7 Ways for Building Relationships with Influencers

Last Updated on: July 13th, 2019

7 Ways for Building Relationships and Engaging with Influencers

Building relationships with influencers and engaging with them is a great way to build your following and brand. I’ve found that influencers, on average, are more willing to engage with you than non-influencers. Perhaps (at least partly) it is their friendly and positive attitude that has gotten them to where they are!

Nevertheless, influencers are busy people and they have a lot of people messaging them. But there are a few tricks that you can use to successfully engage and get noticed by them.

Building Relationships with Influencers: 7 WAYS

If you want to build genuine relationships with influencers, here are 7 action steps you can take to start making friends and building your own sphere of influence.

1. Comment on Their Blogs

Commenting on someone’s blog is one of the easiest ways to get noticed. And a lot of influential bloggers will even reply to some or all of their comments. It’s a great way to start forming relationships with top bloggers.

Lorraine says: Blog commenting is one of the reasons why Ryan Biddulph (the Blogger from Paradise) and Maxwell Ivey (the Blind Blogger) and I became friends. It’s also the reason why many top bloggers have connected with me. I have also gotten many clients from blog commenting as well as landed several guest posting opportunities! Blog commenting is a FANTASTIC way of connecting with people! Max became one of my best clients (I’ve helped him publish all three of his books) and Ryan even let me write for him after influencing me to take my dream vacation to see my first palm tree in real life! But… it’s not easy to get featured on Blogging from Paradise. In fact, Ryan has written exactly what you need to do to achieve that feat! Read How to Get Featured on Blogging From Paradise if you want to really up your blogging game and get connected with this famous blogger!

Even if the influencers don’t reply to you or your comment, they probably read their blog comments. After all, they wrote the post and are probably curious as to what other people think.

To get noticed, try to make intelligent comments that add value to the post instead of just saying “nice post.” Also, be sure to comment regularly. That doesn’t mean you have to comment on every post, but try to comment every now and then if you have something worth saying.

If you really want to get serious about blog commenting, then sign up for their email list so that you get notified when they publish a new article. You can also subscribe to their blog’s RSS feed with a tool like BlogTrottr if you want to be one of the first commenters.

2. Engage with Them on Twitter

Some influencers are active on Twitter and will engage their fans on there. Pay attention to influencers and see how they are using their Twitter accounts. Are they communicating with other people on Twitter?

If so, then this can be a good way to start connecting with them and building relationships with these influencers. Answer their questions or comment on their messages. Get involved in the conversation if you think you can add something good to it.

Another thing you can do is ReTweet their messages when they are promoting their own posts on Twitter. This is a more passive strategy, but if you keep doing it, then they are going to notice.

3. Other Communities and Social Media Channels

Check to see if they are a part of other communities or social media sites and engage with them on there. Some influencers even have their own communities, so join those and participate. Be sure to read and follow the community rules.

There’s a lot less commenting on Pinterest, so if you comment on their pins, then this might be a way you can get their attention on Pinterest.

A lot of conversations happen in Facebook groups, on Reddit, or in other niche community sites. Find the most popular communities, forums, and groups in your niche and engage in real conversations with influencers via those channels so you can properly build your relationships with influencers.

4. Email Outreach

Sometimes emailing can be an effective way to reach an influencer. You can build a relationship with them by emailing, although emails can sometimes get ignored as well.

When emailing someone, you will have to think of a good reason to reach out to them. Some people will reply and some may not. But if you are providing something valuable to the person, then your chances of getting a reply will increase.

Some of the better reasons to reach out by email are to offer to interview them, ask them to participate in an expert roundup (if they have actively participated in one recently), to guest post (if they advertise that they are accepting guest posts), or to tell them that you have featured them in one of your blog posts (and linked to their article or their infographic).

Emailing can also work better if you’ve already started to build the relationship by commenting on their blog first. They will recognize your name!

Lorraine says: I remember when I first started blogging and found myself in awe of one of the top writing websites, Write to Done, which is run by Mary Jaksch. Over the years, I’ve commented on her posts, shared them on social media, linked to them, etc. Mary and I have built up a good friendship and relationship as a result. She has commented on some of my blog posts and shared them on social media. She even commented on some of my personal status updates on Facebook, most recently in June 2018, when I had some health issues. And we have actual email conversations now, too!

Mary Jaksch's email

And Neil Patel even knows my name, because, instead of always leaving comments on his blog, I simply reply to the emails I receive from him about his newly-published posts.

That’s how I learned he is not from India (though he is India) but from England!

Neil Patel conversation excerpt

5. Meet Them in Real Life!

Influencers often speak at conferences and other events. So a good way to reach influencers is to meet them in real life. Sometimes influencers will post their conference schedule on their website, email their list about it, or Tweet about it.

If you can afford to attend conferences, then do a search for the major conferences in your industry. Then check their websites to see who will be attending and be speaking and also if there are events within the conference where you can meet them. Meeting someone in real life is far more personal and a great way to make a good impression.

