Nicola Millard, customer experience futurologist for BT Global Services, shares some insights about what service providers in telecom have to do to beat out not only other telco brands, but all other brands of competitors, whether retail, banking, social networks, financial services, entertainment or any other verticals that touch customers day to day. Neuroscience, she says, shows that 90 percent [...]

There is a great misunderstanding that just because someone is popular it makes them influential. This couldn’t be further from the truth on Twitter. When it comes down to making sure your message is heard and ensuring that it spreads amongst your target audience, you have to engage with the right people at the right time with the right message. [...]

Sam Rosen writes about the Holy Grail of interactive marketing: getting “social media influencers”—the ones with the voice and the reach, the ones to whom everyone else listens—to endorse and promote what you’re doing. Recently, his company managed to inspire 60 such influencers to participate in an event called The Influencer Project, and they even took it upon themselves to [...]

A post by Sam Rosen in Social Media Examiner. It’s the Holy Grail of interactive marketing: getting “social media influencers” — the ones with the voice and the reach, the ones to whom everyone else listens — to endorse and promote what you’re doing. His company managed to inspire 60 such influencers to participate in an event called The Influencer [...]

Finding the influencers and offering free stuff (be it coupons, test drives or entertainment) is only the beginning. As Brian Solis puts it, “Recognition is a start. Reward is a gesture. Engagement and reciprocity is how we christen relationships.” For more articles about a related topic, see also The Problem with Influence and The Naked er: Traditional v. Contemporary Channels [...]

A guest post by Ross Hudgens on QuickOnlineTips. Hudgens explains how to pick the right influencers, and how to reach them. For more articles about a related topic, see also Influencing the Influencer and Cyber Anthropology: A unified View of Communities and Social Networks To access the original material, click on “Offsite link” lower in this page. To read the [...]

According to Brian Solis, “brand prominence and resonance start with the recognition of people who have earned stature in your markets. Engagement and reciprocity is how we christen relationships. Embracing eminence is just the beginning. The same tools, services, and techniques that propel socializers atop these emerging social hierarchies also work for us”. For more articles about a related topic, [...]

Meghan Keane reports on a study from Invoke Solutions, it’s still real world friends that hold the most sway with consumers online. And while Facebook has made a niche for itself by fostering online relationships between people who are friends or know each other offline, on Twitter there could be trust issues. According to Invoke, the most trusted information online [...]

Teen social media influencers—defined in the study as the top 15% most active and most engaged teens in the myYearbook community—are more likely than other teens to engage in various digital activities: 97% spend over two hours a day on social media sites (vs. 79% of other teens). Teen social media influencers also like to talk about what they buy: [...]

Sam Rosen’s company brought 60 online influencers and ask them each for one thing that needs to be done to increase your influence online. This article is a compilation of what each of these 60 influencers said. Each of them was given one minute to share their recommendation.’ For more articles about a related topic, see also On Twitter Influencer [...]

The new service helps identify truly influential bloggers and writers in all sections and enables those individuals to connect with brands, products and services of interest to them. PostRank Connect enables influencers to register free of charge for PostRank’s content analytics service in exchange for verifying information about their content’s focus. PostRank software delivers real-time metrics on how widely read [...]

Sysomos outlines five ways to influence the influencers: Do your homework, read their blog posts, s, etc.. be focused, build relationships, and craft the perfect pitch. For more articles about a related topic, see also Key Influencer Marketing and How To Find a Social Media Influencer. To access the original material, click on “Offsite link” lower in this page. To [...]

Erin Hoffman, in a post on the Cision blog, compares the impact and ROI of celebrity endorsements vs. social media buzz. For more articles about a related topic, see also How Can You Measure Influence? and Finding the Influencers: Influence Analytics 2. To access the original material, click on “Offsite link” lower in this page. To read the original article, [...]

Jon Siegal on DIgidDay:Daily shares some advice on how to find the biggest brand fans, and gives 4 recommendations for rewarding them: roll out the red carpet, virtual money talks, keep the rewards coming, and invest wisely in Facebook. To read the original article, click here

This presentation, by Pranesh Mishra from BRandscapes Worldwide, provides a broad overview of marketing concepts and approaches, and has a few pages about identifying influencers and working with them. To read the original article, click here