Successful social media marketing relies on the principle of word of mouth – someone tells another person about something, who then tells someone else and so on.

It’s one occasion when getting talked about is definitely a good thing. This is why identifying your event evangelists – the ones who are already talking about you online – and engaging with them further can prove an effective marketing strategy.

Although it might seem counterintuitive, placing your focus on your existing fans can actually help attract new ones, as they deepen their relationship with your brand and continue to evangelise about you to others.

There are a number of online tools that can help you find those people interacting with and sharing your content, so you can start engaging with them today.

1. Keyhole.co

Keyhole allows you to track keywords, hashtags and URLs in real-time across Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

When you run a search on Keyhole, it returns a list of users who have used that term in a recent post. To help you identify the most influential users, it shows you who’s tweets had the most follower engagement, and who has the biggest Klout score. You can also pinpoint your biggest fans by looking at which users talk about you most frequently.

Keyhole also offers features to track engagement on the day of your event, including real-time hashtag tracking to identify the most active and influential attendees, and uncover the most popular content being shared.

For increased engagement, display real-time dashboards on screens at your event so influencers can enjoy recognition.

Related: Launch your event in a month – social media and influencers 

2. BuzzSumo

If you want to find out who’s sharing your blog content, BuzzSumo is the place to do it. Simply enter the URL of your blog/website and it will present you with a list of posts (most shared first), detailing how many shares each post has had across Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+.

Pro users can then view the sharers that have helped to amplify that content. With this information, you can reach out to influencers and invite them to collaborate. Perhaps they’d be interested to write a guest blog or you can offer an exclusive ticket discount for their followers?

You should also try your best to get them along to the event (offer them a free ticket), as they will be likely to talk about their experience online, helping generate interest for your next event.

Related: 7 Common social media mistakes EventProfs make

3. Crowdbooster

Using Crowdbooster is like going to a party with a great networker. It monitors your Twitter account and notifies you when an influencer has decided to follow you, so you always know who’s hip and happening in the room.

To nurture this new relationship it suggests you should take an action, such as sending them a mention or starting to follow them if you’re not already.

It will also alert you every time an influencer mentions you and prompt you to engage with them.

In addition to this, it helps you understand the make up of your top fans by displaying your most influential followers and your most enthusiastic retweeters.

Related: An introduction to tracking the ROI of social media

4. YouTube Fans

The ‘Fans’ feature is actually integral to YouTube, but only appears on your dashboard if you have at least 1,000 subscribers.

Nested under the ‘Community’ tab (where you also find ‘Insights’ and ‘Comments’), the Fans page shows a list of some of your most engaged and influential viewers, based on their public interaction with your YouTube channel (this includes commenting and liking etc).

By default, the list is sorted by a combination of subscriber count and engagement level, but you can also sort by either factor on its own.

For each person on the list, you can see how many subscribers they have, how engaged they are with your channel, an example comment they’ve left on one of your videos and how long they’ve been a subscriber.

Related: Top 116 event-related Twitter accounts to check out

5. Socialrank.com

Socialrank enables you to pull in all your followers from Twitter and Instagram and slice and dice ‘em into useful lists.

You can sort your followers by Most Valuable (high-profile followers), Most Engaged (determined by frequency of engagement — retweets, mentions, and replies), Best Followers (notable followers who have engaged with you recently) and Most Followed.

You can also filter and pinpoint your followers by bio keyword, geographic location, interests and activity.

After filtering and sorting, you can create custom lists, which can be saved to SocialRank, exported to Twitter or exported conveniently to a CSV file.

Related: Your guide to using Facebook and Twitter advertising for events

Conclusion

Don’t overlook what you already have in your quest to grow your following. An engaged and influential following is your most valuable asset.

Five truly engaged followers are worth more to your event than 50 uninterested followers, so be sure to show them some love!