Want to reel in the big fish to drive traffic and brand awareness?  To get the attention of key influencers, you need to bait your hook with a combination of hard data, out-of-the-box creativity and personalized content.

Too often, brands looking to attract the attention of influencers throw a dart blindly hoping it will eventually hit a target with lots of followers or fans.  With this haphazard approach, is it any wonder that brands fail to hit the bull’s eye?

Brands need to think differently today about how they can build influencer relationships.  They need to roll up their sleeves and invest the time, effort and creativity it takes to reach today’s key influencers.  To grab the attention of influencers who are bombarded by content every minute of every day, brands must create personalized, targeted content.

During a Social Media Week Chicago presentation, Jon Morris (@JonBMorris), Founder and CEO of Rise Interactive (@riseinteractive), a digital and analytics firm specializing in big data and analytics, advised that “Social media is all about a personalized experience.  What’s your influencer’s story?  Use that information to tap into emotion that will reach influencers.”

When planning influencer campaigns, brands should ask questions like:

• What are they passionate about?
• What are their hobbies?
• Who do they follow?
• Who follows them?
• What subjects do they write about or share in social media channels?

Consider the recent social media campaign Rise Interactive launched in an attempt to get one of the star sharks from the ABC hit show “Shark Tank” to bite.  Using data it culled from detailed research, the agency calculated the number of average deals per episode, average deal valuation, average investment and average equity as well as a detailed profile of deals for each shark investor.

The result was the creative and detailed infographic “Shark Tank Feeding Frenzy” (see images below).

During Shark Week, the agency tweeted a customized message to each shark with a link to the infographic.

The creative campaign did its job.  One of the Sharks, Barbara Corcoran, retweeted the message to her 87,541 followers and Jeffrey Hayzlett, former Kodak CEO and a key influencer himself, saw the tweet and sent a personal email to Shark Daymond John.

In another campaign aimed at driving brand awareness and website traffic, Rise Interactive jumped on an issue close to the heart of power influencer Travis Wright who has nearly 150,000 Twitter followers.  Travis is passionate about the Kansas City Chiefs and set off a viral hailstorm when he posted the following tweet last September:

In response, the Kansas City Chiefs replied with the following direct message which Travis proceeded to capture via a screenshot and share with all of his followers:

Travis’ action resulted in a flurry of activity including being blocked from the Chiefs, a top post on Reddit and a variety of local and national interviews. Ultimately, the single tweet led to the dismissal of NFL General Manager Scott Pioli.

If you wanted to build a relationship with Travis, what better way than to join him in his Chiefs crusade?  That’s exactly what Rise Interactive did when they launched its “The Power of Fans” campaign.  In an infographic (see images below), the agency tracked the timeline of the Travis Wright vs. Kansas City Chiefs situation to demonstrate how one person can make a difference.  To extend the power of the campaign, the agency also created an internal contest encouraging employees to get the word out about the campaign.  Each employee was provided a unique URL so that results could be easily tracked.  The winner of the contest netted 14,000 unique visitors to the site, of which 98% were new.

These two campaigns are great reminders of what it takes to capture the attention of any target audience today.

• Determine goal of influencer relationship (traffic, brand awareness, conversions).
• Use data to identify your target influencers.
• Research their data to cultivate a personal, customized story.
• Be creative when crafting personal content.
• Distribute content via appropriate and targeted channels.
• Leverage employee networks to promote content.
• Measure Results
• Build on influencer relationship with consistent communication.

To attract awesome influencers, you have to think awesome.  Today’s brands need to be part data scientist, part social scientist and part artist.  To win over influencers, put some teeth into those campaigns.  Be creative, dig deep into the data and craft personalized stories.