by Chris Brogan
And “unless” is a lovely word, isn’t it?
Look at the auto industry. Honda, Volkswagen, Toyota, and many other non-U.S. automakers entered the U.S. market by offering a low-cost product that led U.S. buyers to consider a switch based on price. Then they released more expensive products that appeared as “improved quality” and “luxury.” That’s another method to consider.
However, look at the difference between what Gervais did and what Honda did. Gervais didn’t offer a “deluxe” podcast. He merely offered the same podcast, now with a price. See the difference?
Value could be a whole book unto itself. Know this: If you give away as much as you can for free and charge for only the most difficult parts, you will corner both parts of a new value model that improves your impact. It’s how we do what we do, and it has served us well as a model.
Little Bloggers Grow Up
We talked about this in Trust Agents. The saying “Little bloggers grow up” comes from speaker and provocateur Liz Strauss. The notion is that we should be kind to the up-and-comers in our world, because we never know where they’ll go next. We both subscribe to this concept and prescribe it to people looking to build platform.
One way to build a platform from nothing is to find the other up-and-comers and build community among them. Comment on their posts. Interact with them on their social networks. If others in your larger space are also trying to build platform, a little bit of sharing and cross-promoting goes a long way. For instance, if you’re a real estate professional in Spokane, Washington, it doesn’t hurt you to promote posts and ideas from people in Eugene, Oregon, or Doncaster in the UK, but it can benefit you. The more you promote others’ good work, the more they’ll be inclined to share your work when the timing makes sense.
Another way to build platform is to give back to others who are learning. If your profession has a college or professional school supporting it, you might meet with educators who teach courses you could add value to and offer to talk with them, either in person or via Skype. Chris talks with college marketing and PR classes twice or more a month, mostly because it’s a way to share and give back but also because all those students will eventually graduate and find their way into large companies and positions of power. It sure helps to have left a positive personal impression on them, should future opportunities arise.
There’s a balancing act to growing platform. We’ve talked about promoting the up-and-comers and giving back to students (they’re up-and-comers from a different angle), but you also have to connect with people who might be a little larger in your industry. One strategy is to offer guest posts to bloggers in your space with larger audiences. (Before you discount the idea that there are bloggers already talking about your space, swing by alltop.com and see if you can find people writing about your industry.)
If you want to go that route, it’s good to comment and be part of that person’s community before you offer to write a guest post. People with larger platforms often have many people offering to “help” by writing guest material, and they often have to turn away a lot of newcomers simply because there are so many offers. The way to get your offer accepted is to become known and feel like you’re part of the blogger’s community. How? Comment often on that person’s posts. Respond to that person’s tweets or other social media. It’s the same as with the up-and-comers. The goal is just a bit different.
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One of Chris’s biggest inspirations in business is Sir Richard Branson of Virgin fame. He has followed Branson’s work and books for years and years. Imagine Chris’s delight, then, years into his own business journey, when he got the opportunity to speak with and interview Sir Richard for a feature magazine article. Next up: Chris intends to leverage that experience to meet more of his heroes and to potentially meet Branson in person.
In his book Screw Business as Usual, Branson name-drops everyone from the Dalai Lama to Bill Clinton. But he started with a self-published student magazine at sixteen and had no real reason to have access to anyone. Yet he is now a global force to be reckoned with. This kind of access doesn’t come from nowhere.
Our first book deal came because we had a platform and a built-in audience. This book is the result of that one and the fact that it hit the New York Times best-seller list. That book led to access. If you read the blurbs on the back, there are some of the “usual suspects” of business and marketing books, but there’s also the former CEO of General Motors, Fritz Henderson. That came from building a platform and using it to obtain access.
Access with Purpose
It’s important to note that when we gain access to influential people, we never come with an “ask” in mind. Instead, we aim to serve and be helpful. When Chris approached Sir Richard Branson, it was with the goal of landing a cover story for a major magazine in support of Branson’s new book. That this also satisfied Chris’s dream of connecting with a legend was secondary to the service provided.
In almost every case, the purpose of our outreach to someone influential has been first and foremost to help them. The side benefit is the social proof that clearly we have something of value to offer, because we are afforded time by people of standing.
But again, let us stress: It’s important that you connect with people to serve them first. This delivers the best value and impact for everyone involved. Coming to someone with your hand out for help is always far less attractive than creating something of value for the person you’re hoping to connect with.
Leverage Your Platform
As you develop your media platform and build a way to communicate to more and more people (or to the right people), use it to attract people who have something to share. Everyone in the universe is seeking more attention for his or her project or cause and aching to tell even more people about it. Sure, sometimes people are so oversaturated with requests for their time that they have to pick and choose their media venues. Do what you can to make yours seem like the best possible place for the job.
