.

See? Tim Soulo’s second email was much more valuable. Influencers like to boast about their students successes. It’ll make other people think, “this person got success from the influencer’s FREE blog post? What kind of value would the influencer provide in a paid product?”

Controlling What Influencers Say

I just had a personal experience where a brand wanted me to work with them, as an influencer. It’s a product I use so I was very open to the possibility, but when we began our work together, they wanted me to use their messaging, wanted to write the content for me, and didn’t want me to disclose the relationship. Not only does the latter violate ethical considerations, it makes it hard to be an influencer when the words aren’t your own. I stepped away from the relationship and leave this as my advice: Don’t try to control the relationship. The reason you want to work with the influencer(s) is because of the trust they’ve built with their audiences. Let them do what they do best while supporting your product or service.

Gini Dietrich (@ginidietrich) spinsucks.com

The biggest mistake I’ve seen (and see regularly) is brands that don’t allow the authentic voice of the influencer’s they’re working with to shine. Time and time again I see brands try and use an influencer’s platform, just for their reach (and not for their voice). These types of campaigns, at least for me personally, have been the least successful with my audience – and as a result, for the brand as well.

Erin Falconer PickTheBrain.com

The biggest mistake that I have seen with influencer marketing was when the brand hampers creative freedom. The purpose of having an influencer market your brand is to spread your message in a very authentic way. However, many brands decide to control every element of the campaign causing it to flop because they don’t understand the best way to push something to a different type of audience.

Jeet Banerjee (@TheJeetBanerjee) www.JeetBanerjee.com

Influencers know their audience better than you. They know how to communicate with them better than you. Their audience knows the influencer’s voice. The influencer built his audience with his natural voice. For someone to come and think they can dictate the speech is ridiculous. Moral of the story? Educate them about your brand, your product, your values and set expectations…. but don’t tell them what to say.

Buying Links Indirectly & Breaking FTC Rules

The biggest mistake I’ve seen people make is to give influencers free stuff in return for a blog post about the product that includes followed backlinks back to the product site. Google considers this to be the equivalent of a paid link and can lead to big penalties.

Luc Lévesque luclevesque.com

Don’t ask for backlinks or reviews. What you should do is let them know you’re sending them a product and let them decide whether it’s worth the mention or not.

The most common mistake I see people making in influencer marketing is not knowing the guidelines set forth by the FTC. There are specific rules to follow regarding disclosure that I often find missing in relationship marketing content. The last thing you ever want is to get on the wrong side of any alphabet agency. It’s simple: when in doubt, disclose.

Bill Burniece highpayingaffiliateprograms.com (Facebook)

That’s a very good rule indeed.

Disclaimer: this isn’t legal advice. Please seek legal advice from a professional.

Writing Copy for Influencers… Sometimes

Biggest mistake I’ve ever made in influencer marketing is not checking the text copy created by the influencer when exposing my brand to their audience. This plays a big part in the success of the campaign. For example, if the influencer talks about you as a friend and someone they highly recommend, you’ll see much higher returns versus them simply mentioning you. So, I actually write the text copy for an influencer to use.

Douglas Lim douglaslimdigital.com (Facebook) (LinkedIn)

Some influencers may need a bit of guidance regarding the copy. You could work together with them and edit it as you see appropriate… but the end decision should be theirs.

Using Email Templates

The biggest mistake you can make with influencer marketing is using any kind of template based introduction. Do not send an email to connect with an influence that even ‘smells’ like a template or it will go straight to the trash folder. Instead think about how you make friends in real life – what would you normally do to connect with someone to make friends?

Yaro Starak Entrepreneurs-Journey.com (@yarostarak)

Influencers aren’t dumb, they know a template when they see one.

Over-automating influencer marketing is the biggest mistake I’ve seen. Trying to reach out to influencers with automated templates. Instead, you need to be genuine and build a real relationship with influencers.

Brandon Yanofsky (@byanofsky) founder of WP Radius, a WordPress support and maintenance company.

That’s a problem that comes from automation software templates. Everyone has used them.

Using the cookie cutter approach is the biggest mistake I see people make. Sending emails without addressing a real person by name (“Hey!” instead of “Hi Henneke”) is the most basic one. A little research can go quite far. When pitching guest posts, for instance, you must show you understand the blog’s audience and boost your credibility. Why do you think your pitch will appeal to an editor?

Henneke Duistermaat, Founder EnchantingMarketing.com, @HennekeD

If it doesn’t have a name, it’s a template.

The biggest and most common mistakes I see people making with influencer marketing (asides from not doing any) is using the same email template as everyone else or performing an outreach that benefits only themselves.

Brian Lang  www.smallbusinessideasblog.com

I think the biggest mistake for me personally is when someone asks me to post or contribute to their article or do their summit – and they get my name wrong. I think if you want to ask an influencer for their time and effort, you should probably figure out how to spell their name :-). I mean, I get people saying my name wrong. That’s kind of a given – but spelling it wrong? (Thank you for getting my name right! Thank you for getting my name right!) Another pet peeve of mine is when someone wants me to speak at their online summit – and then they want me to make all the effort, do all the emails, do all the marketing, and I pretty much get nothing in return. On the opposite side – I love doing summits for Jennifer Lerner because she always sends me really cool gift baskets after! Yes, I can be bought with swag 🙂

Viveka von Rosen (@linkedinexpert) linkedintobusiness.com

I have seen a few mistakes, which include: 1. Reaching out to influencers and clearly NOT bothering to do any prior research about him/her, which is clearly evident.  2. Doing a copy and paste of information when reaching out to influencers, NOT personalizing the correspondence, and even leaving in details (such as names) from influencers they have previously contacted. Ah…NO!  Both of these things will clearly NOT help you build relationships with influencer and may in fact damage your reputation and any hopes of influencer marketing.

Annemarie Cross www.AnnemarieCross.com (Instagram)

Sometimes when you’re reaching out to a lot of influencers… you’ll open a new email, type the email address, paste the template and personalize. And becuase you don’t want to spend the day sending emails, you’ll start to work faster… but then something bad happens… You forget to personalize some of the emails and your email to Influencer Joe starts with “Hey Sam!” It’s the worst way to start a relationship.

The single biggest mistake (or maybe it is two mistakes) I have seen in outreach emails I constantly receive is as follows: First, people do not take the time to personalize the request. Even to the point where they don’t even write my name. Those get deleted straight away. The other annoying part of that is that people write the same thing to everyone. And it is very easy to see, especially when it is automated and contains links that smack of outreach tools. If you want results in outreach, you have to personalize it (even if it is just the introduction) and realize that you are making a new contact/friend/business partner and not just asking for something.

Ashley Faulkes (@madlemmingz) madlemmings.com

Most influencers know that you’ve used an outreach tool from the way the link looks.

I see a lot of people trying to inauthentically connect with influencers with terrible canned emails. This rarely ever works.

Scott Britton, Co-Founder of Troops

I think outreach tools are vital for efficient marketing, however using the email templates that come with these programs is a big mistake. It seems the majority of marketers are using them verbatim and you can spot them a mile away! We’ve got to get personal in our outreach, try to make a solid connection, and when we use canned emails and blast a couple hundred people at the same time then response will not be good. I suggest target a small number of influencers and craft a unique email for each one. It has so much more gravity, and the potential for a positive response will be so much higher.

Larry Maguire (LarrygMaguire) hardcorejunkie.co

The biggest mistake I see made with Influencer Marketing is focusing on the numbers vs the best fit. Who has the largest Twitter following vs who does our target audience respect and listen to. It needs to be about who drives action. It’s better to have 3,000 people who’ll take action (call, purchase, etc.) than 30k who do nothing.

Brenda Stoltz (@bsstoltz) ariadpartners.com

The biggest mistake I’ve seen others make is a lack of genuine communication. It’s for example when people do not use the name of a person they’re reaching, or they forget to revise the name from the previous message to somebody else. Making connection highly personal is a key, and it begins with a name.

