This document provides an overview of how to implement an influencer marketing strategy using Traackr's influencer discovery and analytics tools. It discusses five key ways marketers have used Traackr: 1) drive awareness for products, events, and campaigns; 2) cultivate advocates and community; 3) build owned media programs; 4) research and uncover insights; and 5) measure impact and report on performance. For each use case, it provides examples and outlines how to identify relevant influencers and leverage their networks.
3. Learn how savvy
organizations are using
influencer discovery
and analytics to identify,
engage, support and learn
from the people creating
conversations impacting
their brands, products
and services.
4. INTROTO
INFLUENCER
MARKETING
Influencer Marketing
is the process of identifying,
researching, engaging and
supporting the people who
create the conversations
impacting your brand, products
or services.
At the core of Integrated
Marketing Communications,
Influencer Marketing aligns
PR,marketing,salesandproduct
around a common strategy.
5. 8 | TRAACKR | 9
WHY FOCUS ON
INFLUENCERS?
Influencers by definition have an audience. One person can
easily encourage 10,000 people to visit your site. One person
can easily send hundreds of leads your way. One person can
stop a rumor and save you face. Influencers make it possible
to go from one to many, effectively.
Influential people serve as filters on the web. If you happen
to blink, or heaven-forbid sleep, you shouldn’t miss out on
what matters to you. Influencers act as conduits to the most
important content, thereby saving you from wading through
the irrelevant muck.
Influencers are also trendsetters. They create waves. Since
they are passionate about their topics, they not only pay
attention to what’s next, they define the trends. Influencers
shape the future of the conversation. By listening,
you anticipate obstacles and harness opportunities.
Marketing to and with these wavemakers will make it
dramatically easier to do three very valuable things:
• Get your messages out to your audiences.
• Pick the right content and channels.
• Make better decisions about content and strategies.
WHAT IS AN ONLINE
INFLUENCER?
Blink. I dare you. Do so and you’ll miss more than 1600
tweets, 48 minutes of video and 18.5 blog posts. People are
creating, consuming, and acting on digital content at rates our
Mad Men predecessors couldn’t have ever imagined.
In this highly social web, information travels like waves.
These waves are created by people who generate content
and build followings. A subset of these people create stronger
waves than others. These wavemakers drive their audiences
to believe, buy and care. So, what makes someone a
wavemaker? Influence.
Influence simply means you are recognized as a thought
leader or expert on a topic. People want to listen to you and
relay your opinions and ideas when it comes to that topic.
Influence is inherently authentic, contextual and, in many
cases, geographical.
For the marketer, these wavemakers are doubly important:
Filters: Wavemakers serve as a proxy to the larger, unruly
web and help focus limited time and resources on the most
powerful channels and conversations.
Amplifiers: Wavemakers are the most effective partners for
sharing your messages and driving business your way.
Influencer Marketing is the process of finding, engaging and
learning from your organization’s specific wavemakers to
support your business goals. This guide will show you how
Traackr helps you discover your influencers and what to do
with them when you find them!
6. Traackr’s influencer discovery
and management tools support
influencer marketing initiatives
for over 140 enterprises and
40% of the top communications
agencies. Broken down by
marketing objective, here’s
a look at the top five ways
marketers and communicators
have used Traackr’s people
discovery engine and influencer
analytics to reach their goals.
1. Drive Awareness for Products, Events & Campaigns
2. Cultivate Advocates & Community
3. Build Owned Media Programs
4. Research & Uncover Insights
5. Measure Impact & Report on Performance
5WAYSTOUSE
INFLUENCER
ANALYTICS
7. TRAACKR | 13
AWARENESS1 DRIVE AWARENESS FOR
PRODUCTS, EVENTS
& CAMPAIGNS
To create or raise awareness, you need to discover who has
the greatest ability to support your messages and relay your
news to the right audience. When you work with influencers,
your message can go from one to many without relying on
paid media.
Traackr helps by automatically discovering the right people
and pulling together their relevant content based on your
custom criteria.
LAUNCH A NEW PRODUCT
Generate buzz and drive interest for a new product.