The most common way to achieve this is to publish interviews to your blog or Web site. One challenge, however, is learning to do an interview that shows off the guest in his or her best light and is of value to your community. It’s very important to practice.
One quick side note or homework assignment about this advice. The best way to learn how to interview better is to experience the work of great interviewers. Look at how Larry King did what he did. See how David Letterman does it. Observe Tom Chiarella’s great interviews in print. Learn by dissecting the questions others have asked and seeing how you could adapt them for your own interests. Experiment and be willing to be bold. Oh, and a bonus piece of advice: Never start with “How did you get started?” It’s the sign of an amateur.
Use your “wins” to gain more access. Once you interview Bob Iger, Tony Robbins, and Sir Richard Branson, doors open to others. Where do you start? Reach as high as you can, and start there. (Again, always do this in service of the other person before your own goals and needs. This can get really scammy and social-ladder-climbing really quickly otherwise.)
Let’s talk about what this Exposure can do for you and those you help along the way.
About TED
Okay, no discussion of platform would be complete without at least a little examination of what has become perhaps one of the most famous platforms on the Web today, that is to say, the TED conference.
TED, for most, needs no introduction. It is a world-class event attended by U.S. presidents, billionaire CEOs, as well as some of the most insightful and inspirational artists and scientists of our time (not to mention at least one of the authors of this book, who managed to sneak in somehow). Occurring once a year, in Long Beach, California, it has also spawned a number of side events, such as TEDGlobal and TEDAfrica, not to mention the hundreds of independently organized events, branded TEDx, that have been launched by universities and communities around the globe. Since its first event in 1984, TED has truly become a global brand that represents both exce
llence in idea design and collective purpose.
But there is more to it than that, at least the way we think of it. Though TED is an event that has reached millions of viewers and touched many people, it is also the perfect example of platform because the organizers themselves do not generate the presentations at all but simply borrow and curate them. This is an important distinction, because it means that they can focus on the platform, and only the platform, ensuring it is among the best in the world.
There is something at work here that is worth dissecting. While it’s true that most conferences do not design presentations, other events have not come close to representing what TED does. TED’s motto is “ideas worth spreading,” yet TED itself does not create these ideas; it simply recognizes them and gives them a platform from which to be heard.
All the best platforms are like this: the Huffington Post, the best-known global magazines, and more. They are aggregators. They focus on what they do best—obtaining Reach and, through Reach, increasing Exposure—while letting another team address the very thing that makes TED great: world-class content.
Yet the two cannot be separated. Without great content, the platform is useless and becomes barren and abandoned. Without the platform, the great idea is invisible and unheard amid the cacophony of the idea marketplace.
What can we learn from TED about platform? Some of the conference’s characteristics are surely coincidental and need not be emulated, but others are in fact critical to the platform’s success, and we need to separate the former from the latter to ensure that we derive the right lessons. Here’s how we see it. See if you agree with our conclusions.
A great platform means great access. If you develop a powerful platform, it becomes a brand in its own right. People become enamored of the brand and will be happy to participate based on the brand’s positive connotations (see Echo in chapter 7). We saw this happen a few years ago with the Huffington Post—a quality that has since diminished because it feels like anyone can write there.
A great platform is exclusive. This is also part of access, because exclusivity by definition keeps the people on the inside feeling like they are having a unique experience. Another event, Summit Series, has developed a reputation for accepting only twenty-five-year-old millionaires as its attendees and speakers. This isn’t true (at all), but the image does make people feel curious enough to want to see for themselves. And if you were accepted to this event, or invited to speak at it, you have to admit a part of you couldn’t help but feel pleased.
A good platform should make you feel privileged to be involved, and this usually has to do with its attendees. Curating the experience means bringing in the right people, which, strangely enough, also restricts the Reach you can grow through it…at least at the beginning.
A great platform produces almost exclusively great content. If your content isn’t excellent, your brand will not be either. TechCrunch, which sold to AOL last year for about forty million, was the exclusive, go-to source for all tech news and gossip. Because of its network, anything that happened in technology was published there first, helping keep exclusivity as well.
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The best platforms are also like a rap supergroup. They enable the audience and fans of each individual to come together and appreciate the whole. If Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas comes together with Jennifer Lopez and Mick Jagger (as they did for “T.H.E.” in December 2011), then the Mick Jagger fans become more aware of Jennifer Lopez and Will.i.am, and likewise across all members of the group.
Seth Godin did this after his book Purple Cow was released with a follow-up called The Big Moo. Collaborating with a group of authors including Malcolm Gladwell, Mark Cuban, Tom Peters, and more (together the “Group of 33”), Godin created a collaborative work that draws upon the prestige and audience of each in order to help carry all of them to a larger set of eyeballs.