Anna Bogushevskaya (@annabdigital) digitaldrivewithanna.com

The biggest mistake I see people making is not being personal. Sometimes people will send an email asking for something, and they don’t have my name, my name is spelled wrong, or it’s clear that they haven’t actually listened to my podcast, read my blog, or gotten familiar with who I am or what I’m about.

No bueno! I’m a person – and I like to be treated like a human, not a transaction.

Sonia Thompson www.trybizschool.com

Probably the biggest mistake I’ve seen people make is not personalizing their approach. I think people just get a little lazy, or maybe they feel like “Oh, this person would never respond to me anyway,” so they don’t bother putting any real effort forth. It’s kind of a waste of time, for both sides. If I’m taking the time to listen or read your pitch or whatever, take the time to make sure you know who I am, what I am about, and why you are pitching me, know what I mean? I know some people can make it a little difficult to find out information about them, but in this day and age, ‘most’ folks are relatively easy to get a read on. They have blogs, some have guidelines on their blogs, most have information available if you look hard enough. Just take the time to do it.

Cori Padgett-Bukowski is a wildly hire-able freelance ghost blogger as well as the creative brains and dubious brawn behind her blogs (yes, plural) Big Girl Branding & Salt, Light, and Faith. In her spare time, she’s busy exploring the realms of dystopian YA fiction under her pen name C.B. Stone, and currently branching out writing about angels and demons, mind-reading, psychic powers, God, and all sorts of nifty and intriguing things, while tossing in wee bits ‘o love for spice. Well, all that and being a mom of course. Which really should come with superhero powers all its own, in her very humble opinion. Don’t ya think?

Here’s the truth about templates… Once they’ve been used once, they’ve expired! Some of you may disagree because you’ve probably used the same template over and over again and it’s still working. But, trust me… it won’t be long until it gets old. Start your emails from scratch.

Sufficing With Personalization (Humanize Too)

One of the biggest mistakes I have noticed is the lack of personalisation in Influencer Marketing. Some brands forget they are reaching out to actual people and once they have, some forget to engage which defeats the object. Authenticity, communication and humanising the experience is key.

Susan Dolan (@GoogleExpertUK) Founder of  seowebmarketing and Public Speaker. You can connect with her on LinkedIn

The biggest influencer-marketing mistake I have seen over and over again is – cold calling, being too brash – appearing unprofessional.  I can handle a cold call from somebody I don’t know if they seem serious and come across like they know what they are doing.  And especially if they really have a good story to tell.  Influencers like to hear a good story.  But, if their email is full of spelling errors and grammar mistakes, or isn’t coherent, I have a delete button. The other big mistake I see over and over again is not sending a slice of cheesecake in advance.  Yeah, that would soften me up.

David Leonhardt (@amabaie) THGMwriters.com

The worst mistake that I’ve seen is that people don’t spend a little bit of extra time to personalize the outreach emails. Just replacing the {name} field is not enough. So, my best recommendation would be to actually visit the websites or social profiles of influencers and collect more information about them. Then use that data to craft more personalized outreach emails. I guarantee that your success rate will skyrocket.

Tung Tran (@OfficialTung) cloudliving.com

When an influencer becomes an “influencer” (whether by label or just perception), there is a sudden influx of attempts at reaching out – i.e., competition.  We talk about relationship building in our industry, but many still rely on a more scalable, “put them on the list and blast this out to them,” approach.  In an already noisy internet, this rarely works – especially using a note void of personalized emotional connection points. Unless you’re offering a paid opportunity (which happens behind the scenes everywhere, from newspapers to the celebrity couch on The Tonight Show), you need to put together a cohesive plan to win the influencer’s heart.  First, ask yourself who would be a great fit for your campaign, then challenge yourself to answer why.  Do your homework, dig up the social data, track down past conversations, and get a feel for their personality.  Still think they’re a great fit?  If yes, craft the perfect, emotionally-connected, personalized outreach. With due diligence completed you’ll have a much higher success rate of tapping into the emotions and passions of the influencer.  Without it, you’ll be more akin to spammers and other inbox-cloggers.

Bill Sebald (@billsebald) greenlaneseo.com

It’s not just personalizing by getting their name right, but you need… Authenticity – Your natural voice, style, story etc.   Humanization – Informal, talk like a human with emotions and feelings… show that you understand them.

Hiding Under a Fake ID

If using a fake name isn’t enough, how about I invade your personal space to “win you over”? 

I’ll just limit myself to an influencer outreach episode. A couple of days ago I received a fishy email from someone using a fake name and a fake email address. The English was so bad, my eyes hurt. And I couldn’t define the sender’s Gender. Was it a man? Was is a woman? Was it a bird? The email address was associated with some username on WarriorForum. Either way, I ignored it. Same day, on my personal Facebook account, I receive a message request. Same message, same bad English, different person – perhaps fake?! This time it was a “she”. Slightly irritated, I accepted her message request just to give her my two cents.

Take note: the year is 2016, yet people still believe that using a fake name which doesn’t have an online presence will get you there. That, plus excuses of not wanting people to know your real name because of competitors. Keep in mind that I am a real person and I expect to connect with someone who is just as real. While I do understand the need to protect your real identity or separate business from personal, going 100% fake name on me won’t get you my trust. Nor would trespassing my personal space.

Roxana Nasoi (@roxanasoi)

Sending Fake Love Letters

What I see all the time when people reach out to me is a pandering statement about how they like my stuff when it is perfectly obvious from what they are asking that they never looked at it. I delete these immediately. Lying simply doesn’t work.

David Meerman Scott (@dmscott) freshspot.com

One of the biggest (and most common) mistakes marketers make with influencer outreach is false flattery. This is where clueless marketers go over the top and say things like: “I’m your biggest fan” or “I’m an avid reader” or “I’m in love with your blog” in order to get a measly link or mention – without actually being a true fan. Instead tell them specifically why you enjoyed their article or blog and focus on a common personal connection. Influencers are regular people too.

Darren DeMatas (@darrendematas) selfstartr.com

The biggest mistake I see people make when it comes to influencer marketing is when someone expects an influencer to share their work or to help them before they provide any value to the influencer. They contact the influencer with a request without first making an attempt to build a relationship by commenting on the influencer’s posts or sharing their work. Even something as simple as tweeting an influencer’s post and tagging them in it can help you warm up that relationship. It’s a good idea to email an influencer and explain what they learned from this person or if they put something the influencer teaches into practice. I also recommend people think carefully about the question they ask influencers. I contacted 22 writers and asked them “what was your biggest struggle with writing and how did you overcome it?” because I wanted to curate answers that would add value to readers.

Bryan Collins (@bryanjcollins) becomeawritertoday.com

The biggest annoyance for me as a football travel blogger at OutsideWrite is that PR people do not research the blog. I get spammed with untargeted rubbish, like invitations to Greek restaurant launches or new cocktail bar openings, purely because I’ve ended up on an agency’s ‘lifestyle blogger’ list. I’m very clear on my blog that I cover football travel, culture (books etc.) and history. Nothing else. PRs need to review a blog before approaching it so that they can provide a unique, relevant story for that blogger and at least know their name. There’s nothing worse – or more likely to make me want to junk list someone – than addressing me ‘Dear Blogger’.

Chris Lee, freelance digital consultant and blogger. (@CMRLee)

Chris is trying to improve relations between PRs and influencers by helping PRs understand how influencers work. If you’re in PR, then check out his influencer relations training session for PRs.

An influencer can be boon or a boondoggle to a brand if they are moral misfits. Once they choose their influencer, the 3 biggest mistakes are:

1. They don’t approach them with a sincere, original, thoughtful compliment that shows that they know their influencer.
2. They don’t make a clear, simple request that makes it easy for the influencer to say yes.
3. They don’t seek to resonate on many different levels to insure it’s a good match personally and professionally.

Susan Harrow, Media Coach, Marketing Strategist & author of the best-selling book Sell Yourself Without Selling Your Soul (HarperCollins). Check out here post 9 Steps to Be a Thought Leader — and Become a Media Darling.

