Creative Destruction

If you throw your first blog post online tomorrow, don’t expect readers to just start commenting immediately. You need to put the time into creating compelling content and showing readers the conversations on your site are worth participating in.

If you want to begin to grow the profile of your blog by getting links from influential blogs in your niche, don’t just email one of your links to that site’s editor. Link out to them a few times. Email the editor and tell him or her that you appreciate their work. Start to build a relationship.

You don’t want your introduction to include an ask. If there is going to be an ask – and it’s okay if there is – it needs to come down the line once your intentions have been established as being not solely focused on yourself.

I had the opportunity to attend Chris Brogan's presentation for the Social Media Club of Dallas last week (thanks @denisefernandez!), and I have to say - it was quite eye opening. So often we get focused on ourselves, on furthering our interests, and doing what's best for us, which is totally ok - as humans we are naturally self interested.

However, as anyone in a career that requires you to sell something (and we all are), you have to build that relationship before you include the ask. I need to work on this immensely, both in my professional career and as a part of my personal brand. I forget that just throwing content out there is nothing - it's all about building that relationship with your sphere. Networking via the internet is just the same as networking in real life.

In the end, it all comes down to one of the biggest lessons I learned: People love to talk about themselves, so ask (from the timeless book How to Win Friends & Influence People).

I highly suggest looking up @ChrisBrogan. He's an incredibly authentic and genuine guy, and when it comes to marketing, preaches strategy, not tactics - and too many people today jump over the strategy and go straight into the tactics.