In many
Internet marketing projects, a common goal can be to reach out to digital influencers in the client's target industry. Reaching out to influencers can provide many benefits like backlinks, positive PR, word-of-mouth, and product sales.
Often, when searching for influencers, we start with sites like Technorati, Google, and Twitter. While that's fine and dandy, we typically neglect looking at Facebook, which just so happens to be the world's most popular social network.
In a recent search for local influencers, we found many examples where the potential influencer had a large and very engaged following on Facebook, but nothing on Twitter, let alone a blog of any type.
Maybe it's because Facebook has spent so much time as a closed network that when we begin our searches, we immediately turn to those networks that we know are inherently open. It's easy to search for power bloggers and Twitter users. It's a lot harder to search for power Facebook users.
But that's not to say it can't be done.
Use Facebook's internal search (which is slowly becoming a powerful social search engine) to discover industry influencers in your area. For example, a search for "social media dallas" might return the fan page for the Social Media Club of Dallas, which has almost 500 very engaged fans. For a campaign targeting social media influentials, that might be a good place to start!
Alternatively, use Google's handy site search feature to look for influential Facebook users (the query might look something like, "site:facebook.com social media dallas").
Do you target Facebook users in your social campaigns? What's worked for you?
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