The evolution of social media has mirrored the revolution in the way that we think about people and their relationships to brands. Prior to the advent of the Internet, the only way to access consumers was to fill their physical world. Billboards. Print ads. One-way points of contact that created the feeling that a brand was omnipresent, hovering over your shoulder – there but untouchable. The speaker in front of a stadium of 10,000. 

Things have changed.

Now, on social media, the consumer owns a brand’s message just as much as the brand does. In fact, people are the conduits of that message – an army of influencers whose comments, likes and shares can quickly spread in the online space.

Finding the right way to influence and engage your consumers online is important and sometimes not as intuitive as you would think. Here are three new ways to approach influence online.

1. Follower Count Means Little.

This is what we first saw – brands sought to engage users with the largest networks. Surely, if someone had thousands of followers on Twitter, they had a sizable footprint that a brand could access if only they could wiggle their way into the conversation.

Here’s the thing – large batches of Twitter followers can be bought quite easily and cheaply, and while they’ll follow anyone for a small fee, they won’t talk to you or engage with you. So the influence? Practically nil.

In fact, I worked on a project where we aggressively engaged people with very few followers. Our goal was to reach the right people that we could shepherd through a carefully curated customer journey, transforming them into first adopters, avid consumers, case studies and finally, influencers.

We actually found that people with fewer followers were much more likely to listen to us, since we weren’t competing with the voices of thousands of other people, brands and bloggers. And these small-scale “influencers” had significant sway in their networks of close friends.

2. Online influencers are offline influencers.

Your most fervent advocates online behave the same way offline, talking about your product and telling your story to their friends. An influencer isn’t only a person, but also a personality type, and your online influencers can easily be called to action to exert influence on your offline customers.

This is something that brands don’t realize because it can be hard to measure. Where and how do you measure offline word of mouth?  But creating incentives, rewards and relationships fuels the story that they tell their family at dinner, friends over drinks, their aunts on the phone, and that random guy on the airplane.

3.  Be influenced.

Your customers’ hopes, dreams and aspirations for their world should color your content on social media. We’re seeing that influence is becoming a two way street – that in order for people to advocate for a brand, the brand must advocate for its customers first.

Start small. Work on a micro level. Post one piece of content online and then see how your community responds. Use their response content to create your next piece of content, and once you have figured out the pulse and rhythm of your community, support your messaging with paid media to help the content reach more people.

So my biggest advice to brands? Be influenced. Be wooed by your customers.