One huge influencer marketing mistake is when marketers reach out to influencers without learning anything about them. For example, I’ve had people tell me, “I’m contacting you because we both serve Audience X.” However, I don’t serve their audience. Since I can tell that they didn’t look at my website or personalize their message, I delete it. If you want an influencer to do something for you, make sure that you have something in common first.

Rachel Foster (@copywriterto) freshperspectivewriting.com

You can still pull it off even if you’re not a fan. If you do your research well, you should be able to find something useful from their website – like a blog post. Learn what it teaches, apply it and if you’re happy with the results… use that as your intro.

Writing too Much

Don’t expect influencers to read a long email. Get to the point quick and make the request specific.

Jane Friedman (@JaneFriedman) janefriedman.com

To assume that the person I’m contacting understands what I’m doing, what I want, and what I offer. When you contact anyone, be specific about what you’re doing, what is required of them, and where you’re going.

Henri Junttila (@henrijunttila) wakeupcloud.com

When reaching out to influencers, don’t over pitch. Don’t reach out with a resume in your opening email. Warm me up first, provide value, then when I reply wanting more… hit me with the full details.

Erik Fisher (@erikjfisher) beyondthetodolist.com

The biggest and most common mistake in influencer Marketing that I see people making on a daily basis, is spending too much time writing long emails to influencers who probably won’t read them, which wastes not only their time but yours too! Personally I don’t care if an email looks templated as long as it gets straight to the point. You need to quickly convey what product or service you’re pitching, what the benefits are, why it’s better than your competitors, what you want to get out of it (e.g: an increase in free trials, paid subscribers, traffic etc) and why I should be interested. Whatever the reason for reaching out, your email should be quick and easy for a busy influencer to review and don’t forget to take advantage of influencer ego to increase your websites traffic!

Matthew Woodward (@MattWoodwardUK) matthewwoodward.co.uk

Matthew Woodward even went to the extent of saying he doesn’t even care if it’s a template! As long as it gets to the point – that’s all that matters. That just shows how bad long emails are… worse than templates. Of course each influencer is different… some will ignore templates no matter what… some won’t. But they all agree on one thing. Keep your email short and to the point!

Asking a Vague Question (for a roundup)

Another big problem, and this is something I see all the time, is that the person doing an expert round up style post asks a really vague question that’s difficult to give a good answer to.

Sometimes I get emailed questions asking to take part in an influencer post and I can’t think of an answer as the question isn’t clear or specific enough.

It should be clear, specific, and to the point. Asking for a very specific type of answer. Not vague. 

Otherwise most people you ask just won’t bother to answer, I know I don’t. 

Stuart Walker (nichehacks.com)

Personally, as someone who has been receiving tons of interview requests (for crowdsourced posts, expert roundups, etc…), the key factors that I know which can really make an impact for your pitch are:

1. Familiarity with the quality of work of the one trying to establish a connection. And it’s a whole lot easier to get into your target influencers when they are already aware of your brand (and even more, if you’ve already built a relationship with them).
2. The technicalities, uniqueness/usefulness, as well as the demand for the information you’re seeking to absorb from the influencer (personally, I tend to respond to questions that make me think deeper on what I really do).
3. The quality of the audience on where the content will be published.

The mistake that other marketers do? They don’t consider all these factors when reaching out.

Jason Acidre (@jasonacidre) kaiserthesage.com

  Of course, don’t ask rude or personal questions… people don’t like to talk about how much they make.

Asking for Too Much

The guaranteed way to get no response from an influencer is to have a complicated “ask.” If it takes too much work to read your initial inquiry, and more than a few minutes to start the process, you simply won’t get a reply. Keep your initial message under 5 sentences, and make it effortless for the influencer to do what you’re asking. If you have a podcast, use a self-booking calendar so it’s a one-and-done process to schedule an interview.

Justin Baeder (@eduleadership) achv.co

Making your influencer outreach message too long – which usually means you’re either asking too much, or sharing more about yourself than the influencer really needs to know. Keep it short, make it clear, and try not to take up more than 3 minutes of the influencer’s time.

Sophie Lizard (@sophielizard) beafreelanceblogger.com

Just making your email short won’t make an influencer’s life easier. You need to be specific and clear on what you want.

The biggest mistake I’ve ever made carrying out influencer marketing is direct outreach. Practically by definition, influencers are already busy people, and they will get direct pitches all the time.

Even the most beautifully crafted outreach email probably won’t get opened. I found this to be a problem, in particular, because my ‘ask’ was too large.

When we first released URL Profiler, I was reaching out to influencers and asking them to try our product. This meant they had to visit our website, download the product, activate, and then figure out how to use it. This is way too much work for someone who isn’t invested in the product already.

To get around this issue, we found that we simply had to let influencers come to us. Let them discover the tool on their own – so when they do start using it, they already have an awareness of the benefits and potential value they can gain.

Whilst this doesn’t sound very proactive, there are two easy ways you can help improve the type of coverage you get from influencers in this way:

1. Get in front of influencers. Find out what influences them, and put yourself there (e.g. a guest post on a blog that they regularly share posts from)
2. Offer to help them. Monitor social mentions (or in our case trial signups) and spot influencers early, then offer to help them. Now that they have at least some level of intrigue in your brand/product, they will be much more open to direct outreach.

Patrick Hathaway (@HathawayP) urlprofiler.com

No matter who you are, big asks will either be ignored or postponed by influencers. In fact, even a free person would delay or ignore it.

Placing too many demands on the influencer: Set the tone and rules upfront. Influencers can’t be expected to take part in everything you do. So, say that. Set the ground rules and expectations so there aren’t any surprises down the road.

Bryan Kramer, President & CEO, PureMatter (@bryankramer) bryankramer.com

Making it About The Influencer Only (Ignoring Their Audience)

The biggest mistake I see people make in influencer marketing is the ones that can easily be prevented. They focus more on trying to scale their influencer outreach than personalizing it. This means they don’t send personalized emails, don’t take the time to research and understand their influencers and their audiences. The focus of your influencer outreach should be to make it a win for the influencer, a win for their audience and a win for you.

Joel Widmer (@jwidmer) fluxedigitalmarketing.com

It not just a win for you and the influencer… it’s their audience too. In fact, if the influencer didn’t care about their audience… I doubt he/she would ever be an influencer.

I made a mistake once and answered a question from an influencer and suggested my product as an added value to the influencer and got back a big no thanks. It has to be added value we are providing without any sales pitch. Any wiff of a sales angle and the influencer is turned off. I have seen others do this in their regular marketing, when we talk about ourselves and lose sight of the problem that is being solved. It is like a lead balloon, falls with a big thud.

My biggest mistake is consistency. You have to allocate and dedicate time and resources to consistently follow, participate and callout with influencers.

Also contacting the influencer before showing some interaction can also be a buzz kill. influencers know they have the eye of the people and they are careful with their connections. They want to make sure you care and are going to add value to the community. The contact has to be focused on what you can do for them and the community (think about what they want and are trying to achieve) and what value you will provide to the overall community.

Penny Zenker (@pennyzenker)  p10app.com

When I received copies of my first published book I thought it would be a great idea to send a copy to all the 20 or so people I mentioned in the back as being influential to me. I simply sent them the book and asked if they’d review it or share with their community. To say that was lame would be an understatement as I made no attempt to build up rapport or to even tell them why I thought they and their followers would benefit. In hindsight it’s highly embarrassing and rather unsurprisingly, none of the people replied!

Tim Brownson www.adaringadventure.com

You can’t just tell the influencer, “Your audience will love it!” or “Your audience will find it useful”. You need to explain and it needs to be a good reason.

Being the Same as Everyone Else

I’d say, the biggest mistake is trying to connect with Influencer without having researched on them. These people are usually busy: if you want to succeed you have to emerge from the crowd when outreaching: knowing their hobbies, their passions, citing their articles or quotes, is essential. But, people don’t get it and keep sending emails that will be ignored.

Giuseppe Pastore (Zen2Seo) giuseppepastore.com

The biggest mistake I’ve made is assuming that relatively obscure information is only relevant to people interested in my niche. But, when I did outreach for my post on The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci, it quickly became one of my most popular and highly shared posts, even in the highly specific memory improvement niche. I now know that this kind of information has wider appeal amongst influencers than I originally thought.

