Thinking Carefully About Who You Want To Influence

It’s all very well having influence or trying to get influence but you need to work out WHO it is you want to influence.

By this I mean things like:

• Is there a specific group of people or even a specific person that you want to influence?
• Will it be more effective to try to influence them directly, or their gatekeepers?
• Do you think all the people you want to influence should be reached in the same way?
• Are you sure that if you effectively influence that particular group of people that it has a good chance of leading to the impact you desire?

If you don’t work this out you might find that you are addressing the wrong audience/wrong person or that you might be getting less engagement than you would have expected.

To give a flippant example, if your main area of expertise is in education and you want to influence teachers- but your monthly column is in ‘Fly Fishing Monthly’ then it is unlikely that you will have the impact you want. Unless of course there is a correlation between teachers and fly-fishing enthusiasts that I don’t know about!

You need to be very careful to make sure that the audience you are seeking is actually congregating in the place that you want to broadcast your message.

Only when you have a clear idea of who you want to influence and where you will find them will you be able to properly approach the next step of how you will influence them.