How to do it:
• Define the online conversation you need to be a part
of using keywords. Tip: think about terms your ideal
customers would use to discuss your product category or
to describe the context where they would use it.
• Use those keywords to find the people who are leading
the conversation you are interested in and create your list
of influencers.
• Reach out to these individuals with a compelling offer that
adds value to their work and creates an opportunity for
you to earn their attention.
• Monitor mentions of your product and other terms that
indicate awareness as your campaign unrolls to measure
the success of your outreach.
Traackr Features:
Influencer Discovery, Dynamic A-Lists, Share of Voice Report
8. 14 | TRAACKR | 15
PROMOTE AN EVENT
Drive attendance and extend your event online.
How to do it:
• Use the event themes or conference tracks to define
several lists of keywords that encompass the content.
• Using keywords, find people interested in the theme of
your event who can help you spread the word. Tip: geo-
target your search to find people near the event venue.
• Make influencers aware of your event (share event
hashtags) and offer a discount for their audience or create
a referral program to drive registrations (point them to the
specific sessions that are most exciting for them).
• Follow real-time when influencers mention your event and
promote their content to attendees. Tip: engage during the
event and point influencers to content that interests them.
Traackr Features:
Influencer Discovery, Dynamic A-Lists, Pulse, Share of Voice Report
LAUNCH A BRAND AWARENESS CAMPAIGN
Increase share of voice and boost positive brand mentions.
How to do it:
• Identify conversations where your brand should be noticed.
• Define your influencer lists by thinking about the bigger
stories your company plays a role in: industry trends,
corporate philanthropy projects, new markets, etc.
• Reach out to the influencers to brief them and build a
relationship. Some ideas include inviting them to your
events and introducing them to your leadership teams.
• Monitor mentions, message pull-through, sentiment and
share of influential voice to measure brand awareness.
Traackr Features:
Influencer Discovery, Dynamic A-Lists, Sentiment Report
Influence Drives Revenue
NetBase
NetBase, the enterprise social intelligence company, was
getting ready to launch an entirely new product line into
the social media market while also overhauling its brand.
Spearheaded by its strategic communications agency,
Eastwick, NetBase used Traackr to identify the top influencers
in their target market and then crafted a strategic and
personalized outreach program, pairing key members of their
executive team with specific influencers. The program created
influencer relationships that have so far spanned over three
years and what’s more, these relationships lead to articles
and webinars, which directly resulted in winning significant
enterprise business.
9. TRAACKR | 17
ADVOCACY2 CULTIVATE ADVOCATES
& COMMUNITY
An advocate is someone who promotes your company without
being on payroll. Finding and cultivating influential advocates
is the Holy Grail for brands.
Traackr helps you identify and learn about your potential
advocates by giving you their entire online footprint and letting
you filter your social listening to these impactful individuals.
SEED A PRODUCT
Find early adopters who will jump start activity in your
product or platform.
How to do it:
• Start with your customer personas and pull out their major
interest areas.
• Use these keywords to create lists of people who are likely
to use and have strong opinions about your product.
• Invite them to participate in a beta cycle or give them a
direct way to contribute to shaping the product.
• Acknowledge their feedback, share it with your product
team, and let influencers know how their contribution has
been be accounted for or incorporated.
• Track when they talk about your product on the social
web in real-time so you can engage and set up monitoring
projects to stay on top of global conversations.
Traackr Features:
Influencer Discovery, Dynamic A-Lists, Pulse, Share of Voice Report
10. 18 | TRAACKR | 19
CREATE A COMMUNITY
Help a group of influential customers and advocates connect.
How to do it:
• Find common attributes that unite your most influential
customers and advocates.
• Study their profiles for clues to what motivates them.
• Invite them to your community where they can meet like-
minded people and get access to your resources.
• Keep this community invite-only and only expand it to a
larger audience once it’s reached critical mass.
• Stay on top of your influencers in real-time so you can
engage with them at opportune moments.
Traackr Features:
Influencer Discovery, Dynamic A-Lists, Detailed Influencer Profiles,
Share of Voice Report, Pulse
MANAGE A CRISIS
Reduce the impact of a communications crisis.
How to do it:
• Start by briefing the trusted circle of influential advocates
with whom you have already built a strong relationship.
