How To Research A New Market & Be An Influencer

Transcript

Sherman Hu: Hey, hey. Sherman Hu here, from ShermanLive.com. I want to share with you a question I received today. I believe the answer will help you if you are considering the same thing.

There are many different topics and niche markets online that you can participate in. Hopefully that the areas you are passionate about or have interest in is also a profitable one. However you may have passions in areas that are totally unprofitable online, in which case you may be searching for a market place in which you would like to be an influencer or thought-leader or subject matter expert but really don’t know enough to play ball. I know what kind of question I have today. I thought I would share with you how you can start moving forward in the right direction.

What I will do, you want to go where the thought-leaders and the subject matter experts and influencers are and come to the party and put on your party hat – this is something of a visual analogy I adopted from Chris Brogan in his talk at BlogWorldExpo – "Jump into the party, be part of the conversation" – participate in the conversation when you have something of value to add. If you are new to the market place this where you study. This is your research ground. This is where you go into student mode for any offline resources.

There are many online resources that you can check out.

One of the places I would first go to would be Technorati.com. I would go to search.technorati.com. At search.technorati.com you will find a search box. Go ahead and type in it the search phrase, maybe the macro search phrase that pertains to the new topic that you are interested in and hit enter. You will be presented with a listing of all the different blogs on that topic. I believe, in the top right-hand corner, there is a web link to filter that search. You want to filter that search with blogs that have a lot of authority. After you filter that search, your listing is filtered down to blogs that are playing serious ball in that space that you are interested in. I would visit those blogs and bookmark them and really study what they have to share because more often that not they will be blogging about what really – the cutting edge, bleeding edge, current news about your topic – you want to be familiar with. Really take note.

Then the next place I would go to is Google News. I believe that is google.com\news or news.google.com – whatever the case may be. Type in your macro-related  phrases there. On the left column you will be presented with Google Alerts. You will be notified via email or, if you are friendly with RSS and have a blog reader, you can copy the link to the RSS feed of that news page that shows you the results of that topic that you searched for. Put it into your blog reader and you will be notified, every day, of the hottest news topic in that niche market that you are interested in. I would study them.

This is the cutting edge stuff. This is the way for you to put on your party hat, put on your student cap, study and in a short period of time – if you are intentional about your study – in the next seven to fourteen days you will be able to gather enough information to be able then, with your party hat on, participate in conversations at these blogs – the ones that you have filtered – add value, get to know the blog authors, whether via commenting on the blog of emailing them or picking up the phone and calling them. I am assuming that you are moving forward with your own blog anyway in that space.

If you are familiar with "trackbacks" at all, you can start posting trackback linking to the next author’s blog entry. Your trackback on your blog will be showcased in their blog as a comment. This will, if your comment is of value – I am not talking about stuff like "Great post, buddy" or "Wow! Nice tip." I am talking about adding a paragraph or a few lines of good content that add to the conversation. In no time you will find that people that visit these authority bloggers’ blogs will start to click over to find out what you have to add to the conversation.

You will start building up likeability, trust, respect, credibility and influence. This is the way that you build up your "rock star status". This can be applied to social networking or social media sites like FaceBook.

This is the killer strategy right here.

Facebook Groups allows you to type in the search phrase topic. Facebook Groups does a search. You will find a multitude of groups there that are related to your topic. You will find some with a lot of members. You will find some that pertain to your topic. You want to visit the group, join the group, put on your party hat, be part of the conversation, be social, don’t pitch, go up there, participate, add value, add pictures, add videos, add Slidecast, add text, add questions and answers in a discussion board and be a player.

You can do the same thing for MySpace.

What I am sharing with you here is, in a short period of time, definitely within a month, being able to intentionally study, put on your party hat and be in the conversation, gain knowledge, share your knowledge that you are learning and start becoming a rock star in that space. That’s my tip for you. If you are wondering how to enter a new space, right there I have given you the gems of how to do that effectively and efficiently in a short period of time. Enjoy!