Here’s one: before trying to build your audience, THINK about who your audience should be, figure out where THEY are, and then go find them. If you think it’s interesting to me, tell me. If you just think it’s interesting, that *might* be interesting to me, but it also might not.
Further, relationship-building comes from people getting to know you. It comes from you contributing to the communities you hope to join. Get to know me and understand what makes me happy before you try to push your stuff on me. Especially if it’s not really a fit.
And me=you, if you think about it. Right?
The tools are not the message. The people are the message. The tools are here to support you, to agument what you’re doing. Learn how to use them, and go forth.
You know what might be a great project? I think you would do better than me talking about a situation where you’ve used the tools to do something you’re passionate about, or to do something where you connected via social media.
Put a link to me or a reference to me or something, and I’ll read every blog post you write. Hell, my site’s still down. I might as well read YOURS.
My website is down. I have approximately 7000 tweets and direct messages and emails and SMS text messages to prove it. Thank you for your kindness.
But here’s what matters:
Friends came right to the rescue. I have seven or eight people all offering to jump in and help out. By the way, I’m taking one friend up on using his hosting company, and will shift my accounts to him.
For everything I do on the web, the most important part are the people. When people come up and ask me how to make millions, it’s kind of the hardest thing in the world to explain, because it’s not what I’m doing on my site, and it’s not what I’m doing with making media. It’s not the direct THING ; it’s the connection.
You know that, “It’s not what you know; it’s who you know” expression? It’s more true now than ever before.
MEET people. Connect. Share. Put your best work out there. Work the HELL out of making connections and find the people doing what you love, and who love what you’re doing. THIS is the payload. THIS is how I do what I do. And if you learned NOTHING from reading my site over the last bunch of years, know that the “secret sauce” of being Chris Brogan is that. Humans. People. Connections.
The tools are just tools.
Sorry you can’t comment. Tumblr doesn’t have it normally (not sure why). Weirdos, Tumblr.
Sorry for the delay, everyone. I’m having a problem with my hosting company right now. They tried to help me yesterday morning, and have not yet resolved my issue. I’ve been told several times that we’re oh so close to making it work. So, we’ll see.
In the mean time, here’s a placeholder.
Sorry. You’re very important to me.
