Influencer marketing is one of my favorite topics, and for good reason – over the past eight or so years, we’ve used influencer marketing to demonstrate exponential increases in key business areas, like client retention, brand awareness and event attendance. There’s been an absolute explosion in brands talking about influencer marketing, and having come back from a conference where I just spoke to communicators about influencer relations best practices, I decided to share a few secrets with you on how to make your influencer efforts more effective.Anyone can be an influencer – as long as they inspire someone to act. Rather than only focusing on social media influencers, expand your horizons to include journalists, experts, academics and even simply organic advocates on your friends list or networks. Your target audiences may look to one, several or all of these for information. The key is focusing less on the number of followers, and focusing more on the quality of their content, conversations and engagement with their audiences. The most important evaluation – is the person you’re considering inspiring their audiences to reply, share, complete a task or buy? If not, the answer is they’re simply not an influencer.It doesn’t have to cost money. 

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