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One of the best tactics you can jump on to while wading through the social network streams is by imbibing Influencer Marketing strategies into your campaign. Whether they’re celebrities in real life or merely Internet-famous, people who follow influencers hold on to their every word and so trust is forged on an intimate lever.

An influencer, off-beat filmmaker Kevin Smith has over a million followers on Twitter and counting. Last February, he tweeted out in outrage about an embarrassing and insulting treatment he received onboard a Southwest Airlines plane. He even followed it up with a string of tweets that explained his frustration over the ordeal, added a photo of himself mocking the airline company and a rant episode of his podcast. This ended with a lot of press coverage and a lot of unnecessary reputation management cleanup.

On the other side of the social spectrum, Conan O’brien’s recent jump into the microblogging platform caused a huge stir in the Twitterverse. He never followed anyone on Twitter but the hype machine went abuzz when the former late-night talk show host actually clicked the Follow button on some random fan, one Sarah Killen, and even announced it on a tweet. And suddenly news agencies and blogs picked up the story and Killen’s mere hundred of followers rose to 29,686 as of writing.

At first glance, these influencer scenarios aren’t really big deal stories to begin with, and yet they both snowballed into media frenzies of international proportions. For both Smith and O’brien (or any influencer for that matter), the audience reaction is instantaneous, even boosted by the Twitter’s real-time platform.

Then came the barrage of retweets from his followers, retweets from his followers’ followers and then the media coverage. Blogs and news sites exploded with different angles and opinions. Links got shared on Facebook and other less popular sites. And these began with mere 140-character posts.

In both the online and real worlds, there are celebrities that people look up to and most of them fervently hold on to their every word. This is why we’ll see Catherin Zeta-Jones on a T-Mobile ad and Danica Patrick constantly on GoDaddy placements. These personalities can provide much leverage on the mass’ purchasing decisions and where to go and how they consume information online.

Online marketers need to find ways to expand and optimize the social Web, adapt accordingly to different circumstances and strategically grab the opportunities as they come. When heading for influencer marketing, there has to be a crystal clear view of what the ultimate goal is and a carefully mapped out, solidly structured strategy map.

It’s not that easy to accomplish unless you’ve already established a working relationship with some of them in the past, in which case, a little bit of marketing know-how and constant communication can turn them into your own brand evangelists and things can really fall into place for your brand.

Tags: Conan O'brien, Influencer Marketing, influencers, Kevin Smith, Social Media, Twitter