The Essential Digital Marketing Trends to Watch in 2025
By Emily SmithDec 13
We’re adding four new use-case dashboards to Brandwatch Analytics this summer:
- Influencers Dashboard
- PR and News Dashboard
- Reputation Management Dashboard
- A Dashboard designed by the winner of our competition – there’s still time to submit your entry for a chance to see your idea in the Brandwatch Analytics platform.
In this article we’ll be telling you about the Influencers Dashboard and how it can help you.
The Influencers Dashboard
In today’s hyper-connected digital world, word-of-mouth has become one of the most important sources of information for people making purchase decisions.
In fact, millennials count it as the most important when buying fashion apparel, packaged goods, financial products and big-ticket items.
Influencers are the key to harnessing the power of word-of-mouth for your brand, and the Influencers Dashboard is here to help you find them.
What’s in the Dashboard?
Create an Influencers Dashboard with any Query you already have, or create a new one, and you can see for yourself!
The Dashboard is made up of different live lists of important people ranked by impact score, which is a measure of the influence of the individual and the reach they have managed to get with their Tweet, blog or post, so you can spot the most effective current or potential advocates and start engaging with them straight away.
It’s a constant stream of opportunities. Opportunities you will never miss again.
Each tab on the Dashboard covers a different type of influencer – Top Authors, Top Tweeters, Top Bloggers and Key Advocates and Detractors, so you can track the most influential conversations wherever they are taking place.
The Dashboard also includes an Influencer Demographics tab, showing you more information on the types of people that are having the more important conversation about your brand.
Planning your influencer marketing strategy
Now that you know who your relevant influencers are you can start planning your influencer marketing strategy.
Influencer marketing is not a new concept; it has been around for centuries.
Offering a sports personality a pair of your state-of-the-art headphones to wear as they warm up: influencer marketing.
Dressing a Hollywood star in your latest designs for their appearance on the red carpet: influencer marketing.
Throwing in some free sausages made with a new recipe to a loyal customer’s basket as they shop for a big dinner party: they’re all examples of influencer marketing.
It’s an ancient art, but the social web has now enabled everyday influencer marketing on a previously unimaginable scale.
.@pewdiepie is the most influential ‘star’ among British teenagers according to a new study http://t.co/ZhCBC80Y2j
— The Sunday Times (@thesundaytimes) July 19, 2015
With the Influencers Dashboard in Brandwatch Analytics you can keep track of all the most important, influential and passionate people discussing your brand online.
Or you might choose to monitor people discussing your competitors, a specific campaign you’ve launched or even an important topic.
What makes someone an influencer?
An influencer might be a well-known journalist or blogger talking about your products.
These people are great for getting the word out, keeping your brand in the public eye and generating buzz for your latest release.
They might be an expert user of your services, generating valuable user-generated content that augments your own marketing activity.
Or an influencer might be a regular consumer with a strong network of friends and colleagues they’re willing to recommend you to.
Influencers come in all shapes and sizes. Celebrities are effective, but they can often be difficult or expensive to attract as advocates. But today, they aren’t the only ones who can reach vast audiences.
The influencers of today include fashion vloggers in their bedrooms, amateur cyclists sharing their routes and, yes really, people taking photos of their cats.
What to do when you’ve identified an influencer
Once you’ve found your influencers talking about your brand, the first thing you’ll want to do is start engaging with them, if the situation suits it.
If they’re saying nice things about you it’s an opportunity to thank them, continue the conversation and develop a stronger relationship with them. If they’re not, see if you can help solve the problem they’re having.
A critic is often more than willing to become an advocate if they receive good, personal service from someone reaching out.
The rewards available to the savvy influencer-marketer are considerable. Digital agency Burst Media found that influencer campaigns earn $6.85 in earned media value for every $1.00 of paid media through influencer marketing strategies.
There are several other ways in which you can be proactive in engaging with influencers:
Give them something nice: Offering a freebie to your top advocates is a great way to make them feel special, and hopefully they’ll return the favor by talking about how much they love the gift. It’s one of the oldest forms of influencer marketing out there and it still works.
Hire them: You need to be careful about paying people to be advocates for you. It can easily backfire if you get it wrong. Slipping someone a bribe to say something nice isn’t the smoothest move. But paying someone to create great content for you, as long as you are open about it, can be a great way to engage a community through your marketing.
Sell to them: You can track influencers around a specific topic – some of these influencers might be valuable leads. Creating a list of power-leads could allow you to start selling to a group of people who will become extremely useful advocate-clients.
Start tracking your top influencers today by setting up an Influencers Dashboard for one of your existing Queries – and if you don’t have a Brandwatch account yet, arrange a demo today.
Join us for next weeks webinar where we’ll be discussing all the new Dashboards and how you can use them to find the real value in your social data – July 30th (London: 5pm BST | New York: 12pm EDT)