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6 Essential Twitter Tools to Find and Connect With Influencers

This is a guest contribution from Adam Connell, blogger at Bloggingwizard.com.

6 Essential Twitter Tools to Find and Connect With Influencers

In the following post you’re going to discover a wide range of powerful and useful tools that will help you find and connect with the influencers on Twitter.

There have been a lot of great posts here on ProBlogger, a few of the best ones can be found here, here and here.

I’m going to be taking a different look at what is possible on Twitter.

This isn’t going to be just another list of tools that you can use to manage your Twitter profile – we are going to be talking about how to identify and connect with influencers in within your niche.

Before I dive in, I want to give you some background information on why you need to find and connect with influencers within your niche.

Influence Marketing

Influence marketing is all about identifying who has influence within your industry or niche and market directly to them.

Think about it like this, there are influencers within most niches or industries on the web and they have an existing audience so the ultimate aim of using these tools is that you will be able to tap into that audience and use it to market your blog.

You can use other platforms to find and connect with influencers, but ultimately Twitter influencer marketing is much more straight forward and there are enough tools on the market to help you.

Please note that there are an enormous number of tools available that can be used for influencer research and an even larger number of tools for Twitter in general – this is not an exhaustive list by any means.

Twitter Influencer Research Tools

1. Simply Measured

Simply Measured influencer tool

Simply Measured is a social analytics tool that will give you access to an incredible range of reporting and data collection tools.

At first glance, their subscriber toolset is quite expensive, but they do have an impressive range of free reports that you can have access too. They’re not just limited to Twitter either. Some of them include LinkedIn, Facebook, Vine, Google Analytics and more.

There is even a report that gives you a detailed combination of analytics that incorporates both Twitter and Klout data.

Simply Measured’s reporting tools will allow you to identify exactly who has the most influence among your network of followers.

This will tell you who you need to connect with and build relationships with.

2. Twtrland

Twitterland influencer tool Twtrland is an incredible social intelligence research tool that works with Twitter and Instagram. It excels at allowing you to easily find influencers and find market insights.

There is a free option and premium option ($19.99 per month), even the free account is still incredible powerful but you just won’t be able to export reports and lists.

There are a few other restrictions but one of the reasons why I like this is that you can still actually use the free account, most free accounts are restricted to the point where it is pointless even using (and then you subscribe of course).

You will get some interesting data about your Twitter account, but what you’re looking for here is to look at the follower’s analysis.

There is an immediate breakdown of the demographics of your Twitter followers – top followers, countries, cities and skills of your followers but the real fun stuff happens when you click ‘browse all’.

Twitter Land influencer tool

Next, tick the ‘power user’ option under Typecast, select your metrics, skills and other demographics – this will show you an incredible list of all of the people that you need to reach out to and connect with.

3. InkyBee

Inky Bee influencer tool

InkyBee is positioned as a blogger outreach tool but it also excels at finding market influencers.

Whether you’re doing blogger outreach or influencer research, the process is the same.

Add a ‘list’ and name it as the market you’re searching for influencers in then add a discovery job by inputting 3 different terms that you would imagine influencers to talk about in a single blog post.

InkyBee will go out and find blogs from all over the web that fit your search terms and pull in some really useful data that is outlined in the image above.

You can order them by different metrics and then export to PDF or Excel documents too.

The way I usually use InkyBee is to find influencers but also gather data of other influencers that I have discovered using different tools because you can manually add lists of blogs.

5. Commun.it

Commun.it influencer tool

Commun.it is a great tool that can separate out your followers and people you follow into a number of different categories while giving you the tools you need to help build and maintain valuable relationships.

The influencer research is essentially done for you because one of the categories just so happens to be influencers; along with supporters and engaged members.

You can use this to follow and continue to connect with these users and continue to build powerful relationships.

One of the difficulties that people sometimes have is what to do next, who do you respond to? Who do you follow? Who do you engage with?

Commun.it actually lists these all out in a straight forward dashboard so you don’t need to leave the page and go into another Twitter management tool.

