Lots of peo­ple have built their own per­son­al media empires with hun­dreds of thou­sands of fol­low­ers that they share and inter­act with dai­ly. Sounds easy right? Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it’s not. You can’t just be fun­ny and charm­ing. You have to pro­vide some­thing crit­i­cal to your audi­ence: val­ue. Those who do this best, who are able to sat­is­fy thou­sands upon thou­sands of peo­ple on a dai­ly basis, have mas­tered the art of build­ing trust, estab­lish­ing a con­nec­tion and pro­vid­ing val­ue. They are called influ­encers, and mar­ket­ing to them and with them has become big busi­ness.

A suc­cess­ful mar­keter will always align them­selves with influ­encers who’ve built their fol­low­ing by pro­vid­ing val­ue. Once aligned, you can share your influencer’s val­ue with your own fol­low­ing. But keep in mind, not all influ­ence is built equal­ly.

Here are four keys to con­nect­ing with influ­encers and launch­ing suc­cess­ful cam­paigns.

1. Popular vs. Influencer

For exam­ple, Kim Kar­dashi­an has more than 33 mil­lion Twit­ter fol­low­ers. Com­pa­nies pay her mil­lions of dol­lars to send a sin­gle tweet with a pic­ture of her wear­ing their prod­uct.

But in the realm of influ­encer mar­ket­ing, she is paid to pro­mote brands. Because of her pop­u­lar­i­ty, after Kar­dashi­an tweets a pic­ture of her­self wear­ing your sun­glass­es they will like­ly sell out. That’s because peo­ple want to be like her, and own the things she owns. It’s more about an image than pro­vid­ing any type of val­ue.

On the flip side, there are influ­encers who are engaged in a unique style of brand build­ing that savvy mar­keters can tap into. Here, you see peo­ple who have a large fol­low­ing, but the fol­low­ing is based on trust more than image.

Gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, this type of influ­encer uses cred­i­bil­i­ty as a cur­ren­cy. They have cred­i­bil­i­ty on a top­ic or niche and have estab­lished them­selves as an expert through blog­ging, videos, TV, or have writ­ten a book.

Always remem­ber that true influ­encers aren’t much into self-pro­mot­ing; they exist to pro­vide val­ue to their audi­ence, and by doing so build some­thing crit­i­cal: trust.

2. It’s A Partnership, Not A Request Line

It’s impor­tant that you keep a gen­uine nature when it comes to con­tact­ing influ­encers to advance strate­gic goals.

Above all, don’t be self-serv­ing. Be sure that your approach focus­es on also bring­ing val­ue to the table. Sure, you may not have the fol­low­er count that they do, but always think of ways you can rec­i­p­ro­cate. Make sure that the pri­ma­ry rea­son you are reach­ing out is because you believe in what they are doing, and tru­ly feel that you can help them in pro­vid­ing val­ue.

For exam­ple, my com­pa­ny is work­ing with six of the top influ­encers in the con­tent mar­ket­ing are­na for a cam­paign called Mon­sters of Fun­nel. These are peo­ple who have built ster­ling rep­u­ta­tions for pub­lish­ing good con­tent that pro­vides tons of val­ue.

While our com­pa­ny doesn’t have the mas­sive fol­low­ing of these six experts, we have the abil­i­ty to cre­ate and pro­mote this cam­paign. That’s how we’re rec­i­p­ro­cat­ing.

Nobody has said, “Hey, what’s our ROI? What will we get from this? How much lead cap­ture can we gen­er­ate?” All we asked for was an inter­view, then took care of the rest because we knew their exper­tise would pro­vide our fol­low­ing and theirs immense val­ue.

The end result is the col­lect­ed thoughts of these six lead­ers in con­tent mar­ket­ing com­piled in an eas­i­ly digestible and fun eBook that peo­ple will get mas­sive val­ue from.

If you’re cre­at­ing and shar­ing con­tent that helps peo­ple, you’ll sel­dom lose. It’s impos­si­ble to cre­ate extreme­ly valu­able con­tent and nev­er gain fol­low­ers or get new leads. The two always go hand-in-hand.

Focus on cre­at­ing and deliv­er­ing killer and the rest will come. Dream­ing about all the fol­low­ers you’ll gain by work­ing with an influ­encer is an easy trap to fall into. Avoid this at all costs. Focus on cre­at­ing val­ue.

3. Ways To Find Influencers

There are sev­er­al ways to find influ­encers. You can use one a tools designed to locate indus­try influ­encers, like Insight­pool or Linkdex’s Enti­ty Search. Or you can start with a sim­ple Google search and do some research.

Bot­tom line: you need to align your­self with an influ­encer with a sub­stan­tial fol­low­ing of peo­ple who trust that influ­encer’s sug­ges­tions. You will want to select influ­encers who build on your own mes­sag­ing and fill in the holes of what you don’t spe­cial­ize in. This will give your fol­low­ing a well-round­ed view of next steps after the use your prod­uct or ser­vice

Remem­ber, find­ing influ­encers isn’t just about what they can do for you.

It’s about what val­ue they bring to your fol­low­ing and what val­ue you can you add to theirs. As with any rela­tion­ship, it takes time and con­sis­ten­cy to build. Be patient.

4. Take The Right Approach

There’s plen­ty of advice out there about how to work with influ­encers and how you can get their atten­tion, like send­ing free stuff and call­ing them out on social media.

While this can work, you should instead place an empha­sis on true con­nec­tions. Send them an email, sched­ule time with them at an indus­try event, or refer them busi­ness.

Start by shar­ing their con­tent, and include them in your shar­ing. Always think in terms of build­ing a true part­ner­ship.

Some peo­ple will say, “I’ve tweet­ed this influ­encer sev­er­al times and they nev­er rec­i­p­ro­cate! Now what?” Again, this isn’t the best approach, nor is influ­ence mar­ket­ing a num­bers game. You have to come from a place of build­ing val­ue and go from there. You’ll see the most sig­nif­i­cant results by build­ing val­ue at the fore­front.

Bottom Line: You Have to Build

Influ­ence mar­ket­ing is all about build­ing val­ue, trust, and rela­tion­ships. If you keep these val­ues at the fore­front of your efforts, you will have no prob­lem con­nect­ing with influ­encers and launch­ing suc­cess­ful influ­ence cam­paigns.

Your influ­encer cam­paigns will do much more than just boost your mar­ket­ing efforts. They will actu­al­ly make a dif­fer­ence in the lives of peo­ple. And what’s cool­er than that?

You can learn more about suc­cess­ful influ­encer mar­ket­ing in our ebook, Influ­ence Now.