Today, influencer marketing has proved to be a powerful strategy to raise awareness about the brand and attract new leads. It applies to all social media platforms. Yet, LinkedIn can offer an exciting focus to marketers. Due to the prevalence of the professional audience there, LinkedIn influencer marketing has become an instrument for promoting B2B goods and services.
Read on to discover the basics of finding and connecting with influencers on LinkedIn.
What is a LinkedIn Influencer?
Before all, the Linkedin influencer is a person having specific expertise and authority, allowing them to be an opinion leader in a particular industry or subject and affect a specific audience and their operation.
In terms of B2B groups, such an opinion leader offers case studies, articles, insights, and solutions from which people are to learn. Thus, if a marketer manages to get in the sight of the top LinkedIn influencers, there is a chance to improve trust in their brand and promote their products.
LinkedIn Influencer Marketing Basics
Many brands use Instagram, Tiktok, Youtube, and Facebook content creators to promote their products and services. However, LinkedIn influencer marketing has different specifics. It comes from the expertise and experiences the people project there. How to find top LinkedIn influencers there? Well, to find at least quality ones, you follow these steps:
- Determine the niche. Before all, you should define the appropriate industry matching your buyer persona. You should consider the demographics and characteristics referring to the audience’s behaviour, interests, and hobbies.
- Identify the influencer and contact them. Next, you must look for the right person to promote your product. They should be experts and have good reach and engagement. After that, you will need to determine the channel to contact them. You may use direct messages. Yet, if they ignore invitations or DMs, you should write to their corporate email address. For instance, you may find company email address information related to influencers with a unique tool straight and send them a letter.
- Consider the approach. Also, it is essential to position yourself right and communicate your intentions. Try to present your product well, compliment an influencer and provide value that will answer their needs.
- Think of the content. As the top LinkedIn influencers want to provide the best insights to their audiences, you should be ready to provide a basis for and support their content. You should understand that their post may bring you more leads. Thus, your task is to offer a decent piece and ensure your leads will continue the customer journey within your sales cycle.
As a result, effective LinkedIn influencer marketing requires you to find the right niche, connect to influencers, provide them with value and support the content. It is only possible if you position yourself right and develop a solid strategy for connecting with influencers.
How to Connect with Influencers on LinkedIn
Connecting with influencers is a crucial part of working with influencers. Why? How you connect to influencers defines the development of the relationships and the campaign’s success. Check these tips to connect to influencers easier and more effectively:
Work on your page
First of all, either a top influencer LinkedIn offers or a nano influencer wants to work with a business that has a solid image or at least clear values. If you do not have enough followers, you can do your best to create an appealing page. What for? It is the first thing experts and influencers will look at if they do not know you.
In this regard, create an appealing page, either a company or a personal one (if you represent your company on LinkedIn). What are the critical things for connecting with influencers?
- Your relation to the company
- The products you offer
- Appealing photos
- Expertise supported by experience and skills
- Active profile (so that an influencer could see that you share a lot)
- Filled sections related to the company
In the end, you must try to fill all the sections that refer to your occupation and experience. Once you have a developed and good-looking profile, you can start writing to people, send them invitations, or simply write a direct message.
Engage with their posts and articles
Importantly, to connect to influencers, you need to develop relationships by helping them and bringing them value. In this regard, you can engage with their content so that they see you. How does it work? You can share the blog, post, infographics, or piece of the case study shared by the LinkedIn influencer and tag them. Also, you can support them with comments, complimenting their work.
In the end, if the influencer likes your post, you have a higher chance of getting remembered. It means that such a repost or an engagement offers you the ground for developing deeper relationships necessary for collaboration. Setting a pleasant communication flow from the beginning contemplates that you will sign documents to seal the joint content creation or product promotion sooner.
Use InMails or special tools
When connecting with influencers, you should use the help of LinkedIn features and other software. In particular, LinkedIn premium allows you to use InMails to send messages to the email address an influencer used for registration.
At the same time, you can use the targeting options of LinkedIn to send personalised messages to influencers under bulk influencer campaigns. However, some influencers can consider it too pushy.
Lastly, you can use B2B databases or LinkedIn email finders to extract essential data about influencers. It can be a great way to follow up if the previous social media influencer LinkedIn messages got no reply.