• Engage in a conversation with your detractors. Share
facts to avoid the snowball effect of misinformation.
Acknowledge the problem, if necessary apologize, and
communicate your plan to remedy the situation.
• Closely follow key conversations that represent risks
(competitors, weaknesses, industry scandals, etc.).
• Track how the tone of the conversation changes over time.
• Watch during good times how others handle mishaps.
Traackr Features:
Influencer Discovery, Dynamic A-Lists, Pulse, Sentiment Report,
Share of Voice Report
Look for Win-Win Opportunities
Mi6 Agency & SAP
Mi6 Agency is using Traackr to discover and monitor
thought leaders and influencers in the areas of Finance and
Retail as part of an Influencer Network program for global
enterprise software provider SAP. This program provides
network members with research, exclusive interviews and
unique engagement opportunities that help further educate
key stakeholders in Finance and Retail on key issues and
opportunities to improve productivity, reduce costs, increase
corporate performance and predict business outcomes.
Executive Activation
Juniper Networks
Juniper Networks, the industry leader in network innovation,
recognized the power of a strong influencer community and
set out to build individual relationships with the thought
leaders and conversation drivers in the enterprise networking
industry. Early on, Juniper Networks empowered its executive
team to directly own the relationships with influencers. Using
Traackr, Juniper Networks matched executives with specific
people from the influencer lists and gave them social media
training and guidance to get going.
11. TRAACKR | 21
OWNEDMEDIA3 BUILD OWNED MEDIA
PROGRAMS
Leading consumer and business-facing companies use their
own media platforms to provide timely, compelling and useful
information. To develop content an audience will appreciate,
the marketer will always start with research.
Traackr helps by surfacing social insights so you can identify
topics and trends that impact your editorial decisions.
DEVELOP PARTNERSHIPS FOR WEBINARS
Find thought leaders you can work with to deliver
compelling presentations.
How to do it:
• Use your content strategy and communications pillars to
identify keywords that define your topic areas.
• Instead of building your webinars in isolation, look to
your influencer lists for people who could augment your
content or share a different perspective. Tip: don’t be
afraid of people with opposing viewpoints, they could
provide the right dose of intrigue to bring your audience to
the screen.
• Zoom in on your influencers’ content to discover who is
passionate about specific topics within your campaign.
• Reach out to individuals to be part of a panel or featured
guest on a webinar. Keep in mind you may need to
compensate people depending on their experience and
the work required.
Traackr Features:
Influencer Discovery, Dynamic A-Lists, Detailed Influencer Profiles
12. 22 | TRAACKR | 23
CREATE CREDIBILITY THROUGH CONTENT
Become a go-to source for trusted information.
How to do it:
• Organize your influencers by content themes.
• Review the content written by your influencers to figure
out what is trending, what types of questions they may
have and what types of information they and their
audiences are looking for.
• Build your content and SEO strategy around the topics
your influencers are talking about.
• Track your progress by monitoring what influencers are
talking about on social streams and following your themes
in your influencers’ content.
Traackr Features:
Influencer Discovery, Dynamic A-Lists, Pulse, Keyword Report,
Theme Report, Share of Voice Report
RAISE YOUR OWN INFLUENCER PROFILE
Become influential through content curation.
How to do it:
• Listen to the social web through a highly focused filter to
find the most relevant content and identify trends you see
across influencer conversations.
• Choose the most interesting content to curate through your
own channels.
• Setup monitoring systems to easily track specific topics
and themes.
• Publish your curated content to your site.
• Monitor how your profile rises through the ranks.
Traackr Features:
Influencer Discovery, Dynamic A-Lists, Pulse, Curated RSS Feed,
Share of Voice Report
Become a Leader in Your Field
Logicworks
Logicworks, a world-class scalable cloud hosting solutions
provider headquartered in New York City, operates in a noisy
space with heavy competition. Looking to stand a cloud
above the rest, Logicworks created an industry-specific blog,
Gathering Clouds, focused exclusively on news and opinion
on the cloud/IT spectrum. Logicworks uses Traackr to identify
niche themes within the overall technology field based on the
conversations influencers are having online. Contrary to most
companies, Logicworks foregoes self-promotion, even going as
far as, featuring a competitor on their blog. Their mission is to
build a solid reputation as a trusted source of information for
the entire industry.
