Are you creating evangelists for your brand?
What is all this social media and online marketing doing for you or your company?
You don’t have to participate in social media, but when it comes times to search for a job, sell your next product, find help with a difficult project, where will you turn? Personally, when I want a connection in a certain business, I find difficult to Google for something like that. It a lot easier to tweet that I need some help or to go on Linkedin and ask my network to connect me.
But, not just anyone can tweet for help or ask their Linkedin network and actually get a response. Someone in your network has to take the time to help you out, and who is most likely to help? A friend, right?
When I tweet with people, I’m building a relationship, giving them insights into my personality and learning about them, and helping us both to realize where we could benefit each other in the future. In many ways, I am creating friendships, but I am also creating evangelists for my own personal brand, people who take my message and share it with their networks.
My clients know they have brands. Brands are understood. What I always emphasize is that they need people to carry their messages beyond their own horizons. You can’t pay enough for a passionate messenger to take your brand to people they know will be interested and then to effectively introduce it and sell it.
On Twitter, retweets are one way I measure the effectiveness of that passion and evangelism I’m creating. On blogs, comments, tweetbacks, and unique visits are good measures of evangelism.
You can pay people to carry your message to new groups. You can’t pay people to care about it though. You have to interact. You have to share yourself and your company with your network. The better you are at it, the more evangelists you’ll have, the easier it will be to find solid connections in places you need them, and the sooner you’ll find that money won’t make you successful… interaction and people who care will.
Thoughts?