5. Followerwonk

Followwonk influencer tool

Followerwonk is bundled in with Moz Pro so it does mean that is a paid tool starting at $99 per month but it also means access to some really helpful tools that go beyond Twitter and even social media.

You can do a bunch of different things like compare users, track who is following you, analyse and sort followers but where this really helps with influencer research is the search function.

Just search for a phrase that is particular to your market and you’ll get a huge list of Twitter users that you can export to Excel and then filter by social authority and the number of followers they have (along with a bunch of other helpful data).

6. Twellow

Twellow influencer tool Twellow is essentially a database of Twitter users arranged by a variety of categories and then by the number of followers a user has.

You can then dive deeper and view a user’s profile which pulls in social profiles along with their website.

There is a search function too so you can find users that talk about the exact topic that you’re looking for.

This platform does revolve mostly around the number of followers a user has, the metrics aren’t much more complex than that but it’s still a huge database that makes users easy to find in various niches.

The important thing to remember is that just because someone has a lot of followers, doesn’t mean they get a lot of engagement; this is why I like to search Twellow for users with websites and add them to InkyBee to get some more comprehensive data.

Summary

You may have noticed that I haven’t listed Klout or Kred as one of the Twitter influencer research tools, and I have my reasons for that.

I have found that these tools are better at monitoring my own influence within particular verticals, rather than finding other influencers. That’s not to say it can’t be done, but as bloggers we only have a finite amount of time to spend on certain tasks so we need to focus on using the right tools for the job at hand.

There are a lot more tools that you could use for this too, but the idea of this post is to make things easier for you, and I haven’t found every tool on the market yet.

So I’ll put the question to you – which influencer tools are you using right now?

I’d love to hear more in the comments below, whether you use them for Twitter or any other social platform.

Adam Connell is the operations manager at UK Linkology. He can be found blogging over at Bloggingwizard.com, where he talks about marketing, social media, SEO and a few other topics. Follow him on Twitter @adamjayc.

About Guest Blogger
This post was written by a guest contributor. Please see their details in the post above.
Comments
  1. Hello sir,
    nice list of twitter tools, i was looking for one of them to analysis one of my friends profile.
    thank you for sharing it.

  2. Wow! Very informative post. I had heard about twitter influencer tools before and now I am definitely interested in using them.

  3. Really a very useful post! I’ve used Twtrland and Twellow but i didn’t know about others! Thanks for increasing my knowledge! You are doing great work with your helpful posts :)

  4. Adams Excellent set of tools, of these tool set I think twellow will be my next point of call.

    I think inkybee would also a great addition. On the side what do you think othe twitonomy tool

  5. Awesome list, would you consider doing one for Instagram tools?

    If so, consider insta-train, I use it on a regular basis nd it works great.

  6. Dr. Trinoll says: 09/03/2013 at 7:59 am

    I’ve been using Hashtags.org — the analytical service — and it’s much better than anything I’ve found for following trends, our promotional campaigns and notables in the industry.

  7. This is such a great way to position yourself with the top dogs in your niche. Great information I will definitely be using this for twitter. Is there a program that does this for all social networks?

  8. Good collection of tools. I’ve been using “followerwonk” for long time.

  9. I also had heard about twitter influencer tools before and now I am using them.
    Thanks

  10. Excellent Article. My friends told me about twitter influencer tools before and now I will try them. Thanks

  11. Wow, Excellent post. All the twitter tools are new for me and I will use all of them for sure. :)
    Thanks

  12. I hadn’t heard of the twtrland tool. But I will definitely be giving it a shot. Thanks for pointing it out.

  13. I agree with Saif, these are some good tools, especially for people who are new to doing outreach on twitter.

  14. Hey Adam,

    I was totally unaware of these tools. Thanks for this list. I will definitely use them going forward.

  15. Good points and ideas. Also, time is limited for all of us so we have to find what works and is efficient. That is a challenge. So much of what we do is research. Who would have thought that about blogging, but it digging in and researching is a big part of it. Thanks for writing this informative post.

  16. Nice list, of late I’ve been using Followerwonk and BuzzBundle by SEO PowerSuite as my primary social monitoring tools.

