How many times have you scrolled through your LinkedIn feed and seen posts that get you fired up to take action?
Pretty sure you found a post from a fellow LinkedIn influencer.
LinkedIn has become a huge platform for influencers and there are huge upsides of connecting with them.
From sponsoring your business to growing together with them.
In this article, you will learn how to find top influencers and connect with them with ease.
Let’s dive in.
Who Are LinkedIn Influencers?
LinkedIn influencers or “LinkedInfluencers” are thought leaders and experts in their industry/field who share content for the whole LinkedIn community to see.
They build communities around their personal brands and have an impact on their followers.
Some may think a person is a LinkedIn influencer when they pass a certain number of followers, but this isn’t the case.
Different industries and niches have a different amount of people interested in them, so a universal follower metric isn’t possible.
But there are several ways you can recognize LinkedIn influencers:
- They have great engagement (likes, comments, shares) on their LinkedIn posts.
- They are featured in other creators’ posts, LinkedIn lives, and media.
- They have a high follower count in regard to their niche.
- Their content is of high quality and filled with value.
- You see them regularly in your LinkedIn feed.
You can also recognize them by their “Top Voice” badge given by LinkedIn to the top influencers on their platform.
But keep in mind that this badge is given to a small number of LinkedIn users.
Most other LinkedIn influencers can be separated into different categories:
- Micro-Creators – Under 10,000 followers
- Macro-Creators – 10,000 – 100,000 followers
- Mega-Creators – 100,000 – 500,000 followers
- Celebrities – 500,000+ followers
This scale can be used as a general rule of thumb but again depends on the niche.
In some niches, having 10,000 followers might mean an influencer is a mega-creator.
How To Find Influencers On LinkedIn
Finding LinkedIn influencers is a tough job as you have many things to think about.
It’s not just looking at people who have 10,000+ followers and connecting with them as anyone can get to a high follower count through connecting and spammy content.
To get to high-quality influencers you need a strategy.
Determine Your Goal
Before even thinking of searching for influencers you need to know who you are searching for and why.
What is your goal in connecting with influencers?
Is it to establish a partnership, sponsor, follow their content, or something else?
There needs to be a reason behind you contacting them.
Utilize LinkedIn Search
Let’s face it, they are on LinkedIn and you can find influencers by searching for them.
First, put together a list of keywords you are looking for.
Let’s say you are looking for B2B SaaS influencers. Your list might look something like this:
- B2B SaaS
- SaaS entrepreneur
- Business
- Sales
- Software
- Startup
After building your keyword list you can start searching.
Input a keyword into the search box and filter it for 2nd and 3rd-degree connections with your desired location.
To get even more precise, open up all filters and add “Talks about” topics.
This will give you lists of people talking about those keywords who have Creator Mode enabled on their profile.
To take this to another level utilize boolean search to search for posts or people who have the exact keywords you are looking for or combinations of said keywords.
Scroll Your Feed
It sounds simple, but your feed is filled with influencers, but what they talk about depends on you.
Your feed shows you what you and the people you are following are interested in, so following irrelevant people for your niche will show you irrelevant creators.
You need to take good care of your network and unfollow connections that don’t add value to your feed.
Take a look at who is in the comments of posts on your feed as influencers love engaging in each other’s comments.
This is a great opportunity to find new influencers.
Use Influencers Lists
There are many LinkedIn influencer lists on the internet updated regularly.
They give you access to 100s of influencers at your fingertips that you can connect with and start conversations.
You can even search for niche-specific influencer lists and find top influencers in that niche.
One of our favorite lists is Favikon’s top LinkedIn influencer list which ranks influencers by more than just their follower count.
Visit LinkedIn Live Events
Let’s face it, influencers’ job is to appear in front of LinkedIn’s public and talk about their niche and expertise.
There are numerous LinkedIn lives being held every day with most of them hosting influencers as guests.
Just click on your “Events” list and watch out for lives that interest you.
It will detect the niche you are looking for the most and recommend you lives in that niche.
Once on a live event you can engage with the hosts and guests and connect with them after the event having something in common to start the conversation.
What To Do When You Find An Influencer?
This one depends on your goal.
If your goal was to contact influencers for a promotion or sponsorship send them a connection request.
After they accept send them a clear message of why you connected with them. Something like:
“Hey {{first name}},
I work with {{host name}} on the {{podcast/show}} name.
{{list a couple of host’s achievements or popularity metrics of the podcast/show}}
I’m a big fan of your content!
So,{{host name}} would like to have you on the show and talk about {{topics}}. Is this something you’d be interested in? The show will also be shared on our YouTube and other platforms and channels {{mention the audience size}}.
{{host name}} is available {{date/time frame}} for a quick chat. Let me know if that works for you.
P.S. We have a couple of tricks for {{mention something that the influencer could benefit from}}”
Remember that their inboxes are full of messages and they don’t have time for spam.
That’s why you don’t need to sugarcoat it, be clear about your intentions.
Save And Manage Influencers
If you don’t want to connect with influencers right after you find them, you should still build yourself an influencer list.
It’s easy to forget who you found and it’s a waste to let them out of your sight.
Who knows when you will need who.
To save them, you can use the LeadDelta Sidebar.
While on an influencer’s profile, you can save them to your LeadDelta with a click of a button, enhance their data, and manage them.
Even in your LinkedIn search, you can use LeadDelta’s advanced filters and add influencers to your LeadDelta database with one click.
Once they are in your LeadDelta you can add Tags to them for easier organization.
Later on, you can easily Filter for said Tags and decide if you want to connect with those influencers.
This is an easy way to save influencers for late and manage them as if you were connected without being connected.
Once you decide, you can connect with them for real and start the conversation.
How To Find Influencers In Your Existing Network?
Yes, this might come as a surprise, but you probably have connections in your network that are influencers.
You might have connected with them without realizing it, or some of your connections became influencers in the past few years.
Whatever the reason, you can easily find them hidden inside your network.
Here’s how:
- Log into LeadDelta and head to the “Connections” Tab.
- Customize your connections table to allow you to see the number of followers your connections have.
- Open up Filters and input the minimum number of followers you are looking for.
That’s it.
You will get a list of all connections that have a minimum number of followers you filtered for.
You can now sort those connections in ascending or descending order and start outreaching or managing them.
This can be taken a step further if you incorporate your whole team into the mix.
With LeadDelta Workspaces your whole team can merge their LinkedIn networks into one database.
This will allow you to search through their connections and find even more influencers the same way you would search through your network.
Even better, you will be able to see who on your team is connected with the said influencer and request introductions from your team using Notes.
Conclusion
LinkedIn is more than just a networking platform, it has an influence on people’s lives, and big creators realize that.
If you are looking to capture the attention of LinkedIn users, influencers are one of the best ways to go, but reaching them can be hard.
It takes work, but done right, you can build yourself a list of influencers you can call up any time you need and grow your business through partnerships.
