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Influencers are essential key players in all businesses. An influencer can be anyone who knows something about your product, your market, or your brand. However, due to social media, influence is no longer held by one large analyst firm or even a single credible individual, but rather resides in whatever community, Facebook page, or Twitter list that is talking about your marketplace (Paine, 124).

In every industry, there are influential figures that write more, say more, and speak in public more. These are the people who others turn to for advice and recommendations (Paine, 125). It is important to understand who and what matters to your target audience.

In order to find these influencers you must first search for blogs that mention your brand frequently. Katie D. Paine mentions that it is crucial to do searches on your brand, competition and marketplace on a regular basis. You will need to collect this data for three to six months to start. You must also be sure to delete duplicates and anything that is irrelevant, then transfer the data you find into an excel spreadsheet so it is easy to compare and monitor who is influential to your brand. At the end of six months you’ll have a list of specific blogs that mention your brand. You must then rank these blogs in terms of numbers of mentions in order to identify key influencers.

ViSalus is a company that does a good job promoting their brand via their influencers. ViSalus aims to get many people excited, involved and talking about their brand and products.