How to Engage Influencers on Twitter
By: Meysam Moradpour
Tags: Twitter, Twitter Influencer, Twitter Marketing, Influencer Marketing, Engagement Marketing

If you’ve gone through the very difficult process of figuring out who’s who in your niche on Twitter, the next step is engagement. I cannot emphasize looking for the right people enough. If you engage the wrong people, you will be wasting your time. It doesn’t matter how positive their reception of you is. If they’re the wrong people, then they’re not going to do you any good. You have to make sure that you truly grasp this.

Next, once you are in front of the right eyeballs, what do you do? How do you engage influencers on Twitter for maximum benefits? Here’s how you do it.

Post high quality niche content first

Before you engage in highly influential people on Twitter in your niche, establish credibility. This is non-negotiable. This has to be done. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a veteran or you just started, you have to go through this. You have to earn their trust.

When you post high quality niche content on Twitter, you’re letting them know in no uncertain terms that you know what you’re talking about. You make them aware that you’re directly interested in a particular topic and you enough about it to keep producing content about it. This will qualify you in their eyes. At the very least, this will separate you from some random spammer that is just trying to use them.

Engage them based on their content

It’s very tempting to engage influential people on Twitter by simply saying, “Good post,” or “You’re a genius,” or somehow trying to kiss their butts. A lot of people think that this is a shortcut, but what they don’t realize is how much a waste of time it is. How come? All these people get their butts kissed all day, every day. What else is new if you try to do it?

Do something different. Engage them based on the actual content that they share. These people are mature adults. They’re not looking to get flattered. Instead, they’re looking to get called out and engage with people. Maybe they did something wrong or presented an idea that is half-baked. Whatever the case may be, they actually appreciate it when people call them out.

They like being challenged. That’s how you know you’re dealing with the real deal, not just somebody who is just faking it. Engage them based on their content because they know when they are participating in a real conversation about their material, eventually their material’s quality increases.

Get on the radar, then ask for benefits

The more you engage with influence leaders based on their tweets, the more they respect you. Of course, this has to be the right type of engagement. You can’t just flatter your way to the top. Once you have done this enough, you get on their radar and then that’s when you can ask for benefits.

What kind of benefits are we talking about here? Well, you can ask for a guest post. You can ask to get an interview or to interview them. You can ask to be a part of some sort of blog alliance. You can ask them to tweet your stuff. There are just so many ways you can go forward with this. All it takes it you committing to putting in the time, effort and energy to make this happen.

This means you have to truly engage with these accounts and that you have to wait. This can’t happen overnight. This also means that you must deliver solid value as far as they are concerned. You have to remember that the best deals are win-win deals. Everybody has to walk away with sort kind of advantage.

Unfortunately, for too many people on Twitter, they always think of Twitter as a one-way street. They think of it as just this place on the internet where they can get free traffic. In other words, for you to win, you’d think other people have to lose. This is a bad deal. You have to always think of how everybody can benefit. That’s how you play the game.