Top 100 List of Influential People. A Great Growth Tactic!
You may have seen lists like, Time 100, Forbes 40 under 40, 30 under 30, etc.
You can create these lists too. They bring you lots of page views, as well as other side benefits.
They are Ideal for newsletters, and can also be done by SaaS, agencies, any type of indie business.
The list celebrates those that are truly having an impact on your industry.
Two examples by indiehackers examples. One of them is mine
I'm the one who made the Influence 100.
Here's How I did it.
First off, the purpose is to get people talking about those who are actually impactful to the industry. You can do these lists about any industry, it just so happens mine is "Influencer Marketing" and yes I get a lot of comments about how "Meta" it is. Influential influencers....
Most of the people who make up this list are not "Influencers" or Creators. They don't have large social media accounts (persay). In fact only 15 "influencers" are on the list, a few of them are on the list because they own their own brand. Jeffree Star, Rihanna, Kylie Jenner.
Their companies are doing things to empower others to be influencers.
My editorial thesis in this list is that your effort must have an outsized impact on the industry. You must first be a net postive, but also have done something, that resonates. So things like revenue, company size, don't have any impact on me.
The people on the list have written about the industry, have created technology, have shared their case studies. Have done surveys and research to further the impact the industry has. Some are even governance, like organizational boards or government organizations that have clamped down on bad actors.
The first step was creating a google doc. I listed people's names. I had a little bio, which was at first a note about their contribution. why they made the list.
Once I wrote down 100 people, in fact a bit more. I emailed 20 people I respect. Yes some of them were on the list.
I asked two questions:
Is there anyone on this list you don't think should be?
Is there anyone not on the list that you think should be?
I got back anywhere between 2 names and 10. with reasons they should or should not be on the list. Reasons for taking off "no impact, just a figure head" or "unethical practices that hurt companies in our industry."
Some reasons to be on the list "wrote this piece that people use now." or "created a new technology that others use."
One thing I tried very hard to do, was not make it about someone's full career. But truly focus on this year.
The writing was not long. Even just 40 to 100 characters about someone gives a good reason for them to be on the list.
As each person's feedback came in, I moved people off the list, moved some on, and moved them up and down.
Important was to get the top 10 locked early. I reached out to an Illustrator to draw the header image, and 10 illustrations of the top 10.
This small gesture, really puts this kind of list over the top. It's a shareable image for everyone.
Would it be better if I had illustrated all 100? Maybe. But it's good to have a single killer header that's shared on every platform. To be recognizable. 100 faces would be 100 different images.
This works because a lot of these people share connections on LinkedIn. I want those shared connections to see this image a few times to get intriqued and click through, ultimately signup.
When I did this in 2018, I gained 200 subscribers in a couple weeks, that almost doubled my newsletter at the time.
Now I have 3,800 subscribers and I expect another 200 from this effort alone.
Back to the action....
Next I made an html page. I used Bulma css to make it look good. I inserted it into a Ghost page.
The first time I made a 100 list, I used plain html and custom css.
here it is: http://influence.directory/100
I changed my site's design and even changed the site in the past year.
This year I put it here in my blog w/ Ghost: https://news.influenceweekly.co/100/
Two weeks before, I emailed those advisors with just a google sheets link.
One week before launch, I emailed 220 journalists, and 10 got back to me wanting to cover it. I shared them on the page, a day or two before the launch to take a look.
I launched the list in my newsletter on Friday. 3 days later I've gotten 5,100 page views.
About 24 hours before launching the list, I emailed the 100 people on the list. in reality I could only find 90 emails and some of those were representatives, managers.
Even though I told them the list would launch on Friday at 6 am EST... I didn't necessarily say there was an embargo. I didn't say "don't post until..." But out of the 100, only one person posted before that morning on LinkedIn. it was great.
Then on Friday... a lovely deluge of people posting, tagging me, tagging my company.
I expect a few more through the week. Only one person in the top 10 mentioned it at all. If even one or two others in the top 10 tweet about it... I think the list could get 10k or 20k pageviews.
I'm still working out a few places to post it, writing some blog posts analyzing it.
