When the World's Attention Turns to Your Expertise

As the news traveled around the world that protesters were blocking traffic in Bangkok, Barrow realized this was a perfect opportunity to report the real situation in the country. He would act as eyes and ears on the ground for travelers, expats, and the media. Barrow broadcast in real time on an hourly basis as the situation evolved.

One of the most important news stories in the world was exactly in Barrow's area of expertise! And he took advantage of the situation, being agile, getting information firsthand, and reporting to his customers and the public. Being at the center of an important story meant that he had a huge opportunity to significantly boost his personal brand.

“I started tweeting back in February 2010 when there were protests in Bangkok,” Barrow told me. “I had just bought my first smartphone, and one of my first tweets was about a protest march into Bangkok. I tweeted pictures and live updates about this march and its effect on the traffic.” Over the days, weeks, and months that followed, Barrow visited the rally sites and did live updates from each area. At this time, Twitter was an important information source for expats and tourists. Most of the news coming out of Bangkok was mainly in Thai. So, besides his own eyewitness accounts, Barrow also translated updates from the Thai media. This was when he first started to get a large following.

As the news of the latest protests was unfolding and I was considering my journey to Bangkok, I knew that mainstream news about the protests would be distorted in several ways. It's often the case when a political situation is developing that local news accounts translated into English reflect either a pro-government or a pro-protester bias. The international media often focus on the worst aspects during such events, so I was wary of sensational or distorted media reports. I was also aware that many stories in the international press were not firsthand reports, so they couldn't really be trusted.

That's why Barrow was my primary source. He was in the city, and he understood travel. He created a real-time Bangkok Protests Map that kept tourists informed about the areas to avoid. It was also referenced in many international media stories. Even the local Bangkok Post pointed to it.

“The new protests are a bit different,” Barrow said at the time of my trip. “The protests have been taking place simultaneously at multiple locations around Bangkok. In addition, they were mobile. Many more Thai media people are on Twitter these days, so I was able to set up a digital office. I collected all the various reports, decided which were reliable, translated the best into English, and then sent them out to my followers. I also received many live reports from citizen journalists (expats and tourists), which I then redistributed to my followers. Every now and then, I would also visit the rally sites on my bicycle to compose live Twitter updates.”

What fascinated me about this story was how anybody could suddenly become situated at the absolute center of the world's attention. It's like a mega version of newsjacking except you've already got a following for that particular expertise. It is a perfect opportunity to greatly expand your influence—if you're quick and willing to work hard.

Barrow armed himself with technology to report in real time. He even used a small drone aircraft, which he brought with him to rally sites on his bike, to get aerial shots of protests.

“Technology has improved a lot compared to the 2010 protests,” Barrow told me. “Battery life was the main problem back then. Now we have battery packs that keep us going for several days. This time I also have a DSLR camera with WiFi, so I can zoom in easily and have the pictures uploaded live to Twitter. And with the availability of 3G, we can upload pictures and video to social media far more easily. But, at some of the main rally sites, so many protesters are uploading selfies to Facebook that the network can occasionally slow to a crawl. When I send my remote quadcopter above the streets, I get images that provide good crowd estimates, and the pictures can be sent live on social media. All of my new equipment fits into my backpack, and I can still be mobile and cycle between protest sites.”

Barrow's updates have captured the attention of the world's media. Reporters around the globe, including CNN, The Telegraph, the Huffington Post, the New York Times, and many others, follow him and use his updates in their stories.

“Twitter has been invaluable for Bangkok's expats and tourists. It provides access to instant updates on the situation from people around the city,” Barrow said. “We no longer have to rely on the traditional news media to tell us what is going on. We are organizing it ourselves now.”

Barrow's fantastic coverage, and the Spark Conference organizers' assurances that it was safe, removed any worries I might have had about walking to my hotel. I reached the security checkpoint and thanked the guard as he examined my bags and let me pass.

I could have canceled the trip. I could have stayed home. I could have disappointed the thousand attendees of the Spark Conference by not showing up. I could have let fear control me. But Barrow and social networking got me to Bangkok.

Sooner or later the world will be interested in your area of expertise.

If you're agile like Barrow, you can become the global source about what's really happening. And that means for years to come you'll be seen as trustworthy and reliable, just as Barrow is viewed as an authority about what's really happening in the streets of Bangkok and elsewhere in Thailand. It will be a huge part of your personal brand.

