Finding Influencers and Getting Your Social Media Game On

This can be a very long discussion, so I promise to keep it short, because I want this message to be concise, almost a mantra:
The goal of all this discussion, energy and activity regarding social media is to do one thing and one thing well - find your key influencers by listening intently and empower them to be your brand ambassadors.

"Find your key influencers by listening intently and empower them to be your brand ambassadors".

If you focus on achieving just this one goal and measure its effectiveness over time, you will win the battle for customer loyalty and engagement.

We see try to find ways to reduce the noise and keep social media hyperbole in check around here. FohBoh is a Silicon Valley-based social media company dedicated to the foodservice industry. We also run an online community. So, we are social networking practitioners and have an Internet perspective grounded by conversation and experience that began, at least for me, in 1998. On our social media consulting side (fohboh.net), we work with foodservice industry companies to develop and execute strategies that meet their current needs. Because needs change, we try to keep things simple.

Any marketer or social media "expert" can easily confuse clients and create a 100 page social media marketing tome. These folks can easily entertain their clients with vocabulary, citing hundreds of web 2.0 tools and delivering animated presentations for all things social web - in 140 characters or less. But the reality is, conveying ideas simply to consumers has a history of generating higher ROI than messaging complex ideas. Remember KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid)?

FohBoh, like facebook, Twitter and Linkedin, and all the other companies making a living from social networking, are learning on the job. Because this is true and the social web moves fast, we had to find our own way. So, our way is to first boil the ocean. Then, we reduce it to bit-size pieces to frame a methodology that is simple to understand, easy to execute and can be measured. Then, we listen intently as we go along (and yes, we engage) using our foodservice filters and 30 + years of restaurant operations experience and execute consistently in partnership with our clients. Open engagement, consistent messaging and listening intently are key success factors for a winning social media strategy.

Getting your social media game on is mandatory for any business seriously interested in competing and being successful these days But, it's a matter of degree. An independent restaurant operator, for example, must be in the game, and on their game, but they do not need to over-think it. They just need to think about it and jump in with a basic strategy not just a tactic like Twitter because they read about it.

Chains, well, if you are not listening to the crowd, you are out of touch with those that define products and services - your customers. Those same customers (90% of them who are online anyway) hang out in communities somewhere and are a demanding lot. They have a voice that that voice is getting stronger. Doesn't it make sense to leverage this amazing communication channel to harness its power, find and engage your brand ambassadors? It's like having a street teams for your restaurant.

"Find your key influencers by listening intently and empower them to be your brand ambassadors".

Check it out: FohBoh.net

Tags: empowering your key influencers, finding your brand ambassadors, restaurant social media

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Comment by Michael L. Atkinson on February 5, 2010 at 2:46pm: @michaelb, great question and Joseph is basically correct. They are usually the ones with the most fans and followers and have their own blogs. There are three types of influencers: peer, social and key influencers.

Peer influencers are those that are the easiest to spot; they are your employees, family and friends. They are closest to you and your brand.

Social influencers are those that are online a lot, comment on blogs and rate restaurants after a dining experiences. They are generally active and have an opinion.

key influencers are the ones that can help you or kill your brand. They have the most activity on their networks. They are part of the 1% on social networking sites that generate 99% of the content.

With a product like FohBuzz™, you can fine them and enter into a dialog, where you can reward them.

At fohboh, for our social media clients, we "collect" them and covet the relationship.

Comment by Michael L. Atkinson on February 5, 2010 at 2:32pm: Rodney, that's an unrealistic goal. It's not about quality as much as it is quality. Measuring success can be defined a number of ways. Fans, followers, messages, etc. What I can tell you is consistent, incremental execution of the tactics of a strategic plan will provide successful outcome. It's free, assuming you do it yourself. That's why we created FohMedia to help restaurant operators find and measure success.

Comment by Rodney Wedge on February 5, 2010 at 6:15am: I have a client that has issued the challenge to increase his followers from 150 to 5000 over the next 6 months and on a tight budget. My social media skills are beginner stage and although I know this can be accomplished, I really don't know the path to take to accomplish this goal.

Comment by Joseph Szala on February 4, 2010 at 7:17am: @MichaelB, the influencers are going to be the loudest on your social pages. I don't think you should single them out and leave the rest behind though. The reason sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc are successful is because the control lies in the hands of the consumer, not the brand necessarily. If the content is cherry, people will react.

For instance, on our viral/word of mouth coupon site, Blabberbug, we have a number of places with normal coupons. One of our clients, Roburritos, posted a coupon to Rock Paper Scissors for a free burrito. It sparked like wildfire and got people talking. That's doing something different, and that gets talked about.

My advice would be to focus on "what's in it for them" and deliver that. Let the influencers do what they do best: influence.

Comment by Michael Biesemeyer on February 1, 2010 at 12:20pm: @Michael: How does a restaurant identify its key influencers amongst the 'noise' that it's brand might be generating online? In other words, if my restaurant has 1,000 fans on Facebook, how do I single out the quality contacts from the rest of the crowd?