Impressions Do Matter!

Building a community for yourself or a business seems to follow certain patterns. I've started less than a month ago to do Social Media with this post http://bit.ly/J3wp5. Since then, I have 99 followers on my Facebook group, 112 followers on Twitter (no spam). My blog already received 185$ in donations without advertising. My blog was also mentioned as a "Successful and Outstanding Blog" by Liz Strauss. Looking at the situation, it's a beautiful start. Continuing needs some adjustments.

Here are my discoveries by observation:

Doing nothing takes you somewhere. Just by Twittering personal stuff and posting sometimes on Facebook, you'll have 1000 followers on Twitter in a year and about 200 on Facebook. The reality is that people naturally connect and belong to communities on Social Media sites. The big question is how can you increase these results and capitalize on human nature?

TIP #1:

It's not what you say, it's who you are. If you're famous, rich or have an important position, you'll get following. If you are @jack, Chairman of Twitter, you get 873,027 followers not by Tweeting on a friend's coffee place or your personal lunches. If you are a corporate brand, you'll have a hard time. Who wants to follow ads? Especially if they are not cool.

TIP #2:

Get "impressions" in the Real World. If you are not part of the first category, you can try this. @jeffpulver (30,302 followers), @lizstrauss (30,932 followers), @mitchjoel (9,382 followers), @chrisbrogan (83,904 followers), do participate in events. They speak and meet real people in the real world. Not every person in the real world Tweets, but behind every Tweeter there's a person from the real world. Each of these speakers use events to capitalize on this human factor. They use these opportunities in their own way to expose their Voice. If you are a corporate brand, use wisely your people on the ground (in stores and during events).

TIP #3:

Invest in the collective memory. If you are not famous, and you are not a speaker or do not have a network of stores, then try this: Share your thoughts with others by writing a book or a blog. Better do both. Make your thoughts permanent. Blogs and books are not as powerful as "Tip #1: Reputation" or as a "Tip #2: Personal contact", but they help to gain reputation and scalability. They create opportunities to expose yourself.

Bastien's Multiplication Table

Activity	Twitter	Factor
So after one year, if you do nothing	1,000 followers	1
If you Tweet actively and write a blog	5,000 followers	5
If you Tweet actively and write a book	10,000 followers	10
If you Tweet and write a blog and a book	20,000 followers	20
If you Tweet and write a blog and a book and do events	50,000 followers	50
If you are famous you can break the	100,000 followers	100+

Note 1: The quality of your writings may partially change these results :) 

Note 2: The methodology here was just to look at a few people I know and do an average

Note 3: Numbers are true on this July 6, 2009, 3:30pm while Twitter gives me the message "Twitter is over capacity. Too many tweets! Please wait a moment and try again." So numbers might change over time.

Important

This is my moment of glory: The Source matters more than the Message. I haven't heard that before, but it makes sense to me. I put that in the hard things to learn and accept in life! It doesn't matter that much WHAT you write. More important is WHO you are. This gives a new professional meaning for the word "impression". Readers have an impression before they read.

More Important

No need to mention that WHAT you write has an impact on your reputation and makes WHO you are in the eyes of the public. But this approach takes years to bring results. The fact is that WHO you are in private makes WHAT you write. If it doesn't, it will at term. So the more you expose yourself, the faster the "Private WHO you are" becomes the "Public WHO you are". The key of success becomes to impress by WHO you are more than by WHAT you say. Expose yourself and try to let the "Private WHO you are" impress the "Public WHO you are". This is another new professional meaning for the word "impression". Impress yourself!

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Comments

[Lydia]

I remain convinced that WHAT you write will define your public YOU. Your public YOU may grow faster with WHOM you know which brings us back to tip # 2: contacts in the real world. Maybe I’m old school, but seems to me that successful public YOUs work hard as hell to write WHAT they do write. I don't really care about metrics... I just read what interests me.