Make Yourself the Center of Information
Eastwick Communications
Eastwick, a leading independent public relations agency,
helps technology companies shape markets and connect with
audiences. To lead in this space, Eastwick must convey their
industry expertise to prospective clients and understand how
to identify the highest-impact tactics for each client. Using
Traackr, Eastwick forms strategy and unique tactics for each
influencer, for each client. As a result, Eastwick is able to
create holistic campaigns that encompass media relations,
analyst relations and influencer cultivation to maximize
message penetration and impact for its clients.
13. TRAACKR | 25
INSIGHTS4 RESEARCH &
UNCOVER INSIGHTS
Harnessing the power of the social web starts by listening and
understanding the dynamics of the communities that interest
you. But from listening should come action. At the very least,
listening enables you to react in a timely manner. At the very
best, listening makes it possible for you to anticipate needs,
problems and opportunities.
Traackr helps by focusing your social listening on the most
important people and content so you are more prepared and
act faster than your competition.
GET FEEDBACK FOR PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
Gain essential insights on the feelings and opinions around
your product and drive a smarter product development.
How to do it:
• Identify the top influencers around your product category.
• Collect data and insights from your influencer’s content.
• Find the themes driving opinions of your product.
• If you want to generate more direct feedback from your
influencers, allow them to test the product, provide
feedback or get members of their audience to participate.
Tip: create a product advisory board with members from
your influencer lists.
Traackr Features:
Influencer Discovery, Dynamic A-Lists, Detailed Influencer Profiles,
Keyword Report, Theme Report
14. 26 | TRAACKR | 27
CONDUCT COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
Understand your competitors and track how your
organization is situated in the competitive landscape.
How to do it:
• Use keywords to find the influencers who cover the
general conversation where you compete.
• Track how often influencers mention you and competitors.
• Segment mentions by theme and sentiment.
Traackr Features:
Influencer Discovery, Dynamic A-Lists, Share of Voice Report,
Sentiment Report, Theme Report
GET TO KNOW YOUR PROSPECTS
Follow prospects and generate high quality leads.
How to do it:
• Create a list of your top prospects.
• Identify all of the places they publish and share online so
you can access all of their content.
• Set up monitoring systems so you know when your
prospects talk about important topics in real-time.
• Study your prospects’ content to tailor your materials and
reach out on social channels.
Traackr Features:
Influencer Discovery, Dynamic A-Lists, Detailed Influencer Profiles, Pulse
Sell Smarter
Widmeyer Communications
Widmeyer Communications, a leading independent public
relations agency uses Traackr to follow their prospective clients
so they know which issues are most important to them, what
types of activities they are trying, the tone of their conversation
and the challenges they may be facing. This way Widmeyer
Communications has all of the information and insight they
need to win the account when the time is right.
15. TRAACKR | 29
PERFORMANCE5 MEASURE IMPACT &
REPORT ON PERFORMANCE
If a marketing campaign is successful, but no one measures it,
does it make an impact? Jokes aside, it’s vital to track progress
towards business objectives. In communications, there are a
few notable measures for demonstrating performance: share
of voice, topicality, sentiment and message pull-through.
Traackr helps by keeping tabs on important metrics,
generating presentation-ready reports and making it easy to
track message-level themes and sentiment.
DEMONSTRATE SHARE OF INFLUENCE
Reduce time required to track and report share of voice.
How to do it:
• For each group of influencers, follow specific keyword
mentions (company name, product name, key people,
competitors, etc).
• Create reports and visualizations to demonstrate to your
team or clients the number and frequency of mentions.
• Break out important content by keyword and influencer to
show trends in coverage and message pull-through.
Traackr Features:
Influencer Discovery, Dynamic A-Lists, Share of Voice Report,
Theme Report
16. 30 | TRAACKR | 31
TRACK CRISIS MITIGATION EFFORTS
Determine if communications programs and messaging are
making an impact.
How to do it:
• Create a list of people who are influential in the topic
affected by the crisis.
