How many times have you seen a “rock star” on a social media channel and pondered what did they do to get there? You could also be thinking. “What can I learn from what they are doing in my own idea creation?”
When I first got started in social media/digital marketing, people had already been blogging for a few years. They had already created “BlogWorld” in Las Vegas and those bloggers were “King of the Hill”. (Not the silly cartoon..the guy that gets to stand at the top and gets to randomly push off threatening rivals to his crown). They were early adopters who got in on the ground floor and were rocking it out. The rest of us were relegated to buying tickets and hearing them speak on panels and we would never get as popular as they were because they got there first. Period.
Then there were the people who rocked Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube before anyone else. They understood how to grow an audience by being authentic, or silly, or funny or just weird. You could not compete with these people. They got there first.
Now, there are new tools and channels that provide “newbies” with a shot at excellence, or at least notoriety. Periscope is growing and you don’t even need to understand social media to be popular. A friend of mine pointed out a policeman who is using Periscope mainly to respond to his followers questions and comments. As my friend Lance says, “He is a LA Cop, and school teacher, doesn’t say anything of particular value, but he interacts with his followers better than anybody I have seen using Periscope. He is quick to acknowledge so many followers, even quicker to block “losers” and just a cool guy. You look at his Twitter followers, Instagram following numbers – they are ok, but his Periscope followers 49,000 and over 2 million hearts – check him out @jewce22. His name is Alan”. The new King of the Hill, and he is not even trying to market anything.
Another new tool is the new “Linkedin-Slideshare” where you can upload your presentation slides on any subject and other people can now “clip” your slides and share them on a clipboard. The game here is to be the person people seek out in their field who has the “coolest clipboards”, much like Pinterest, but for the business and entrepreneur crowd. The more you scan other people’s work, and cultivate and curate, the more influential you can become. Or in keeping with the theme of this post, you don’t have to rule the roost, you can go in and get some really great ideas and information to use in your own line of work.
Being part of the “cool kids” is also about creating dynamic visuals. Again, once relegated to folks with a design team at the ready, it is now easy, free and fun to design your own blog graphics using Canva and infographics using Piktochart. I created an inforgraphic to promote my book, “How to Move to Kona” on Pinterest and it was amazing how quick and easy it was! (Maybe I can shoot for King status by making cool infographics..or not)
There are stars on every channel. You can have a million followers if you have an amazing Tumblr page, or you can be a DIY star like Lauren from Laur DIY, whom my daughter hangs on her every word and creates many of Lauren’s do-it-yourself projects. I have picked up some tips about marketing from Lauren by seeing how she has set up her Youtube channel page and encourages her followers to send her photos of their own work and she posts it to engage her fans. I took that idea and used it on my 365Kona Facebook page and received over 50 fan photos of Kona and I picked the top photos to use as my timeline photo to let fans know I was engaging with them.
Social media and digital marketing have allowed many creative and driven types to give the rest of us ideas and inspiration to share our stories, promote our clients, and get inspired to use old, new and up and coming channels in innovative and interesting ways. I have learned that you may not have gotten there first, and you may not be an expert at that ONE channel, but if you keep your eye open to see who is doing what in each realm, you can get a pretty good crown of your own.
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