Tactics to get your influence back

Write, write and write some more

You can directly influence your online influence by the sheer amount of writing you do. If you write only two days a week, jump that up to five days a week and your influence will go up. Guest blog, and your influence will again continue to increase. This increase in writing will also help you cast a wider net for the searchers, of which there are 3 billion on Google every day:

This will ultimately lead to more visitors, subscribers and influence.

Build a list

If you don’t have one already, then the real magic of generating influence will come from that email subscriber list. See, the more you blog, the more traffic you get:

But that traffic is worthless if you don’t do anything with it. So, if you want a way to communicate with your audience, then start building an email newsletter list. This gives those who sign up an exclusive relationship with you. And your conversion rates will be much higher when you market to the email list.

Interact with your readers

One of the most basic ways to build and keep influence is to engage with your readers. Respond to every comment, engage them with posts that ask them for their opinions and pick their brains for insights using tools like Qualaroo:

Also, reward your readers with contests and giveaways that demonstrate how much you appreciate them. And you can really build influence when you create content that they love and want. That is the way to build that engaging community of people who become advocates for you as they share your content on the social web.

Use a variety of media

As the web grows and supports more and more types of media, you will have to learn some new skills in order to offer people what they want. These days, text is not enough to influence people. You now need to know how to use video, audio and photos.
When should you use which media? Here’s a little guide:

• Text – Keywords still dominate the world of search, so you will need to provide a substantial amount of copy.
• Video – Some people make video the center of their influence platform (Khan Academy has become famous through its use of video), while most other people use it to complement their other work (SEOmoz does this with its Whiteboard Fridays). Either approach adds to the power of your influence. By the way, you have to create a transcript of your videos for search engines and the readers who like to skim text. There are great services that can make that happen quickly.
• Audio – Audio works great for those people who are natural-born speakers. They are very comfortable speaking, can do it on the fly, and thus naturally create some of the best podcasts out there. Check out the Manager Tools podcast to see what I mean. If you are not that comfortable speaking, however, you still may want to consider using audio to enhance your content. For example, you could create a monthly podcast, where you interview an industry leader or explore a certain subject in-depth.

Be original

You will only gain an audience if you provide original content. Since there is so much competition online, it truly is harder than ever to be original.
There is so much great content being produced. How do you compete?
One way to compete is to ride the wave of a trending topic. If you are the first to share content on hot news, then you’ll gain some attention, followers and traction.
You can use Google Trends to follow what’s hot:

Based upon those results, you could write an article titled “What Zombie Apocalypse Can Teach You about Personal Persuasion.” In fact, you could write an article using all of those topics.
Then, you could take it a step further and use Google Insights:

Search by category, and you’ll get a very targeted set of searches.
Don’t forget that you can’t just create cute content from trending topics that aren’t useful and full of detailed research. You’ll probably lose your core audience. So, in order to build your influence and keep it, you have to provide content that your audience cares about. Only then will they listen to what you say.
You also need to follow as many blogs as possible. This will help you to stay current and generate new, fresh ideas.

Remain insanely focused

Those who constantly seem to be at the top of the searches and are always being quoted in this publication or that blog have a little secret: they discipline themselves to focus on one thing and one thing only.
They understand the big picture, and everything they do serves going after that big picture. That means that highly-influential people are delegators and use the best tools to accomplish their tasks in less time.
Here are four tools I highly recommend to help you stay insanely focused:

• Batchbook – Influential people have a huge contact list. But as it gets bigger, it also gets harder and harder to manage, so you need a system. This free, cloud-based tool will help even with your social media contacts.
• MailChimp – Naturally, you’ll need a system to stay in touch with all of those contacts. Repeated messages via email grow your influence among your readers. MailChimp can automate that process for you on just about any budget.
• DropBox – A no-brainer for people who need to store, share and access all kinds of media from their laptops or phones. Insanely focused influential people love convenience!
• Rescue Time – Like I said, influential people are focused. Keeping track of what they do, where they are wasting time and how long it takes them to do something helps them keep their razor-sharp focus. This tool is a must have!

Stay relentless

This one is the other side of the coin of remaining insanely focused. People who have influence, lose it, build it up again and keep it, never, ever stop!
Sure, they will vacation and might even shut off their phones and laptops at the end of the business day, but when they are on, they are on.
Besides, it’s really tough to keep them away from their work.
This is also why influential people are successful people. They hang in there through the ups and downs because they know that success takes a long time.

You also won’t find them straying from their cornerstone content or their schedule. In my own career, being relentless has been easily one of the top secrets to my success. Are you relentless?

Find a common enemy

Another tactic you can use to build influence is to employ the tactic used by copywriters called “the common enemy.” See, people love it when someone stands up against perceived opponents, and they love getting behind the crusaders and supporting them.
The idea behind this concept is to zero in on a bad guy in your industry. Financial newsletters want you to think that the bad guy is the government; politicians pick on the other party; and Aaron Walls picks on Google.
He’s not alone, however. There are a lot of people who think that Google is dangerous:

You do need to understand one thing, however. You shouldn’t build your entire platform on finding a common enemy. Rather, this should be something you refer to on occasion.
In addition, try to avoid attacking actual people. Instead, focus on companies or institutions. It will be a lot easier to defend your actions.

Twist social media to your benefit

A long time ago, blogging was the only thing in town. You could influence people by simply going to people’s blogs and leaving comments. That’s exactly what Pete Cashmore of Mashable did, leaving a hundred or more comments on other blogs every day.
But with Twitter, Google+ and Facebook – and rising stars like Pinterest and Tumblr – at your fingertips, social media is going to be your most powerful tool for getting and keeping influence, certainly more powerful than leaving comments.
Don’t neglect your commenting strategy. Just adjust it.
Your first step, however, is to create great shareable content. Then you share other people’s content and follow and engage the influencers.
It’s a pretty simple formula for spreading your brand across the web and building influence…and it works.

Target your audience

One mistake you want to avoid when building an audience is going for the biggest. It is a lot harder to influence a large audience than it is to influence a smaller audience. I am not saying it can’t be done, but it just takes a very long time.
You’re better off focusing on a niche audience.

The problem with trying to go after the biggest audience is that it sacrifices quality for quantity. In the end, that always drives down your conversion rates.
The bottom line is you need to get to know your audience really well and then you need to give them what they want.

Be very personal

One of Robert Cialdini principles of influence is being likable. You have to be approachable, honest and authentic. That means you don’t have to churn out business-like content all the time. You can share personal life experiences that show people you put your pants on in the morning just like everyone else does.
I think Chris Brogan does this very well, and it is certainly a part of his appeal. Just take a look at his “Best Of” page, and you’ll see a lot of content from his personal life:

No doubt it feels like he is writing to you because that is exactly what he is doing! He’s conversational and passionate about what he does. It permeates everything he creates. Imitate Chris, and people will like you. Once you have them liking you, you can influence them.

Stick to your brand

If you jump around with your brand from your message to your colors to your design, you will confuse people. Confusing people doesn’t help them develop trust in you.
I understand that early in the game you may be tinkering with your message and who you are, but at some point you need to decide and then communicate that brand consistently across all mediums.
I love how Johnny B Truant does this. From his name to his image to his tweets and to his blog posts, he communicates his brand.

It’s original, and he’s very consistent with it.