There are people in your niche that have influence over your target audience. You can leverage that influence to grow your own blog, increase your traffic and your authority. But first you need to know who these influencers are and key influencer research tools..
You could hop from social network to social network, doing manual research.
Or you could take the easy option and use a tool that is designed to do influencer research and get the insights that you need to leverage the power of influence.
In this post I’ve put together 8 of the best, with a range of different features and a lot of them are affordable or can be used for free.
Exclusive Bonus: Download my step-by-step guide which will show you exactly what to do once you have done your influencer research.
NOD3x
NOD3x is an incredible tool that will allow you to identify influencers based on any topic.
As well as the ability to identify influencers, you will get access to sentiment analysis, a handy word cloud, a bird’s eye view of the location of authors, top posts, top times and more.
There is a free option available, but you will only get 14 days data storage. Paid accounts add a large array of features.
These include the likes of being able to create and schedule posts, access to large news sources, hashtag analysis, Google Post Ad insights, increased project allowances and more.
Platforms supported: Google+ and YouTube included on the free plan with data for other platforms available for a monthly fee.
Price: Starts from free, all data sources are £133/month (20% VAT added for users based in Europe).
Authority Spy
This is a really straight forward and easy to use influencer research tool that also has helpful features for those doing blogger outreach or guest posting (more on that in a moment).
The main difference with Authority Spy is that it is a software based application, rather than a cloud based tool.
This isn’t a complex data mining tool, but it’s perfect for those getting started with influencer research or those who are looking to run a quick search to get some surface level data.
You can get quite specific with your list, so rather than just searching for topics, you can expand your query to include what these influencers do.
So for example, rather than just searching for an influencer in the marketing industry, I could expand this to include authors, consultants and journalists with the following queries:
- Marketing+author
- Marketing+consultant
- Marketing+journalist
Another important factor; It’s cost effective too.
What about this blogger outreach and guest posting thing?
I mentioned that Authority Spy had more uses, specifically for blogger outreach and guest posting – here’s why.
In addition to searching for influencers, you can also use it to search for influential blogs.
It also pulls in data from Alltop and Google Blog search, while pulling in the extremely important contact information you will need to contact these blogs.
I reviewed Authority Spy a while ago, click here to read my review.
Platforms supported: Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Klout.
Price: Starts from $27.
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Twtrland
This tool allows you to search Twitter profiles and filter them by skill, location and name.
Twtrland then allows you to filter them further them by specific types of influencers.
Results for free accounts are limited to 50, upgrading will lift this limit but you can still glean some valuable insights using a free account.
Platforms supported: Twitter.
Price: Starts from free, paid accounts start at $19.99/month.
Commun.it
Commun.it is more of a Twitter management tool, but it will make leveraging relationships very easy.
As well as being able to setup monitoring for particular phrases, you will be able to identify the Twitter users which are valuable to.
These are broken up into 3 categories:
- Influencers
- Supporters
- Engaged members
Commun.it is a straight forward platform to use, immediately after logging in you will be greeted by a ‘quick actions’ page which will display users for you to consider unfollowing, following, thanking and tweets to retweet.
The only downside to the free account is that you are limited to 20 engagements per week.
Platforms supported: Twitter.
Price: Starts from free, paid accounts start at $40.99/month.
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BuzzSumo
I primarily use BuzzSumo to help me identify which posts are getting the most shares for my competitors, or for certain topic areas.
BuzzSumo can also be used for influencer research.
You can search based on topics/keywords or Twitter usernames, filter by type of user (e.g. bloggers, influencers, journalists etc) and then sort your results by various metrics.
You can also follow users, add them to lists or view their shared links from within BuzzSumo.
Platforms supported: Twitter.
Price: Free.
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Followerwonk
This is another tool that focuses on Twitter and goes beyond influencer identification.
One thing in particular that I like about Followerwonk is that you get access to their ‘social authority’ metric – this can be very useful when it comes to identifying a Twitter user’s influence.
You can also monitor the growth of your profile and your competitor’s profile, as well as analysing the followers of any account (or users they follow).
This can give you some incredible insights including; location data, most active hours (Buffer integration provided for easy scheduling) and lots more.
Platforms supported: Twitter.
Price: $99/month (included with a Moz Pro subscription)
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Inkybee
If you want to find influential blogs within your niche, Inkybee is incredible.
You can manage each part of the process, right from identifying blogs with influence to the outreach process, which includes relationship tracking.
One feature that I particularly like is ability to run your Twitter account through Inkybee’s system to identify influential bloggers you’re following, or those which are following you.
Platforms supported: Twitter.
Price: Starts from $79/month.
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Littlebird
Littlebird is a tool for those that are serious about social intelligence and have some budget to play with.
A large variety of social networks are supported and you will instantly be able to find rich communities and get detailed information on the influencers in those communities.
You can also find and share relevant content from those influencers.
Platforms supported: Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Linkedin, YouTube, Google+ and Slideshare.
Price: Starts from $50/month.
This influence marketing thing is powerful.
I’ve used it to grow an entire business on a shoe-string marketing budget.
Now it’s your time.
Step 1: Pick one of the above tools and find out who is influencing your target audience.
Step 2: Click the link below to download my exclusive guide which will show you all you need to know to benefit from this.
Step 3: I’ll send you a confirmation link, click the link if you want to get access to all of my other exclusive ebooks and templates (all focused on helping you grow your blog).