Anthony Metivier (@AnthonyMetivier) magneticmemorymethod.com

Biggest mistakes I’ve seen others make are being irrelevant and giving up too early. They contact someone one time, never hear back and give up on it. Or they send spam messages which are not targeted and not relevant at all. You need to be in it for the long run. It takes time to build a name for yourself and establish relationships with influencers. Second, you need to be relevant, targeted and provide something unique and of value to the person you are contacting. There’s no point in contacting an influencer about something they see all the time, or something don’t care about and have no interest in.

Marko Saric (@markosaric) howtomakemyblog.com

Mumbling, Being Indirect & Sneaky

The biggest mistake in influencer marketing is hiding your agenda. If you want someone to do something for you, the direct, honest approach is the only one. But, that means doing the hard work of:

• Understanding the influencer’s interests and brand and sweet spot
• Making sure the content you want them to share, endorse or participate in is right for them
• Making sure it’s as good as it can be and really worth someone’s time
• Helping them achieve their goals before you ask them to help you achieve yours

If your work is great, any influencer should be happy to associate themselves with it. It’s win-win. If it’s boring, paint-by-numbers content… spend your time fixing that before you ask anyone to endorse it for you.

Doug Kessler velocitypartners.com

Get to the point! What do you want???!! If they can’t understand what you’re asking from the first few lines – they are gone!

Typos & Errors

When doing cold influencer outreach, the biggest mistake I have seen is not proofing your email, tweet, etc before sending it. This is more than likely the first impression someone sees of you, so make it count.

Chris Makara (@chrismakara) chrismakara.com

Seems like obvious advice doesn’t it? Well, it’s not! Because a lot of people fail to follow it. Many people don’t proofread before they hit “send” or “publish”. You have x seconds to make an impression. Don’t ruin it because of some proofreading you didn’t do.

Failing To Establish Credibility

The biggest mistake I see people make in influencer marketing is failing to establish credibility. This is vital as you’ve maybe 10 seconds to convince the influencer to even read your request. “Warm” outreach is best, where you already have a relationship with the influencer through Twitter and/or other social networks. But if you don’t have that, then name-drop–mention other influencers you’ve worked with or acquaintances you have in common–or cite well-known brands you’ve with, or link to A-list blogs or journals where you’ve been published.

Tom Pick (@TomPick) webbiquity.com

Being Creepy

My biggest mistake was trying to get personal/chummy too fast, it really turns someone off. You really have to build some rapport first and make the relationship worth their while.

Mary Green (@marygreenim) mary-green.com

The last thing an influencer needs is another creep in their inbox.

Being Their Fan With No Respect (For Yourself)

When I first got started, I made the mistake of acting like a fangirl when meeting big name bloggers I admired. If you can’t respect yourself and your work enough to act like a peer, the chances of them promoting your work is almost zero.

Jennifer Gresham Founder of everydaybright.com. You can find her on Facebook.

There are two big mistakes made with Influencer Marketing I’ve seen in coaching clients to gain more influence and authority publishing content online. First, they have terrible POSITIONING. The are positioning their approach as my good friend Kimanzi says, “Chasing Influencers”.  You should not be viewed as “chasing” but rather as an advocate or partner. Secondly, they don’t consider their ALIGNMENT. Alignment means you are in line with the influencer’s objectives. We’ve featured multiple best-selling authors as a guest on my podcast because I reached out with the message that I wanted to help them promote their book, rather than leading with my own motivations.  Keep your positioning and alignment correct and you’ll develop great partnerships and many new friendships.

Jeremy C. Jones (@jonesima) Self Publishing Expert and Author Advocate. You can find him on Facebook.

I approached influencers as if I needed them. They were the stars, I was the wannabe.  Mistake.  I soon realized, “Hey, I’m an influencer, too.”  In fact, they needed me as much as I needed them. Symbiosis.

Donna Merrill donnamerrilltribe.com

Everyone has a bit of influence in them. How many times have you gotten someone to go to your favorite restaurant?

How to Write Outreach Emails

When I first started out, I listened to all the wrong people. “Use this email template,” they said. I did, and so did countless other marketers. The results went from bad to worse.

Here’s why:

Templates are problematic because heavily distributed ones are easy to spot. They also don’t help you learn anything about writing great outreach emails.

So what’s the solution?

Write emails based on a framework. Distill it down into the essential elements you need to include in each email, then tailor it to the person you’re contacting.

When you use a framework, you’ll become far better at writing emails that people will want to read, and you’ll be more likely to get a positive response.

Adam Connell (@adamjayc)  www.adamconnell.me

So what’s the framework?

One thing before we start… There’s no such thing as the perfect outreach email. You cannot impress everyone. Even the best powered up messages won’t get a 100% response rate (unless you’ve built a solid relationship). Now we can start…

• A clear short subject line that gives the influencer a feel of what the email is about. Make it unique, specific and useful (to them).
• Get to the point quickly and keep your email short… don’t be sneaky.
• If possible, show credibility by mentioning other influencers in your campaign or anything that stands out and relevant. Keep this short too.
• Personalize and humanize your email. Let them feel it’s a human on the other side, not a bot.
• Make sure your offer is unique. You need to stand out from all the other people spamming their inbox.
• The whole thing must be about the influencer, their audience and the benefit they both get… nothing about what you get.
• Make sure there are no typos especially in their name.
• Make sure you don’t say anything about link building or anything showing signs that you’re trying to break FTC rules.
• Don’t ask for too much. And don’t give them short deadlines.

Once you write your email following the framework, your chances to getting a reply will be much greater than all the other emails influencers get. In fact, you now know more about influencer marketing than most PR firms and agencies. You know how find the right influencer, build a relationship with influencers and become their most valuable “asset”. And you know how to treat them, work with them and much more. You’re getting closer to your growth goals and hopefully going viral.

Fighting

I picked a fight with a really well known person in the legal industry. I did this shortly after starting my law firm internet marketing agency, NiftyLaw. Little did I know he sat on a lot of conference committees and was well connected. Even though I disagreed with him I am not sure I fully understood the potential effects it would have. Lesson learned: play nice…always.

Mike Ramsey (@MikeRamsey) Nifty Marketing

Influencers aren’t perfect, they are like the rest of us. They’re just humans… they can be fussy, arrogant and hateful and just wrong… picking a fight isn’t the wisest choice in any situation – fight’s aren’t productive. The only difference is… if you fight with an influencer they could tell all the other influencers to stay away from you and it won’t look good on you. Solution? Let it go!

Not Following Up

The funny thing is, when we are offended we usually get angry and reply back defending our “honor”… but when someone does something nice for us we just stay quiet and take it for granted. Only a few people reply with thanks. Those who do good things to you are the ones you should reply and talk to – ignore the insults.

A common one would be to get the influencers involved and then once the post is all finished don’t follow through with the outreach the people featured or the wider community to get the post the attention it needs. 

You need to follow up with everyone featured via email or Twitter (depending on if you want links or shares) to get them telling their audience about it.

You also need to follow up with other names not featured to get them sharing it – people love to share this sort of content. 

You also have to make it SUPER easy for the influencer to share like including a click to tweet link in the email so all they have to do is click it to share to Twitter, this makes a huge difference than just asking “please share on Twitter” as they have to go log in and actually share it.

And even if that IS their intention… they might forget or get distracted. 

So have the click to tweets, the embedded links, the link to upvote on Inbound or whatever you want to achieve in the email for them.

Stuart Walker Nichehacks.com

This applies to not only round up posts, but everything else too. Make sure you say thanks and show appreciation after everything is all over.

a) Not getting to know what’s important to the influencer

b) Not being clear on what you want the influencer to do

c) Thinking that influencers alone can help

d) Not saying thank you and building at least a loose relationship with the influencer

Ramon Ray (@ramonray) and smarthustle.com

It doesn’t need to be a super strong relationship with every single influencer you meet. Even a loose one is still useful. Holler at each influencer at least once a month. Not literally, I mean help them at least once a month… those you want to stay in contact with but not get too close with.