  17. Great list of tools. These all work for finding people, but do you have any more ideas for how to use them to actually get these “influencers” to listen to what we have to say? While it is great to know who they are, how do we get them to see our tweets and then actually retweet them or tweet them out to their followers? I know who the targets are in my niche, just not sure how to make that connection!

    Chris

    • Chris, I’m glad you asked.

      The truth is, tools can only get us so far, research gets us part way there – there rest is up to us.

      There are a number of tactics that you can use such as @mention’s, linking out to them etc.

      Actually, what’s worked really well for me is linking out to influencers on my blog and then reaching out to them and ask them to share – otherwise known as ego bait.

      Just sharing of a post that mentions them will reinforce the fact that they’re an authority figure within whatever sector it is.

      For some further reading I mention some tactics within this post that you should find useful: http://bloggingwizard.com/influencer-marketing/.

      Sometimes all it takes is asking – that’s how I got namecheap.com to share one of my articles on their Facebook page – if you don’t ask you don’t get!

      Thanks for the comment.

  18. Peter Kanayo says: 09/04/2013 at 8:12 am

    Chris it usually takes time to get into their radar but you shouldn’t get discouraged.

    For me I usually retweet their tweet-this is however the no 1 step. For step 2 u will need to ask questions and comment on their tweets. You could also give oppose them from time to time by replying their tweets.

    You can also use the Brian Dean Skyscraper techniques by asking them question and writing a blog post about it.

    After which u will need to send a tweet asking them to retweet your article- as you’ve added one of their links to your site.

    Hope it helps. U can connect with me on @compellinadvert

  19. This list of Twitter tools has come along for me at the perfect time as I’m about to start turning up my social media interaction and was on the lookout for something that could help me with Twitter as I’m struggling to keep my head above water on that site.

  20. Nice job,
    Honestly , i rarely use my Twitter since i have my Facebook.
    But there are amazing tools that you provided here. This is can be a motivation for me to use Twitter again.
    That encourage me so much,
    Thanks for your valuable information.

    Stephan Wu

  21. Wow! I never try all these tools before. It’s great! Time for exploration.
    Thanks for the tips!

  22. WeFollow could also be added into this list..By the way thanks for these Twitter Influencer Tools

  23. These tools are very are new for me, Ii think I should try them one by one and then finalize my decision.

    Thanks!

  24. Thank you ! I have this bookmarked for reading the rest tomorrow. I am all blogged out for today haha, I am learning a lot from you though! It is appreciated !

  25. This is best for newbies like me as I am in search of some useful tools for twitter I just found them here so thanks for sharing them.

  26. Hey Dave,,
    I have never thought of using a Twitter influencer tool before this post. I think reaching out and re-tweeting from people in your niche helps you grow your followers for sure

  27. Good info. I don’t normally use any of these tools but now I see the benefit of finding out who the top influencers are. I tried out Twtrland yesterday and I will try Twellow soon. Thanks for the resources.

  28. Hey Adam.
    Very informative post on twitter tools, I was unaware of these tools, thanks for pointing out and helping me to increase my knowledge, I appreciate your effort.

  29. thanks twtrland.com cool site

    I found Tcounter.com cool site chek out

  30. Interesting article and helpful for a lot of small businesses. I can only agree on many of the suggestions you make in the article. Especially number 4 and 6.

    Thanks for the tips!

  31. Rooshabh says: 10/24/2013 at 11:24 pm

    Great article. Just a quick question! Would you happen to know any nice tools that can help me identify influencers by region? Majority of these tools track influencers globally which might not be of as much use to me if I’m looking to find influencers for a certain category in my country/city.

  32. Really helpful article, lots of good tools here. I’m surprised that Little Bird didn’t come up – they’re pretty new but I’ve found their tools to be fairly powerful. They have a free trial but I’m not sure how much it is after that.

    Thanks for sharing these resources with us!

  33. New info for me and especially useful at this stage. It would be great to also share tools that are either mobile-friendly or has their own dedicated mobile app.
    Just my point of view.

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