The very definition of “customer” has changed.

Your new customer is anyone who buys from you, as well as anyone who can influence those who buy from you.  

Influencers, in other words.

Influencers are those who create the conversations impacting your brand, product or service.

They’re usually people who are on social media, but don’t necessarily have lots of fans or followers (although a lot of them do).

What they do all have in common is the earned trust of their audience and the ability to impact their impressions and decisions. 

Here are 7 quick tips for teaming with influencers to better your content strategy.

1. Listen Up!

There are a lot of blogger outreach tools available to help you find and engage your influencers. The first thing you should do is simply listen to them and observe how they’re engaging their audience and what they’re talking about.  What topics are being discussed? What questions are being asked? Simply observing and listening can give you great insight for future blog and content ideas.

2. Turn a Tweet into Blog

By simply listening to your influencers, you can get ideas to build on.  In this case, @dannybrown and @markevans are taking a position on the idea of the “free” economy purported by many startups.  That could be used to build out a blog post on why so many businesses offer “free” stuff.  You could canvas businesses and ask them why they offer free stuff, seek their insight, and of course get @dannybrown's and @markevans' input as well.

3. Poll or Survey Your Influencers

Looking to release a new product? Want testimonials for a new eBook? Need that great quote for a blog post?  Use your influencers.  Ask for their input and ideas, uncover any stats, facts, or case studies, or simply crowdsource ideas and input.  In other words, take a community-centered approach to your content generation.

4. Interview Influencers

Whether it’s a podcast, video, Twitter chat, or Q & A blog post, interviewing an influencer is a great way to engage them, learn from them, promote them, and gain insight into their audience (your customers and prospects).

5. Invite Them to Present a Webinar or Workshop

Similarly, you can ask influencers to be a part of a webinar you put on.  Your influencers probably have a pretty good pulse on your industry and your customers, so reach out and ask them for ideas for a webinar or workshop that would bring both your audiences together.

6. Give Influencers Exclusive Access

For the added VIP treatment, give your influencers access to exclusive products, news, reports, or key content.  Giving them “the scoop” will help make them shine with their audience, at the same time making a favorable impression upon your brand.

7. Ask Influencers to Share Your Content (But Promote Them Too)

Don’t treat your influencers as a means to an end, but as human beings.  Engage with them, cultivate a relationship, and help promote them (and not just yourself).  And in turn, they’ll be more happy to help by sharing your content and promoting you too.  And if they don’t, just ask them.

Speaking of influencers, check out this SlideShare featuring 12 people proving that content marketing is more than a buzzword.