The word, ‘influence’ means having the ability to alter the manner in which others act or even think. In a digital world, although the social graph and the number of followers a person has goes on to show their popularity, it does not necessarily mean that they can wield the kind of influence that is useful to promote your luxury brand. Rather than focusing on the sheer number of social media fans or even the average monthly visitors to a website, focus instead on the quality of the audience.

For a luxury brand wishing to gain exposure in the affluent community, the ideal influencer would be someone who has the ability to drive action through their words, change the behavior and opinions of others through their action. The right influencers for your luxury brand are those whose word resonates among their followers, who have a relevance to both the products and the audience and are able to reach crowds easily.

It is possible to best amplify the brand’s content by identifying the right influencer on the basis of several factors such as demography, size, and engagement of audience and the quality of the content produced by the influencer.

When finding your ideal influencer, you process should include the following steps:

• Social Listening: Listen to the social interactions on myriad social media channels. You might notice that some influencers are influent not only within the affluent community but within the influencer community as well. Once you have identified a small group of influencers that seem to target your coveted audience, start engaging their communities.

• Google Alerts: Keeping tab on Google Alerts is another way to finding your ideal influencer for your luxury brand. Look at the people who are actively participating in discussions about your product. You should set keyword alerts on Google; make sure that you use various keyword combinations that are related to your product.

• Use Hashtags: Hashtags are another great tool to identify the right influencers to suit your luxury brand’s target audience. Keep an eye out for those used most by your target audiences; then identify the most active in the conversations. Add these influencers is a Twitter list or Google + group to easily connect with them on a regular basis.

• Rank them: Finally, rank these influencers based on their social media Klout, their reach, and their relevance to your luxury brand.

To find the ideal influencer, it is important to understand that influence comes in various shapes and sizes and varies from product to product and campaign to campaign. The ideal influencers should be able to convert some of their loyal fans into potential customers for your luxury brand.

Roxanne Genier
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