Putting it All on The Influencer

The biggest mistake is putting all the burden of success on the influencer – as if success simply takes securing your market’s influencer. Don’t forget the “marketing” in “influencer marketing.” Plan entire campaigns around that influencer. You can’t just call it a day when Jay Baer has blurbed your book. Now you need to market that blurb – and, better yet, involve Baer in a campaign.

Joanna Wiebe (@copyhackers) Creator of Copy Hackers and Airstory

It’s true. You can’t put it all on the influencer.

This guide that you’re reading right now will be promoted and marketed and is being marketed as you’re reading. Although a ton of influencers will help me promote it, I’m not going to leave it at that.

In fact, you should never have high expectations from people. Don’t rely solely on them. Most people will let you down… sometimes it’s their fault and most of the time it’s because of your unrealistically high expectations.

Fully trusting someone or depending solely on one person is the greatest mistake I have ever made.  The person’s confidence made me trust him, but on the other side, due to the work pressure (I assume) he could not fulfill the task I entrusted him with. Ultimately, that lead me to forgo some of the prestigious projects at hand.

I’m sure he didn’t do this on purpose, but my leniency led him to take it in an easy way. Though I have told him about its seriousness and the projects on hand, but he could not deliver it on time.

I’ve learned a lesson from this incident… that one should not depend on only one person for everything since he or she may have other things to deliver on deadline. Sometimes a constant vigil or follow up may bring results on time, but most of the time, it may irritate the other side and get things twisted.

Philip Verghese ‘Ariel pvariel.com (@PVAriel)

This story has two lessons…

1. Don’t solely rely on one person
2. Most people have other obligations and deadlines other than yours. You’re not their only deadline.

Not Giving After The Campaign (continuously give and help on a regular basis)

My biggest mistake is failing to keep up with my connections and letting it go stale. I meet people and hang out at conferences and we get along well… then I get back in my office and just go back to it. If you don’t take the time to nurture those relationships and keep up the communication, then it becomes little more than a casual “hey” when you pass in the halls at a conference… and not much more.

David Risley blogmarketingacademy.com

Not a clear mistake but just generally I could have been better at nurturing relationships. I’ve had some good support from influencers in the past but the guys who really do it well are constantly nurturing relationships with influencers on a daily basis. I haven’t really done that and I would like to get better at that. I think if you can prove yourself useful to influencers on a regular basis, they are much more likely to support you.

Dan Norris (@thedannorris) 7daystartup.com

You should keep the relationship going. You’re not a hit man doing a one time job (or at least I hope not), you’re a blogger/marketer/entrepreneur. Take the relationship up a level. Do it slowly. Send them your Skype ID, of course… don’t be pushy about it… just send it in case they ever want to talk.

(Disclaimer: I hate Skype so this wouldn’t work with me… at least in most cases)

Basically, just do all the relationship building stuff that I talked about in the previous section – do it regularly… maybe once a week at least for the first few months so they don’t forget you.

Giving Up too Quickly

The biggest influencer marketing mistake which I see others making (and I was probably guilty of myself some years back) is not accepting and learning from failure. The harsh reality of the matter is that most influencers don’t care about the contents of 99% of pitches. To get to the level of being regarded as an ‘influencer’ an individual has had success in one or more ways and, unfortunately, this means they’re busy people.

If you read ten guides on ‘how to do influencer marketing right’ they’ll all tell you that you need to carefully identify your influencers, justify why they should care about what you have to say and make them feel special. In reality, that’s often not enough. Most ‘influencers’ are busy people and sometimes absolutely nothing is enough to gain their attention. That doesn’t always mean to say you approached in the wrong way, sometimes simply that you reached out at the wrong time.

As such, especially in the early days of building relationships with influencers, failure is common. That is, failure in the form of no responses. The mistake many make, however, is to give up. There’s no denying how powerful influencer marketing is, however the reality is that it takes time to get right and even then, there’s no guarantees of success. The real recipe for success is simply dedication. Stick at it, continue doing things which are likely to garner an influencer’s attention and before long, that success will come.

James Brockbank is Managing Director of Digitaloft, a specialist team of results driven content marketers situated in the North West of the UK. You can find him on twitter @BrockbankJames.

That’s true, even if you follow all good practices you’re not guaranteed to get a response from everyone. In fact, it’s highly unlikely that you will – unless you know them all on a very personal level and your ask is small.

I’ve reached out to many influencers who respond with “Thanks, but I’m in the middle of a book/product launch right now. So I can’t take on any other opprotunities”.

These influencers are always busy and it’s not unusual they’ll ignore you. No matter how great your offer is, sometimes the timing won’t be right and that’s okay. It’s out of your control. That’s why you should have a handful of influencers on your list.

Sometimes when an influencer is trying to promote their latest book/product… they’ll start to accept contributions to round up posts, interview invitations etc. to reach a new audience for their new or upcoming book/product.

If you can time your round up or interview invitations to help them with their promotion, then your likelihood of getting a response will be higher. Of course, make sure you make it the purpose of reaching out to them – to help their product/book reach a new audience.

Anyway, you’ll make a few “failures” here and there but hopefully with this guide loaded with mistakes you should avoid burning bridges… you’ll get better results than most people out there.

The most important thing is, you should never give up… keep learning from mistakes. As James said, “The real recipe for success is simply dedication”.

Biggest mistake I’ve ever made in Influencer Markerting: Not Keeping the Connection Alive I admit to have my share of fails especially in keeping the connection alive. It took me a while before I realized it. Here is how I used to connect to influencers:

Step 1. Start reading their blog(s).

Step 2. Subscribe. Engage. Comment.

Step 3. Follow them on SM channels.

Step 4. Engage with them on SM channels.

(After a couple of weeks of constant activity and transformation from status: invisible to status: visible in their SM feeds and through comments on their websites, I’d move to the “call to action” part).

Step 5. Reach out. (In the past when auto-DMs didn’t roam the Earth, I’d go for Twitter: a mention asking the influencer if we can discuss an opportunity. Based on that, they’d follow back on Twitter. Which gave me the chance to send a couple of DMs to pitch the opportunity and place a call to action – Skype or Email or Phone. Nowadays, it’s more of a direct approach via email.)

Step 6. Discussion. Sealing the deal. “Thank yous”. And that was it. Over the course of 1 year, my connection with the influencer would die for sure.

Biggest mistake: not maintaining the connection alive. And there are endless ways to keep a connection alive, from social media to a simple message or joining one of their groups, causes. I did none and that cost me greatly.

Roxana Nasoi serplified.com

The least you should do is engage regularly on their blog and social. Don’t just vanish.

Measuring Performance

One of the biggest mistake marketers do when they run Influencer marketing campaigns is not to track and monitor the performances. An Instagram influencer campaign can be monitored with tracking links or hashtags (if you don’t use link) It’s also important to identify the best influencers based on your industry or niche. The narrow it is the better your camping will perform. I’ve already tested some Snapchat influencer campaigns and tracking is crucial.

Stefano Mongardi The Web-Mate (Snapchat: stemonga)

This is where step 5 comes in…

Step 5: Measure your KPI(s) to see if you’ve achieved your goal or gotten closer to it.

Is it working for you?

Several ways to track performance…

• Affiliate links
• Unique squeeze/landing page sign ups
• Promo codes
• URL shortners such as bit.ly and goo.gl, that show you how many people clicked on your link and which influencer got the most clicks.
• Google Analytics for traffic

Whatever you do, make sure you check if you’re on track. Any influencers not performing well? Get rid of them. Audience complaining about the product/content? Improve it. If you don’t measure you won’t be able to know what’s working and what’s not.

Make sure you start measuring from the beginning. Don’t delay it.

Become an Influencer

I’m sure if someone wants to go viral… then they’d certainly love to be an influencer too… maybe not a huge influencer but at least a small one. Anyway, here’s how to do it and how not to do it…

Spreading Themselves too Thin

The biggest mistake I ever made in Influencer Marketing was to think I could build a business by creating content for everyone. Only once I learned to focus on a target audience did I finally see results.

