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The Word of Mouth Marketing Association defines an influencer as:

A person who has a greater than average reach or impact through word of mouth in a relevant marketplace.

Your job as a company, brand or marketer is to indentify, seek out, and engage with these influencers to gain the support of the influencer for your business, product or service.

Read more on the Influencer Marketing Strategy.

Why it’s effective:

• People trust friends
• People trust known authority
• People Trust social proof (independent sources and many of them)

Some of the best influencer strategy overviews come from Michael Wu, Lithium’s Principal Scientist of Analytics. Check out these posts:

• The 6 Factors of Social Media Influence (introducing the model)
• Finding the Influencers (covers credibility and bandwidth)
• The Right Content at the Right Time (covers relevance and timing)
• Hitting Your Targets (covers alignment and confidence. There are several excellent and in-depth dialogs in the comment section)

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