You can use a tool like Google Alerts or Talkwalker alerts to monitor any time an influencer’s name is mentioned online. You may discover opportunities to meet your target influencer at a local event, and if you are lucky, they may even speak at free events like Meetups in your area.

6. Take Their Course

This will cost you some money, but it might be worth it to purchase someone’s course. Take their training course, if they offer live coaching as one of the benefits. Sometimes these courses can be inexpensive, but if you have a chance to actually talk and get to know an influencer, then it might very well be worth it.

The primary reason for taking someone’s course is to learn from them or get coaching, but once you’ve made the purchase, be sure to be an active participant if they have live coaching calls or provide email support.

Work hard to become one of their best case studies and you’ll definitely stand out from everyone else.

7. Build Your Own Influence by Creating Your Own Quality Content Consistently

Finally, one of the most important steps that no one ever mentions for building relationships with influencers it to build your own influence at the same time. Creating quality content and showing influencers that you are capable of being one of them encourages them to build a relationship with you as well.

Lorraine says: I remember when I was a new blogger, and I reached out to some top bloggers to feature them in a round-up post. I used the analogy of sharks and guppies to write a guest post titled 8 Action Tips For Guppy-Bloggers In An Ocean Of Sharks. One of the “sharks” I contacted was Ana Hoffman, whom I learned a lot from. I felt like a guppy back then. Over time, Ana and I developed a true friendship, through Facebook comments, blog comments, and Twitter conversations. A couple of years ago, she called me a “sharkette”! As Ana once said, “I’d say a blogger becomes a shark when other sharks start sharing their content.” I have since graduated from “sharkette” to “shark” because she now shares my content on social media without me even asking her to!

Ana's Tweet about my post about How to Succeed Even when You Feel Like Giving Up

Ana's Tweet about my Infographics post

One of the hardest parts about building influence is being consistent with content creation. Set a schedule and create processes to decide exactly what type of content you will create.

Spend extra time on your articles so that you outperform your competitors when you are doing things like guest blogging. Content creation can be challenging at first, but you’ll get better at it and faster as you do more of it.

If you want to stand out, then figure out how you can offer something different than everyone else.

For example, long-form content is really popular in the digital marketing niche to the extent that many people won’t even consider short content. So I wrote an article about how short-form content can actually perform better with the right strategy.

Keep reading and learning from other people as well as experimenting on your own. Remember that a real expert isn’t just a writer, but someone that takes action too.

To Sum It Up

Building relationships with other influencers is a tricky task to incorporate into your schedule, but it’s one of the secret ways smart bloggers and marketers stand out. If you can excel at building relationships AND creating great content, then you can become an influencer yourself in no time.

Lorraine says: And if you need a kick-start to finding some influencers to follow, check out these 30+ Blogger-Sharks Spouting Oceans of Knowledge.

Brian Liang headshot

 

Brian Liang is the founder of Small Business Ideas Blog and Web Developers Etc, which offers website, hosting and design services. Sign up for his newsletter for more articles and ideas on business, marketing and achieving success.

 

 

46 thoughts on “7 Ways for Building Relationships with Influencers

  1. says

    Hey Lorraine, this is a great piece of content.
    Keeping in touch with the influencers is one of the important tasks.
    There are huge benefits in this, but only a few people realize it!
    Thanks much for the share 🙂
    Cheers,
    Vish

  2. Mark Stephen says

    I was never really into commenting on blogs, but after reading this I felt that I should thank the writer, it is very well written. Thank you for sharing such great information.

  3. Buy Business Class says

    Yes, completely agreed with this. If you as a blogger are successful in building relationships with influencers then there is a great chance of your blog getting a boost which can work out very fine.

  4. Harshil Tyagi says

    Hi, Thanks for sharing wonderful tricks to build a relationship with influencers. Your tricks are easy and meaningful. Now I have an arsenal of tricks to build my repo with an influencer.

  5. Boyd Kobe says

    Hi, Brian and Lorraine,

    This is what I will apply to my Blog. Did you know, There are 7 topics.
    But what I’ve done is just “1.Comment on Their Blogs”.
    The 6 remaining topics I never thought of before.

    Thanks for making me realize.

  6. Hi
    Brian and Lorraine,
    Setting up a blog and writing content is not enough, we need to make an effort to build strong relationships with the influencers and also it helps in making our blog viral. Really, the tips provided in this post are effective in building relationships with the influencers. I think tip #5 is not an easy task for many. Here, I have picked out some new ideas about building relationships with influencers.

    Thank for sharing this post with us.

    Have a great day.
    Praveen Verma
    Praveen Verma recently posted…Top 10 Must Haves in your Check List before Launching your Startup

    • says

      Praveen, thanks for your input.
      It’s always good to hear from you (especially NOT always on Facebook, LOL!). 🙂
      I hope you try out some of the tactics mentioned for building relationships with influencers. You’re a good blogger and others should know more about you!