John Meese (@JohnRMeese) johnmeese.me

Focus on a specific target audience… don’t target everyone. If you’re a home cook… then don’t target females who like to cook. Target, stay at home moms who are newly married with a new born and want to get rid of their post-baby belly. You’ll attract a more loyal audience that way. Remember… engagement triumphs follower count.

If you want to be well known and be an effective influencer, it’s important to be known as an expert in a particular area. Don’t just talk about any topic that comes up, focus on one particular area. This will usually be whatever your main business focuses on (in my case, buying/selling websites). When I first started out, I used to try be an expert on everything and pretended to know about every subject. While it’s helpful to have a practical understanding of all areas of business, you can’t be an expert at everything. Keeping focus means you are more likely to be recognised as the “go to guy/girl” in your niche.

Thomas Smale feinternational.com

Want to be an influencer? You have to be the go-to person on a specific topic. If you needed brain surgery… you’d go to a brain surgeon… not just a general surgeon.

Biggest mistake I’ve made is not taking a consistent approach to the content I create for my own platform. If you’re too busy actually running your company instead of working on your personal brand I think it’s important to pick one medium and stick to that consistently whether that’s blogging, podcasting, youtube or something else – being consistent is key and I’ve failed there but working to correct.

Chris Guthrie (@ChrisGuthrie) UpFuel.com

You can’t ace every single platform on your own. You need assistants… a team and to outsource a lot of the social media content… editing… filming etc.

But, what you can do is focus on one or two (preferably one) platform and master it. Then just share the content you created on all the other platforms.

I’m sure most of you will create accounts on all social platforms you can get your hands on before someone takes your desired handle/username. So using them for only sharing your posts is a good start.

So if you’re a blogger you’d focus on blogging and then just use social media to promote your blog posts. If you’re a Vlogger you’d focus on creating videos and then just use social media to promote your videos. The most important thing is to focus on one medium at least 80% of the time.

Not Knowing Your Craft

The biggest mistake is that many people are claiming that they’re influencers in a topic or field that they really don’t have experience in. No joke, I met a life coach who was 22 years old last week. Is it just me or does that seem a bit ridiculous? How is a 22 year old person with hardly any career experience really be a life coach to people? In order to be a true influencer you need to live, eat, breathe and sleep your craft and be genuinely helping/teaching others by mostly giving your stuff away for free.

Greg Hickman (@gjhickman) system.ly

Yeah… you’re not alone Greg… that is ridiculous.

Please guys… if you want to become an influencer at least be realistic.

The way to learning isn’t through just reading… you need to experiment what you’ve learnt.

To become an expert you need to have an opinion… and you can’t have your own opinion if you’ve just been reading other people’s opinions. You need to do it and see the results for yourself… you’ll always end up with a different perspective of things because you may be from a different industry, different region, different culture, different resources. Based on these differences you’ll be able to master your craft, have an authentic opinion, and most importantly attract a unique audience that resonates with your personality and circumstances.

For example, a mom in the U.S. isn’t the same as an Indian mom… there are culture differences and other stuff.

Building a Faceless Brand

Not realizing what’s worth following. The human mind is designed to follow people, not businesses. I made the mistake of building a faceless brand for many years. But, as I’ve grown in my confidence, I now understand the power my story, my family, and my values bring to my mission. People crave authenticity. Your manufactured brand will never outpace you in that race.

Dale Partridge StartupCamp.com (@dalepartridge)

I hate it when I don’t know who’s behind a blog or startup… I check the about page and I can’t see any human names… their social accounts or a story behind the blog/startup.

Imagine no one knew the people behind Facebook and it was all a big secret. Besides being spooky… Facebook wouldn’t be able to get funding… IPO… and most importantly, Mark Zuckerberg… no one would know who he is.

Another thing I’d like to say is… make sure you brand your content with a logo or signature on each post. The last thing you want is someone to steal your content and take credit for it. You can do it with wordswag, typorama, phonto, canva and many other image editing tools.

Blending in (Bad Positioning And No Strong Opinion)

At pitchanything.com, we’ve seen more than 1,000 marketers and entrepreneurs ask for help. Today, these young entrepreneurs are losing the art of a compelling story, because they’ve been taught to A/B split test messaging, and “the audience will choose right marketing message.” Yes, this A/B testing does work, to a degree, but in the end you’ll find, all your messaging will end up in “get rich quick” -territory, which might drive traffic and revenue, but won’t communicate brand quality. Testing is good, but don’t give up on a good story that is authentic and connected to your brand, just to drive some extra traffic.

Oren Klaff (@pitchanything)

What makes you stand out is your story. The authenticity in it. That’s what people will remember and connect with. With no story, you have no brand. You’re just another “get rich quick”, “lose weight quick”, or “find a partner quick” business. Be proud of your story and keep it authentic. Things like that should never be tested… your story is your story… end of story.

The biggest mistake I see with influencer marketing is around positioning. People don’t position themselves correctly as an influencer. Instead, they need to position themselves to the market they want to work with directly.

John McIntyre reengager.com (@johnmcintyre_)

Which one sounds better?

1. Marketer helping entrepreneurs increase revenue.
2. Direct-response marketer helping entrepreneurs increase revenue
3. Direct-response marketer helping small restaurant owners increase revenue

Choice (1) sounds like everyone else out there.

Choice (2) is a bit better but still too general.

Choice (3) is more targeted. If I owned a small restaurant I would go to them. But, is that all you can do? No, there are other ways to position yourself so you can stand out from the crowd. I’m sure there are other direct-response marketers helping small restaurants out there.  

The biggest mistake I made was not taking a strong position on something. In the real world, listening to people and considering their points of view is the best way to grow. But, to influence people online, you need to take strong positions.

Andrew Warner (@andrewwarner) mixergy.com

Take note of that… that’s all I can say.

The biggest mistake that influencers make is that they try to be liked by everyone.  They’re afraid of being polarizing, and tone their message down to be “all things to all people”, when they shouldn’t be holding back.  The best influencers are those who can defend strong opinions, which makes them more influential at the end of the day!

Marc Mawhinney (@marcmawhinney) naturalborncoaches.com

Haters gonna hate. You need haters. Not everyone will like you. If you can’t accept that, then it’s time to start accepting it or blend into the crowd.

Displaying a self-orientation by constantly selling “why you should select me” instead of selling “why you should change.

Anthony Iannarino (@iannarino) thesalesblog.com

Give your followers a reason to change, don’t be satisfied with the status quo.

Think You Control Your Followers

The biggest mistake anyone can make as an influencer is to believe their own hype and sell out thinking that their followers will simply become obedient, compliant consumers. Being an influencer means you are there to serve. You become the central node in an extended social network that runs on trust. You can never betray that trust, even when you use your elevated position within the network to market. Integrity is key and so is passion and the need to keep things real. There are countless examples of influencers who built up a popular profile on social networks only to see it crash and burn because they failed to grasp this simple truth.

David Amerland davidamerland.com (@davidamerland)

Your fans are your fans because of the trust that you have built… once that’s gone… you’re gone too. 1 click unsubscribe button, 1 click unfollow button, 1 click unfriend button… you’re a click away from being a nobody.

Trying to Influence

The biggest mistake I see people make is focusing on influencing rather than connecting and/or offering valuable content. The real reward comes from establishing a relationship. Influencing is simply a natural by-product. Here are a couple of annoying things that turn me off (and probably other people): 1) Automatic thank you’s sent from a service. (they’re not personal); and 2) when someone I don’t know pings me through social media asking, “How can I help you?” (a hollow offer)

Jesse Lyn Stoner (@jesselynstoner) seapointcenter.com

Don’t try to influence people… you’re likely to come off as pushy… bossy… a dictator… no one likes that. Connect with your audience. Help your audience. If I want to lose fat… then help me lose fat and I’ll be loyal to you forever.

What makes you stand out is the way you teach it, your story, the way you smash common misconceptions.

Focus on offering valuable content and talking with your fans… that’s all you need.

