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This piece was written by Belinda Stinson for Jeff Bullas's blog

Jan Gordon: My commentary

This is one of the suggestions that was mentioned in tis article but I can't stress this enough, it should be #1

After you've discovered who the right influencers are, always look for ways you can sincerely contribute to them that is meaningful, then find ways to leverage the relationship and make it a win/win for both of you. 

Intro:

 "if you want to grow your business, you need to know who the influencers are in your field, learn from their expertise and build a productive professional relationship with them".

Why leverage influencers?:

"Influencers are hubs of information, they have many followers who respect their recommendations and opionions and being featured by them sends a powerful amount of targeted traffic your way - It's good old fashioned word of mouth recommendations on steriods"

Here are a few ways to discover influencers that I personally do myself:

**Twitter Lists - Twitter is a great untapped resource for finding influencers and keep track of what they are posting

**Groups and Forums - These are valuable sources of information.

**Podcasts and webinars - This is a great way to find key influencers - whether it's through interviews, presentations, information products of their own or curated information by others

Here are a few ways to build relationships that I've found very effective in finding influencers in my industry:

**Connect through the social media platforms they use

**Share the posts that are of value to your audience, retweet & quote their content, share, comment and like their Facebook posts

**Help promote what they are involved with, including charity causes, seminars, conferences, publiations and promotions

Selected by Jan Gordon covering, "Curation, Social Business and Beyond"

See full articles here: [bit.ly/Nw9xqY]