Finding Movers And Shakers In Your Micro-Niche

In the last lesson of Module 4, Ed talks about the importance of building relationships with the key people in your niche. The more people who know about you and the more you help people, in turn makes it more likely that they will help you out as well. If you don't feel confident doing this with the micro-niche that you are targeting, for now do it with your main hobby. Practice and sharpen those communication and leadership skills in an area that you feel confident in.

When you are starting to understand what's going on in your marketplace, one of the best places to find the leaders in your market right now is Twitter. By simply doing a Twitter search using your keyword phrase, or main phrase as you did when looking for forums, you can find people who are talking about your market. With the results returned, you can scan the list and pick out some of the more relevant or interesting tweets and go and visit those Twitter profiles. Then you can follow the people who seem interesting, have a decent number of followers and appear to talk about your market frequently.

Alternatively, you can go to the Find People area of Twitter and do a search using your keyword phrase. Again, using your main phrase as you did when looking for forums. The results you get back from the Find People lists accounts that either have the keyword phrase in the username or bio. Take note of the most recent tweets of each of the accounts and only take the time to look at accounts that have tweeted recently. Stagnant accounts add no value. Visit the accounts that have recent tweets and find some that you can see value in.

One of the most powerful features of Twitter is the ability to create lists. Ed shows you how to create a list and add some of the Twitter accounts to it that you found the most interesting. One of the great things about lists is that you don't need to follow the Twitter accounts in order to get their tweets, keeping your main Twitter stream clean and keeping your market specific tweets organized into a list. Over time you will begin to see who the influencers are.

Another place to look for movers and shakers is on Facebook, more specifically Facebook Pages. This is something that will be much more market dependant than Twitter. Ed provides some guidelines on what to look for with Facebook Pages and how to find your way around the various functions of a Facebook Page. An important note to make is that Facebook Pages also have an RSS feed that you can grab and put into your Google Reader.

Actions For The Day - 1. Do a Twitter search and Find People search using your keyword phrase for relevant or interesting tweets from people. 2. Create some Twitter lists and add relevant Twitter accounts to it. 3. Search Facebook Pages for relevant pages to your market and Like the ones that are interesting enough. 4. Follow the off-module publishing guidelines for your Posterous network and Micro-Niche blog.