Acting Before Knowing

I was excited when I finally landed my first big guest post on a MAJOR blog. I was hoping this would really help me connect with the owner! BUT…I learned I was making a gaffe by replying to every comment I got, which is considered ‘comment-stuffing’ or a bald attempt to up your comment count, just to get a bigger number. Feedback through the grapevine was that I was ‘grandstanding’ and had a swelled head. Yow! Obviously, I stopped answering every single comment, but I never did end up building much of a relationship with that particular influencer.

Carol Tice (@ticewrites) makealivingwriting.com

We learn two things from this…

1. Don’t reply to every single comment – only reply to those who really say something. Unless it states otherwise in the guest blogging guidelines. If you can’t find anything in the guidelines then it’s safer to ask the blog owner/editor… they will tell you there preference.
2. Knowledge comes before action. Don’t act upon ignorance.

Forgetting That Your Followers Are Real People With Problems and Desires

Biggest mistake I see others make is treating people on the other side (visitors, clients, and customers) like numbers or statistics, rather than like real life human beings. The reason, of course, is that it doesn’t scale…and that’s exactly why it matters.

Tom Morkes (@tmorkes) tommorkes.com

That’s one thing we forget… that behind each social account there’s a real human behind it, tweeting, liking, sharing. A human with problems… needs and wants. All this sitting behind the screen has turned us into emotionless bots. Before you tweet or post, always ask yourself… would I post this if I had 10,000 people standing in front of me?

Too often I see people forget to make their messaging all about the individual they are reaching. Focus more on the “Why” and the “Purpose” of YOUR target and it will lead to more results for YOU. Remember, it’s not about YOU. It’s about the client.

Ben Newman (@continuedfight) bennewman.net

No one cares about you… they only want to know how you can help them.

Placing yourself as an authority without identifying your core audience, niche, and genre are the biggest mistakes I am seeing in the industry these days. For the first 2 years I blogged in the dark (without identifying my audience’s need, passion and interest), but once I knew the ingredients, people started recognizing my blog.

Kulwant Nagi (@kulwantnagi) bloggingcage.com

Don’t just start blogging and hope the right people read it. Identify them, name them and put it in front of them.

The biggest mistake I’ve ever made in influencer marketing is not understanding my audience and fan base inside out.

Erik Qualman (@equalman) www.equalman.com

If you don’t deeply know them… what they like and dislike, then how will you help them? Yes, great advice… so how do you do that?

1. Find the blogs your target audience reads, read their comments, look at what blogs are the most popular (they are popular because they solve a deep problem or fulfill a desire the reader has).
2. Go to niche forums. Although forums are quite old school… it’s still the place where all conversations happen. All the questions, frustrations and confusions happen there.
3. Ask your current fans to tell you about their problems, life, age, occupation, opinions. Frequently do polls to learn more about them.

But, remember…your audience want results, not more information. Here’s a short story…

200 pages. Then 90 pages. Then 59 pages. When I started out writing books and courses, I was under the impression that you needed at least 200 pages in a book. When I wrote 90 pages, I’d be a little nervous. The last course we had, I wrote just 59 pages—and clients ended up with a skill, instead of more information. My mistake was assuming that clients wanted bulk, and that’s the last thing they need. What they really want is the shortest route to a skill. If your books and courses are getting thicker (with dozens of bonuses), you’re making a big mistake. Clients want results, not more information.

Sean D’Souza www.psychotactics.com (iTunes) (Stitcher)

Not Communicating Expectations

I did not set clear expectations at the onset of my first influencer campaign (what exactly I was providing them, niche audience that was being targeted, etc), and that affected communication between myself and a pretty larger and influential company. In the end my influencer campaign sounded more ‘canned’ than providing an honest review and recommendation to purchase their product and it did not have a lot of readership. It flopped and the company has not worked with me since then. I learned a valuable lesson about setting expectations and clear communication before you start an influencer campaign.

Chantal Bechervaise (@cbechervaise) takeitpersonelly.com

If you choose to promote other people’s products when you become an influencer then make sure you have communicated expectations to brands and marketers before you work on any campaign. Word can spread and other brands looking for influencers will hear about you… make sure it’s good. You don’t want to be someone who overpromises and under delivers or in other words… be someone who breaks their promises.

Promoting Shady & Irrelevant Stuff

The biggest mistake I’ve seen a lot of other brands or affiliate marketers (as bloggers), is to promote unethical or questionable offers just to make a quick buck. In the world of online marketing (and in life), it takes years to build up a trusted reputation. The reason why this is so common in the world of online marketing, is that sometimes you can make a quick buck by promoting something scammy. Bottom line… always think about what you do and promote online before doing it.

Zac Johnson of zacjohnson.com

You’ll get exposed sooner or later… evil never wins.

Accepting irrelevant campaigns. It’s in the influencers interest to stick with their niche. Not just for respecting the fans and followers, but also for maintaining integrity.

Erik Emanuelli (@ErikEmanuelli) nopassiveincome.com

Remember why they following you and you’ll know what to promote.

Lack of authenticity. People plugging products that they clearly don’t use and/or like. Always shines through.

Niklas Laninge, a psychologist running the edtech startup Daily Bits Of  @dailybitsof

The biggest mistake I’ve seen many influencers make (especially on Instagram) is promoting products and services that don’t align with your existing platform. For example, a fitness influencer promoting a product that has nothing to do with fitness (like financial). It’s important to know your audience’s demographic and whether they align with your current platform. Don’t just be a frickin’ pitchman/woman, give real value and your audience will LOVE you!

Ebong Eka @EbongEka (twitter, snapchat, instagram [every dang social platform]) EKAnomics.com & EbongEka.com

Even if the product is good… if your audience doesn’t find it interesting then it’s useless. Relevance… remember? When you’re an influencer it’s audience over money. Not money over audience. Without the audience, you’d have no money anyway.

Not Sharing Trusted Third Party Content

The biggest mistake I’ve seen others make in influencer marketing is not investing time in content creation. Some people believe that they have to share their own blog posts exclusively in order to build thought leadership, which is simply not true. Successful influencers share a healthy balance of relevant third party content mixed in with their own content.

Michael Cheng @michaelhsc, cofounder of snip.ly

You’re not the only person out there who write quality stuff… there are many others… share it.

I think there’s a fine line between promoting your own products and services and being overly promotional. I’m sure I flirted with the latter, especially earlier on in my career. But, the 80/20 rule can be used here too – promote other people’s content 80% of the time and your own 20% of the time (I could still get better at this I bet! 😉

Gina Horkey, (@HorkeyHandBook) horkeyhandbook.com

When you update your audience on the most relevant and up to date content… your audience can then rely on you to keep them updated… they won’t have to go to someone else anymore.

Not Having a Wide Presence

If you want to be an influencer you need to be on almost every platform your audience is on. You need to write for blogs your target audience read.

This does sound like bad advice because it sounds like I’m telling you to spread yourself too thin and do several things at once.

But, I’m not saying that, because I know creating content for a blog can take hours if not days. Making posts for social media takes time too. Videos can take a lot longer than blog posts and require some planning. Let’s not forget all the other stuff you have in your life, learning and other work.

Actually I’m not even talking about that.

I’m talking about guest blogging.

Don’t just write for your own blog, write for others to reach a wider audience.

For example, if there are 7 popular blogs in your industry then write 1 article for each blog every month. That means you’ll have to write an average of 2 articles a week – not bad. When people see you writing for blogs they trust, they’ll trust you too. Most importantly, you’ll get yourself exposure from people who match your target audience.

Broadcasting Only (engage with audience too)

The biggest mistake I see others make in influencer marketing is not taking the time to be authentic in their communications. People see right through that canned, fake stuff! I teach thought leaders to engage authentically when they send emails, respond on social media, and prepare content to post online. This isn’t difficult–it means slowing down and sending a genuine message, tweet, or blog post. It means being a resource for others. And above all, it means making your communication personal, so the person on the other side feels valued.

Shannon Hernandez www.thewritingwhisperer.com @writingwhisper

  Just like you expect influencers to reply and engage with you, engage with your audience too.

Not Building an Email List

My biggest mistake was not building my email list. Once I started focusing on getting more email subscribers (and sending them good stuff), my revenue literally tripled in one year.