Barrow succeeded because he was already social. He had experience blogging, was on Twitter, and had posted videos. And because he jumped at an opportunity that presented itself, he delivered incredibly valuable information to customers who already relied on his travel advice about Thailand.

You can do the same in your marketplace. By becoming active on social networks, you will be more successful. If you're an entrepreneur, you need to be social. If you're a sales representative, you need to be social. If you work in a customer services position, you need to be social. If you run a company, you need to make certain that your employees become social.

In this chapter, we'll look at some other people who have found personal success through social networks, and I'll share what you need to do to follow in their path.

Getting Social

Earlier in this book, I shared stories about organizations around the world that have built businesses by focusing on agile sales and real-time customer service. So far, we've mainly focused on the businesses—how American Airlines and Vodafone Egypt service customers through social networks like Facebook and Twitter, or how agile sales strategies drive success at Quark Expeditions and Basement Systems.

Now it's time to turn to you.

To make the new rules of sales and service part of your world, you must change your mind-set. You'll need to understand your buyers, rather than just talking about your products and services. You'll need to be aware of what's going on in the real-time news and on social networks. You'll need to create content and publish it on the web, and sometimes you'll need to do it urgently to be successful. On social networks, two-way communication is required, not just the typical broadcast approach that most people are used to. These habits and techniques do not come naturally to entrepreneurs, salespeople, or customer service representatives steeped in more traditional ways.

I've talked with people all over the world who are struggling to adapt to these new rules. The process often starts when someone realizes how severely the conventional old methods can handicap their business and career. But since you've read this far in the book, you know that already.

Sometimes people tell me they fear being overwhelmed. There is just too much involved with all this social stuff, too many new and unfamiliar ideas. But here's the good news: You can adapt to the new rules gradually. I don't expect you to stop doing what you've been doing for a decade and do only new things. No, rather you can implement these ideas in bits and pieces! You can focus on Twitter first, perhaps, and then turn to creating videos and posting them to YouTube.

Once you start to develop your personal brand on social media, you're taking the first step toward building an asset that can help you for the rest of your life. Really! In this chapter I'll introduce you to people like Summer Land, who got a book deal because of her personal brand, and Smit Patel, whose social media participation scored him an internship in Silicon Valley. If you build your social media presence now, you'll have an advantage the next time you need to do a job search or when you're ready to start a new business.

Why Social Networking Is Like Exercise

The second most common question I get asked at my talks is: “How do you find the time to do all this social networking stuff?” People want to know how to find the time to blog, tweet, produce videos, and create valuable online content. (The number one question I get during Q&A is: “What is the return on investment [ROI] of social networking?” But that's another story.)

I've found that finding the time to participate in social media is much like exercise; you need to make it an important part of your life. If it is important to you, you don't even think about it anymore. It just is.

You have a choice. You can choose to exercise regularly in order to stay fit. The most effective way is when exercise becomes part of your routine. Some people like fitness clubs. Others enjoy running outdoors or dancing or kickboxing. But in all cases, success comes from making it an important part of your daily life.

I like to mix it up. Some days I practice yoga, and other days I lift weights. I also do good old push-ups, pull-ups, and sit-ups. Once a week I swim a mile and a half. I always get up early, around 4:00 most mornings, and do much of my training in the family room while watching recordings of the late-night television shows from the evening before. I don't even think about finding the time, because it's a very important part of my life.

The situation is no different with participating in social networks and creating online content—it becomes part of your life. In my case, I do about 100 blog posts a year and maybe 20 videos. I comment on hundreds of blogs. Most years I write a free e-book. And I'm on forums, chat rooms, Instagram, Foursquare, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and others.

Many people are surprised when I say that I probably spend about six hours a week on social media—about the same amount of time I spend exercising. I don't even think about it. It's important, so I do it. And I can't really say how I fit it in. It's mainly in microbursts of one or five minutes throughout the day.

I recommend that you don't even try to find the time to create content and participate in social media. You'll fail, just like trying to find the time to exercise leads to failure and wasted money on health club memberships.

Instead, make exercise and social media important parts of your life. If you still cannot fit exercise and social media into your life, cut out television completely. You will be amazed at how much time you will free up!

People You Know

Why even bother with your personal brand? Some people tell me they just don't want to get active on social networks. Even after I tell stories like those found in this book, they're still skeptical about whether a blog, YouTube channel, LinkedIn profile, or Twitter feed can help them.