We could learn a lot from TED, the Group of 33, even Jay-Z and Kanye West. They understand audience building in a way that seems to be lacking on the Web, where most channels are created by individuals and stay with them, and where the stars stand alone in their platform-building attempts. We need to see that piggybacking off other channels is naturally the most efficient way of working your way upward and that when at the top, we need to carry the up-and-comers as well.
How to Do a Launch
Musicians, conferences, and book authors are also different because they understand the concept of the launch. They don’t publish every day; they publish once a month—or maybe even once a year—so they know they have to make a big splash and do it right.
Let’s face it: Launch days are important. Maybe you have a new book or product, or you’re changing the price of something old but interesting. You’re going to want a big splash, like a huge ad campaign used to make when you put it in the New York Times or Life magazine or whatever other thing used to be important.
Well, this is the twenty-first century. Now you don’t need those guys or any other major institution to give you a helping hand. Don’t get us wrong; they give a boost, of course. But they are by no means necessary to the successful spread of information. For that, you don’t need a huge newspaper, a television or radio station, or anything else. You just need a bunch of friends who have used the information in this book wisely.
Every single person who uses the tools we’ve written about here will be able to build a little bit of an audience that is slightly different from any other, no matter how similar the topic they both speak about. If your friend is writing about being a mom, and you are too, you will gather similar but distinct audiences based on your personalities, what you share, and how much work you put in. So you can use this magic to help any launch you end up doing. It doesn’t matter how small or massive it may be; this strategy can scale, so you can use it anywhere.
1. Do not focus on your audience; focus on other audiences. The reason for this is simple: Your audience is already sold on you, which is why they follow and pay attention to you. Every piece of content you create (hopefully) sells them further on who you are and what you do, so you don’t need to work that hard at convincing them. Instead, work on collecting allies.
You collect allies in a number of different ways, but the most important part is just to make friends. Attend lots of different events, local and not; if you go to them with guns blazing, it’s money well spent. Write guest posts for bloggers beforehand, or just e-mail someone to tell them you respect their work. Connect with people mercilessly and find a group whose ideas and messages resonate with what you’re trying to deliver. Make a list of them—a big one.
2. Always ask beforehand, not the day of the actual launch. Everyone is busy. Even if you have built something that people care about in a big way, their own lives will always take center stage. So work with people up to a month in advance in order to push something on a predetermined day. Ask them if they’d like quotes, things to tweet, or interviews. If it connects with their audience, be forward about that and tell them you think you have a match. You’d be surprised how often people agree. After all, bloggers are the new journalists—their business thrives off good content, and if you have some, it will be evident to them.
3. Create real incentive and/or scarcity. What are people buying on your launch day? Is it your ideas, your attention, or the ability to better serve their own clients or help their own families? Amplify this feeling if that’s the case by creating different incentives for those people who are in your or your neighbors’ audiences.
Chris did this amazingly well (that’s what Julien thinks, anyway) when he launched his book about Google+ in December 2011, not only selling the book itself and the knowledge it contained (a serious steal at around ten bucks) but also offering a free webinar about how to publish a book for those who bought on a certain day. This moved the book up the Amazon rankings spectacularly fast, even for someone with Chris’s high profile. He accomplished this by asking himself what his audience really valued besides the obvious soci
al-media advice and realizing that much of his audience was also interested in book publishing. (Seriously, it’s becoming all the rage. Everyone is doing it.) So this “extra,” a simple add-on for Chris that was easy to make, was really valuable to his audience and pushed many of them off the fence and into buying territory.
4. The quality of your work must be consistently excellent. The best advertisement for your launch is the set of customers who have already bought from you and talked about it.
REACH: HOW TO RATE YOURSELF
Reach is perhaps the easiest of the attributes to measure. It’s easy to compare, for example, how many subscribers, Twitter followers, Facebook fans, or whatever else you have against someone else. At the same time, it’s very easy to get discouraged by looking at others’ Reach. You see one guy in our industry with a huge audience, and you’re not doing not so well. But all is not lost.
There are tons of factors that accelerate Reach, but one of the things we tend not to consider is how long a certain channel has been in place. So we take that into account before we get depressed about how few people we can reach.
For example, we could look at the Web site ZenHabits.net, run by our friend Leo Babauta, and compare it to another minimalist blog, TheMinimalists.com, run by our buddies Josh Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus. In absolute numbers, Zen Habits is winning with its 250,000 subscribers. It’s also been around since January 2007 and has, by far, the most readers of any blog of its type. By contrast, The Minimalists has been around only sixteen months and has 12,000 readers. In absolute numbers, this is a daunting gap, and yet looking at how long each has been around shows a whole other game. Yet another method of checking this would be to see how many subscribers each blog has per post. There are different ways of comparing two channels.