Brian Dean (@backlinko) backlinko.com

The biggest mistake I made was focusing on building a following but not converting the following to my email list. I have 280,000 followers on Facebook, but now my access to them is controlled by Facebook, and I need to pay to play. Had I converted them to my email list I would have access to them on my terms and not Facebook’s.

Gordon Tredgold www.gordontredgold.com @gordontredgold

Near to me the biggest mistake most rising influence marketers make is “Starting without an incentive”. When you don’t have anything to give in exchange of an email, your email list will take time to grow. It’s better to create an incentive before stepping into the industry. It’s not compulsory to create a really giant incentive, you can just start with a short e-book. As soon as you start giving an incentive in exchange for an e-mail… you’ll boost your email list and your business.

Umair Akram (@iclicknetworks) mytechmag.com

Putting Yourself in Bad Situations

Someone once added me to a Facebook group, and although mildly annoyed, I followed along with the postings. A few weeks later, the same person who added me to a Facebook group (or so I thought) posted about how annoying it was to be added to Facebook groups without being added to them.  For some reason, although I knew better, I responded by saying, “Isn’t that the same thing you did to me?”  My intention was to be helpful by letting him know that perhaps these people didn’t realize they were adding people to groups and assumed they were getting requests to join.  Instead, it made me look like a troll.  The moral of the story, if you’re thinking something you’re about to post on social media could be misinterpreted . . . don’t post it.

Zeb Welborn (@zebwelborn) welbornmedia.com

Anything that has the possibility to be misinterpreted should not be posted. If you do post it, then make sure you tackle every single possible objection that may come your way. If you can’t think of some possible objections then gather a group of critical people who match your target audience and ask for their feedback… they’ll come up with objections you can tackle. Here’s a post I came across today where Jeff Goins does that very well.

Never generate traffic through negativity, personal attacks, or media stunts. That’s because people will pay attention out of curiosity, but they only buy from people they respect. Getting attention by raising a ruckus may generate short term interest, but it hurts your long term business. Be respectful, and be respectable at all times.

Todd R. Tresidder – Founder and Money Coach at FinancialMentor.Com

If you shouldn’t post anything that gets misinterpreted, then you definitely shouldn’t publish anything negative just to get some traffic. No one in their right mind would ever want to attract haters. Show respect… not everything should be spoken.

Expecting Fast Results

Thinking that you can be an influencer overnight. I’ve helped clients BECOME influencers, it takes a while, and key relationships in your industry help make it faster but it still takes time to build those too! Plan on a solid year to two years of hardcore influencer marketing. (I made this mistake at the beginning too!)

Jaime Tardy (@eventualmillion) eventualmillionaire.com

It takes time… but look at the bright side… A few years of serious influencer marketing is one way become an influencer… others have done it before… so can you!

Letting Opportunities Pass

My ‘Influencer’ status started when I was recognized by LinkedIn for my work and chosen by them to be one of the world’s top 150 Business influencers.  My mistake was I was embarrassed by the accolade and reacted slowly to the opportunity. I didn’t realize the power it brings, and the reach it gives you. Today I get many requests to undertake keynote speeches all over the globe as a result of being a business influencer.

Colin Shaw beyondphilosophy.com (@colinshaw_CX) LinkedIn

The more opportunities you take on, the more you’ll get, the faster you’ll grow.

Thinking it’s a 9 to 5 Job

The biggest lesson I learned as an influencer, is that you can’t be an influencer from 9 to 5 , and then get back to a “different life”. It’s not even a job. It’s a lifestyle. The way you articulate people around you is so intricate and yet so simple, that, at some point you really have to blend all of the “techniques” and “strategies” into your lifestyle. That’s how it works, for me. Influencer marketing is not about what you say, but mostly about who you (really) are.

Dragos Roua dragosroua.com (@dragosroua)

Are you ready to become an influencer?

A Roundup Story

A year and a half ago I didn’t know anything about blogging. I had no idea that someone can earn money only. I didn’t even know the difference between a website and a blog. I started by helping a friend who has been in the blogosphere for many years.

This guy was making expert roundups as a paid service for other bloggers. In the beginning, I was just doing easy tasks, like research and promotion. In time, I learned all the necessary steps for creating a successful roundup.

The problem was that I reached the point in where I was doing most of the work, but I was receiving only a very small part of the money and no credit for my work (I was doing everything under that guy’s name, inclusive posting on his twitter profile, editing posts under his name and even sending emails from his email address).

So, a few months ago I decided to provide my services under my own name. The main challenge that I faced was the fact that nobody knew me. I got to know many bloggers through my work, but they had no idea who I was. So, my biggest mistake in influencer marketing was the fact that I start cold emailing to a few of my contacts.

I read a very good post on blogger outreach and I thought I understood everything. It looked easy: read their post, share them on social media, leave a few comments, after that send them an email. The first email was something positive about their work and the second email was a pitch.

Needless to say that it didn’t work out for me. This strategy is great if you are a blogger trying to connect with another blogger, but it doesn’t work if you are just a reader, that is trying to sell a service to an influencer.

Fortunately, I came up with a better idea. I made my own blog and the first post that I published was an expert roundup in which 40 Bloggers Talk About Their Biggest Challenge.

This post got a nice number of visitors and shares, and most important, it allowed me to truly connect and build relationships with other bloggers. Shortly after I made this post I started getting clients for my expert roundups.

As for the second part of the question, I can also share a mistake that someone else did towards me. I did a roundup for a client, he seemed satisfied with my work and he asked to make one post for him every week. Putting together an expert roundup requires more time than 7 days, but I was determined to do my job well.

The problem was that, although I agreed with my client that he will pay me half of the money before and the second half after the post is done, I didn’t wait. I started working like crazy sending lots of emails and in a few days, I already had about 30 answers for that roundup post.

At that moment, I told my client that I won’t continue with any work until he pays me as we agreed. What happened then was completely unexpected: he fired me. He told me that he didn’t trust me because he didn’t believe I could stand up to his expectations. After many negotiations, he offered me only 25% from what we initially agreed to publish that post that was half done.

I refused him and I sold that roundup to another blogger. I explained her the situation, she understood, I emailed all those experts and I informed them that the post will be published on a different blog. Nobody had any issue with that. So, I sent some more emails and I made it one of the biggest expert roundups on the web. In this roundup 110 Top Bloggers And Entrepreneurs Share Their Most Successful Social Media Action.

When the post was published it was a huge success:

– 118 bloggers were featured*

– 1500+ social shares

– 137 comments

Now, do you believe that my previous client did a big mistake by not trusting me? He only wanted each roundup to have around 20 experts and get just a bit over 50 shares. * the title mentions only 110 bloggers, because I received the last 8 answers after the post was published. I updated the post, but I kept the same title.

Minuca Elena creates expert round-ups that provide quality content and bring huge traffic to her clients you can find her at her minucaelena.com and twitter.

What are some key takeaways from this story?

• If you want to make a name for yourself then don’t work under anyone’s name – the time is now, don’t delay. Remember the faceless brand? Yeah, don’t do that.
• If you want to sell a service then, do your work for free and showcase it. Being nice and offering value to an influencer won’t make them buy what you’re selling. A blogger connects with an influencer and eventually gets a tweet, a share, a testimonial etc. But a product/service seller needs to show his product/service to the right customers. Don’t expect influencers to buy your stuff just because you’ve helped them.
• When you become an influencer, don’t turn into a tyrant. Don’t break promises. If you have an agreement, then follow through it. Don’t back out. Treat everyone with honor and dignity. The repuation you’ve built can be destroyed any minute.

Conclusion

The biggest mistake I ever made was in assuming someone was not an influencer when, in fact, they became much bigger than I ever imagined. Don’t judge people. That’s the lesson. And I wouldn’t worry too much about influencers; just try to treat all people well.

Jeff Goins goinswriter.com (@JeffGoins)

In the end… you’re dealing with people.

Humans, just like me and you.

Treat everyone well… make them happy… help them… give, give give, give, give and don’t expect anything in return…

Because either way, you’ll win!

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