Who are the New Influencers?

As I get organized for the new year, take a look at this post I wrote for the blog Social Marketing 2.0 this week.

As they create public relations and media plans for the new year, my clients are increasingly looking for ways to reach out to and communicate with bloggers and other online influencers. It’s not just about the traditional media anymore. It hasn’t been for a while, but many businesses are just catching up.

But with more than 112 million blogs out there, how do you find the ones you need to connect with?

In its recent study, the Society for New Communications Research asked social media power users in a number of industries to share how they evaluate the relevance of bloggers, podcasters and other online influencers.

Here’s what they had to say:

The number-one criteria is the quality of their content.

A close second is the relevance of the content to your business, brand or industry, followed by the influencer’s web site search engine rankings. Power users also cited a number of other factors to check out, such as name recognition, blog search engine rankings and overall traffic.

Less important, but still relevant was whether the influencers are affiliated with a traditional media outlet or have been quoted extensively within the traditional media.

Least important? Surprisingly, typical measures of audience engagement, such as active commenting on blog posts, content syndication and distribution methods, and the longevity of the blog, were ranked last.

Looking to target new media influencers in your PR efforts? Start with blog searches on your industry or business (try Google and Technorati for starters). Sort what you find with the criteria above. Then go ahead and start a conversation.