• Target your mitigation efforts on the individuals who can
help you spread your messages widely.
• Develop a system to categorize posts and mentions by the
themes of your campaigns.
• Run reports to show how messaging is being picked up
and transmitted by your influencers.
Traackr Features:
Influencer Discovery, Dynamic A-Lists, Detailed Influencer Profiles,
Pulse, Theme Report
FOLLOW CHANGES IN SENTIMENT
Report accurately on sentiment.
How to do it:
• Read the most recent content by your influencers.
• Monitor their content to associate sentiment to mentions
(positive, negative or neutral).
• Report on changes in sentiment across your influencers.
Traackr Features:
Influencer Discovery, Dynamic A-Lists, Pulse, Sentiment Report
Keeping an Ear to the Ground
JPMorgan Chase
For JPMorgan Chase, listening is a critical part of its social
media strategy. While the social noise around a large brand
such as Chase can be almost deafening, Chase uses Traackr
to navigate through all the sound and take away clear,
actionable messages – about the brand, its products and the
industry as a whole. With this knowledge, Chase can then
tailor its messages in a way that is productive and meaningful,
rather than just adding more noise.
Using Social Listening to Monitor Trends
SocialxDesign
Traackr helped SocialxDesign, a strategy firm that builds
brands and loyalty by bridging online engagement and offline
experience, follow the 2012 US Presidential Election and
map campaign issues to social conversations. This sped
up understanding, response, and above all, engagement in
the audiences that mattered most. Traackr enabled SxD to
pinpoint the most influential conversations as they happened,
letting them cut throughout the chatter and follow key ideas
and topics in a way that drove action. This research paid off
not only in engagement, but in follow-up reporting and data
sharing reported by SxD in publications like Forbes.
17. INFLUENCER
OUTREACH
BESTPRACTICES
Engaging with influencers
is more an art than a science.
What makes excellent influencer
engagement stand out
from mediocre attempts
is creativity and customization.
This is a lot easier to accomplish
when aided by Traackr’s
influencer insight and analytics
tools that let you deep dive into
the online profiles of the people
you want to engage.
18. 34 | TRAACKR | 35
BEST PRACTICES
FOR ENGAGEMENT
BE RELEVANT, DO YOUR HOMEWORK
Look at an influencer’s entire online footprint including
everywhere they publish: blogs, co-authored sites, Twitter,
Quora, etc. Before reaching out to someone, find out their
topics of interest, how often and where they publish, and what
they enjoy doing outside of their influential zone.
“I always start my influencer outreach with research. With Traackr we are
able to go really deep for each of our influencers – digging into their interests,
communication style, resources they use, etc. We are able to create very
personalized pitches from this research that results in great relationships
and stories for our clients. I was struggling to get our client on the radar of an
influencer and after some digging on our Traackr list, I discovered he had a
side blog covering his interest in sports technology! When our client (a tech
company) held an event at Fenway Park, I was able use that knowledge to
send him exactly the right information to secure his attendance and long-term
interest in our client.”
Jesse Hamlin, Account Manager, Eastwick Communications
ENGAGE EARLY, OFTEN AND AUTHENTICALLY
Sometime influencer relationships take off quickly on the first
email or Tweet, more often they require nurturing. Engage
by joining their conversations, leaving comments, asking
them questions. You’re interested in them so there will be
opportunities to connect.
EMBRACE COMPETING VIEWPOINTS
Different opinions make the world go round! Embrace alternate
views and use them to your advantage. Find your comfort
zone and understand how your point of view is different than
others. What’s great about competing ideas is they make for
truly engaging conversations.
COMMUNICATE WITH CONFIDENCE
We all want to be valued and influencers are just like the rest
of us. Imagine how great you would feel if you received a
thoughtful email asking for your opinion. The only difference
between you and an influencer may be they have an audience
and topic matter experience. Bear in mind you don’t need
to convince a well-chosen influencer that the topic you care
about is important, they know as they are an opinion leader in
that conversation.
“What makes an influencer an ‘influencer’ is that they are connecting good
content – content that’s interesting, useful, provocative, funny – with an
already-engaged audience. This audience is inherently interested in what this
influencer has to say or share. But they don’t necessarily create all of that
themselves. You can help both the influencer and yourselves by reaching out
to the right influencers with the right content at the right time.”
