Identifying Your Company’s Influencers or Fans

About the Project:
This week, you will identify influencers to target your outreach efforts, or fans who make good candidates for a brand advocacy program. The purpose of this exercise is to create a target list of influencers or fans, depending on whether you’ve chosen to pursue an influence marketing campaign or develop a brand ambassador program.
Project Instructions:
In this project, students will write a report or prepare of presentation. Recall your Week 1 program and the program you selected for your Week 3 project – whether influencer or brand ambassador.

In Week 1, if you selected the influencer program for your Week 3 project – you will be identifying influencers in this project.
In Week 1, if you selected the brand ambassador program for your Week 3 project – you will be identifying folks who qualify as ‘fans’ in this project.
Write a report or prepare a presentation that includes the following sections:

Selection Criteria: Explains in detail criteria used for selecting influencers/fans for the brand (ex: follower count, readership, brand image, tone of voice in content, prior brand relationships, etc. for influences & prior brand interactions, online conversations relating to brand, etc. for fans
Means of Identification: Explains the means used (or would use) to identify current clients or customers who are talking about the brand (ex: customer relationships management software (CRM), the company’s site analytics, social monitoring, etc.)
Identify the Influencers/Fans: Identifies specific influencers to target for outreach, or fans for brand ambassador program. Occurrences of overlap of fans and influencers (for instance a fan with a large following is also an influencer) noted with explanation of how to cultivate deeper relationships with these individuals on a greater than average scale
In Week 1, if you selected the influencer program for your Week 3 project – Compile a list of 3-5 influencers for your organization.
Where they are active online and offline (sites or social networks they frequent, publications they read or shows they watch, events they attend, etc.)?
Explain in detail why you picked those particular influencers, and look at more than follower counts. Consider the other factors we’ve covered in the material: influencer’s personality and online image, whether they’ve worked with brands before, etc.
Go the extra mile and assess influencers one at a time, with a human perspective, so you’ll be able to target your marketing communications even without using a paid social media integration and management solution. More personalized asks yield better results for your outreach efforts, and the ability to personalize your outreach for each influencer arises from a better selection process.
Factors to Consider: Size of following, Engagement (comments / interactions on their blog), Communication style and tone, Others? (Explain what else you considered.)
In Week 1, if you selected the brand ambassador program for your Week 3 project – Identify 3-5 social media followers who qualify as ‘fans.’ Hint: engage in social monitoring for brand mentions, see who’s talking about your organization
You can identify fans who might be good candidates for a brand ambassador program, even if you are not affiliated with the company you’ve chosen to study. You can view publicly available information via social monitoring and search engines to find fans who are discussing the brand online.
Then, determine where your brand’s influencers or fans are (online and offline). Which social networks do they prefer? Which sites do they frequent? Explain how you’ve determined this, using research about social network demographic and psychographic data as compared to your audience, or using publicly available information about the audience for certain websites (e.g. Alexa.com‘s audience data).
Explain other ways you will identify current clients or customers who are talking about your brand, as well. For instance, if your company uses customer relationship management software (“CRM”), you could integrate that data with your company’s site analytics, social monitoring, etc., to get a better sense of your current customers’ online conversations.
Fit with Brand: Explains in depth why each specific influencer/fan is a good fit for brand, more suitable for outreach than others or for brand fans, explains which communications or posts qualify them as fans
To earn maximum points, make sure to reference the rubric below and double check that you’ve included the appropriate information.

Deliverable:
Submit your plan in one of the following formats:

A PDF of a Presentation. For instance, you may elect to use Keynote to create a presentation. Regardless of platform that you use, be sure the slides include the important details, such as your creative concept and your plan for getting your content into the hands of influencers who can help it to catch on. Your presentation file (such as Keynote or Powerpoint) must be converted to a PDF (if no audio narration) or movie file (if audio narration).

OR
A podcast enhanced with slides (video file such as .mp4 or .mov). If you submit your plan as an enhanced podcast, include slides that complement the audio/narration. Full credit will not be awarded for an audio file with no visual element, or for podcasts that only use screenshots, with no Keynote slides supporting the narration.
Other Notes:

Whatever format you select, if you consult outside sources, cite them using proper APA formatting for sources in your deliverable.
You will be graded using the below rubric. To earn maximum points, make sure to reference the rubric below and double check that you’ve included the appropriate information.
Review the Week 2 Reading and Materials, including the video featuring Mack Collier’s tips for identifying influencers and fans.
Avoid Scope Creep – Please reference the rubric to ensure you include, at minimum, the elements required to earn points. You may included additional creative elements that may arise while you are working on the project. However note, those additional elements do not impact your grade.