    • says

      Thank you Praveen! It definitely can be difficult to meet people in real life, but it can be a nice thing to do if possible. Thanks for stopping by.

  7. Hi Lorraine,
    I like your approach when contacting Neil Patel.
    It does make sense as he almost always says something like “if you have questions, shot me an email, and I’ll be sure to respond”. I always thought that’s courtesy and nothing else. So definitely an easy way to stand out.
    Thanks!

    I also have an approach to add. It’s related to blog commenting.
    Most influencers have a presence on GrowthHackers.com. And that space is way less crowded than the comment section of their popular blogs.

    So when, for example, Brian Dean publishes his new post on GH, I make sure to upvote it and comment on it. Because I know he’ll notice it, and he’ll read my comment. Sometimes, he’ll even respond, especially if I ask a question.

    Anyway, it’s my strategy and it works because I go where there’s less competition.

    And as a way to strengthen the effect, I usually comment on both GH and Backlinko so that’s twice the chance to make an impression. And it compounds as time passes and more posts are published.

    Now, if only Brian could be persuaded to publish more often, and not just once per month… 🙂

    It’s a chink in my strategy’s armor, I know…

  8. says

    Hi Brian and Lorraine,

    It’s nice to e-meet you Brian! The blogging community is super friendly and approachable. There are still some top bloggers I’m ‘too shy’ to approach – kinda like being star-struck. 🙂

    You’ve shared some great tips here. There are some bloggers I would love to meet in person – that is on my bucket list!

    Great post Brian. Thanks for sharing!

    Cori
    Cori Ramos recently posted…How To Create Customized Watermarks For Your Images In PicMonkey

    • says

      Cori, Brian sure shared some really good tips here. (Thanks again, Brian.)

      You need to get over your star-struck feelings, Cori. Those bloggers are people, too. Just like you and me. Relax and approach them! Start by leaving comments on their blogs, then move to Twitter or Facebook, and interact with them there. Then you can try emailing them! Baby steps, girlfriend! 😉 You can do it. You’re awesome and I cannot imagine anyone NOT wanting to interact with you! <3

  9. You’ve achieved so much since you first started blogging (and a great deal in your first year). Kudos to you! You’ve listed a great amount of advice for newbies like me. Thank you!

  10. All very true –life and blogging are both about reciprocation. I’ve belonged to a group on LinkedIn “Bloggers Helping Bloggers” for years. It is a great group for meeting and sharing with people. Thanks for stopping by my blog, Lorraine.

  11. Hi Brian & Lorraine,
    The tips here are fascinating because they work like magic. For example, blog commenting. I never knew Ryan Biddulph, but we got to know each other via comment in his blog and sharing his posts regularly. In fact, he recently featured me in his post. Same with top influencers, Jeff Bullas, Donna Merrill, Neal Shaffer, etc.. So the more meaningful comments you make, the more the blog owner takes notice of you.
    My guest post on Janice Wald’s blog, Mostlyblogging resulted from commenting on her blog. After reading one of my comments she sent an email to me asking me to create a blog post based on my comment for her blog. I wrote the post and she published it on her blog. Quality content also helps you build relationships. For example, after reading my guest post about “Emoji Marketing,” the chief editor of the Rocks Digital emailed me to write a similar post for her website. That is relationship right there.

    Thanks a lot for sharing, Brian, and thank you Lorraine for publishing👌👍!

    • says

      Moss, I have had similar experiences with guest posting. I’ve also invited others to guest post on my blog as a result of their comments. That is the beauty of networking online!

      Congratulations on the success you have had with building your relationships with influencers, Moss! You are a hardworking guy and you deserve it!

  12. Great tips for building your blog and platform. It is indeed all about relationship building. Being a Gemini, I actually like the process of getting to know people online, and many of those connections have led to in-person meetings, friendships, and collaborations.
    Doreen Pendgracs recently posted…tasting Cuban chocolate

    • says

      Doreen, you’ve done a great job connecting with others and building your brand.
      I know that whenever I see your name, I think “chocolate”! 😉

  13. says

    Hello Brian,
    Building a relationship with the influencer’s in one’s domain is a well kept secret. Top bloggers almost do it on daily basis. The tricks that are given in this article are indeed fundamental, however like everything with blogging it takes persistence and passion to accomplish it, but its an effort worth taking. Thanks for sharing.

  14. Brian and Lorraine, smart tips! Thanks for the shout too Lorraine. If you talk to people online in genuine fashion, you befriend them. This is relationship building. It takes persistent chatting, helping, serving and just plain being in the game when most bloggers quit. Keep talking to people through multiple platforms. Friendships blossom for generous, social bloggers.

    Ryan

    • says

      Ryan, I like what you said about persistence. I completely agree. It takes both persistence AND patience to be a blogger and to get noticed by others! (I’ve been blogging for 5 years and now, and I think it took me about 2 years to REALLY make a name for myself and get noticed online!)

      Thanks for chiming in. Of course I would mention you; you and I share so many similar views about blogging that I couldn’t NOT mention you! 😉

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