Alan Belniak, Director of Social Media Marketing, PTC
TRY ALTERNATE CHANNELS
A good rule of thumb is to start by engaging influencers on
active online platforms they own (rather than contribute) but
not everyone you address will be game to engage with you.
They could be busy or simply uninterested. Some will respond
to let you know and others will leave you hanging. It’s a good
idea to follow up or try alternate channels. Set goals and make
adjustments if needed.
COMPENSATE WHEN IT MAKES SENSE
Influencers are excellent sources for content, but keep in
mind the difference between briefing an influencer and
asking them to generate fresh content for your benefit. When
it makes sense, approach the relationship as you would with
a service provider. Trade carefully though as ‘real’ influencers
will always value their audience over a deal (as the trust they
earned in their community is their real currency). If you enter
in a business relationship with an influencer, you’re really
buying their expertise, not their influence.
19. 36 | TRAACKR | 37
ABOUT TRAACKR
Traackr is a powerful influencer analytics suite that supports
successful influencer marketing strategies by giving you the
knowledge you need to craft smart strategies and effective
plans. Traackr helps you understand your audience and focus
your attention on the most important data on the social web.
Influencer Discovery
Traackr’s Discovery Engine finds the most influential people
on any topic as you define it. Traackr automates the influencer
mapping process to give you a complete list of relevant people
based on your custom keyword phrases.
Dynamic A-Lists
The dynamic influencer lists refresh on a regular basis,
continuously pulling in fresh content and changes to
influencer ranking. Your A-lists are fully customizable so you
can add your own influencers to the list, exclude individuals
and export contact details.
Detailed Influencer Profiles
Influencer Profiles give you the entire online footprint for every
influencer on your list, including contact information, direct
links to their publishing platforms and relevant posts on your
specific topics.
Pulse
For real-time listening, Pulse helps you stay on top of what
your influencers are saying as they publish and interact. You
can configure Pulse to display real-time brand mentions, event
hashtags or any other keywords.
Sentiment Report
Assign sentiment at the influencer- and content-level from
anywhere in the application. Then run reports to monitor
changes to opinion on your brand or topic over time.
Theme Report
Throughout the application you can apply custom themes to
content so you can simplify processes like tracking message
pull-through, managing influencer follow up and keeping on
top of your outreach to influencers.
Share Of Voice Report
Automatically track mentions of your products, brand, or
competitors by influencers and monitor your share of voice
over time. You can also create presentation-ready performance
reports for custom time frames.
Keyword Report
Get deeper insight into your influencers and emerging content
trends. Browse content by your influencers and see which
topics are most talked about by influencer.
Geo-Targeting
Geo-target searches to include or exclude geographical areas.
All influencer lists can also be sorted by location to find
influencers by geography.
Curated RSS Feed
Get a curated stream of your influencers’ content for yourself,
team members and clients. From the Share of Voice Report,
you can grab an RSS feed of content to integrated into your
reader or mobile app.
20. THANK YOU
Special appreciation to the following people for sharing their
stories with us. These individuals are at the leading edge of
influencer marketing, making waves and showing the way.
Manny Ataebi, Logicworks
Alan Belniak, PTC
John Demarchi, Social Czar
Jake Gardner, Logicworks
Jesse Hamlin, Eastwick Communications
Chris Herbert, Mi6 Agency
Barry Reicherter, Widmeyer Communications
Giovanni Rodriguez, SocialxDesign
Lisa Joy Rosner, NetBase
Jessica Sheehan, JP Morgan Chase
Ben White, Edelman
21. For more information
contact info@traackr.com
“We all know that influencer marketing
has been around since the beginning of time.
So, what’s new today? There is just so much
noise out there that it’s increasingly difficult
to know who is authentically influential to your
target customer. The value of Traackr is that
it surfaces the right people who can have
a disproportionately powerful impact on your
brand so you can get the most out of your
engagement efforts. If you don’t know who your
influencers are today, it’s time to get started!”
Lisa Joy Rosner, CMO NetBase