You need a presence on social networks because we all prefer to do business with people we know. When somebody can instantly find out a little about you on a social network or perhaps read your thoughts in a blog post you wrote, then you're not a complete stranger.

If you have great content, people will find you and interact with you. And this will drive familiarity. As people do their research, they will find others with expertise in the subject they are interested in—much as I did when I was planning my visit to Bangkok. You develop a virtual relationship with those who deliver valuable information—just like Richard Barrow does for those visiting Thailand. That relationship means you're already on the road to making a sale, getting a job, starting a business, or helping a customer succeed.

You're Already Online

Go to your favorite search engine and enter your name together with the name of your current employer. If you've recently left your job, Google your name and that of your most recent employer. If you're a student, then try it with your name and the name of your school.

This is what many people do to learn more about you. Employers Google people who apply for jobs. Buyers Google the salesperson they're assigned. If you're seeking funding for your start-up, there's no doubt that venture capitalists will Google you. Heck, many people study Google results before agreeing to a first date!

Whatever comes up is your personal brand. If you're publishing great content online, then congratulations, because you've got a great personal brand! If you're publishing nothing, then you're leaving your personal brand to others who create content about you (like that arrest record from a wild night when you were in college). And if you're publishing lousy information on the web, then you're creating a lousy personal brand.

No matter what business you're in or what job function you have, you need to take control of your personal brand by jumping into social media.

The Sharing More Than Selling Rule

When I speak with people at conferences, they most frequently ask me exactly how to use social networking feeds such as Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook to communicate effectively as a sales tool. While most people recognize that social networks are a great place to share content, to interact with others, and to listen in on what's happening, they also sense that social networks can be a way to get the word out about themselves and their businesses as well.

While there is no right or wrong when it comes to content creation and sharing (as you've learned throughout this book), as I review people's business-related social streams I find way too much selling going on. Too many companies are shouting into the social world.

Therefore, I suggest a guideline may be helpful as a way to think about how you can use the various social networks to educate and inform, and yes, also to sell. I'd suggest you should be doing 85 percent sharing and engaging, 10 percent publishing original content, and only 5 percent or less about what you are trying to promote.

Building a Fan Base One Download at a Time

When the Electronic Dance Music (EDM) artist Pretty Lights dropped his new album A Color Map of the Sun in 2013, customers could purchase it from online downloading services, web retailers, or record outlets. But another way to get it cost nothing: He gave it away free at his site.

Here's what Pretty Lights said that morning. “A Color Map of the Sun has now officially been released! If you can, I encourage you to purchase a copy of the album digitally in iTunes or physically through Pretty Lights at prettylightsmusic.com, or at a local record store, or download it at no cost below. Thank you to everyone who has supported PL by purchasing a copy of this record. I hope it is enjoyed!!! To see how this unique album was created, watch 'The Making of' documentary.”

So why make it available for nothing? To gain exposure and build a fan base, of course! If I recommended it, you probably wouldn't go out and buy the album. If you heard a track in a dance club, you probably wouldn't buy the album. But you just might take a chance to download it for free and give it a listen. (And you should.)

And then maybe, like me, you'd end up buying a ticket to one of his live shows. I caught Pretty Lights in Baltimore, and it was a fun show with excellent music, interesting people, and a great light show.

And then maybe you'd become a fan and talk Pretty Lights up on social media like I did.

All because of a free download.

But it's not just EDM artists who can use this technique to generate attention. You can too. And you can achieve your goals as a result. Now we'll take a closer look at how you can enhance your own online presence.

Don't Hide in the Shadows

I'm amazed when someone writes a terrific blog, has a great Twitter feed, or has a wonderful presence on a social networking site, but fails to effectively say who they are. Don't they want to stand out from the crowd? Your blog's “about” page, your Twitter bio, your LinkedIn profile, and the other places you interact are great opportunities to say who you are. This is an essential element of personal branding. Don't ignore the opportunity to tell the world about yourself.

As a way to introduce this important concept, let's turn our attention to your Twitter profile. While each social network is different, the concepts of personal branding are similar and can be carried over from one network to another.

Most Twitter profiles don't say enough, and most have lousy design. While that's fine if you're just communicating with friends, if you're using your Twitter feed for your business, you need to pay attention. When you first set up your Twitter account, you have choices. And after you've set up the account, you can make these changes to any aspect of your profile at any time (except your Twitter ID—that's fixed, so be careful what you choose).

1. Twitter ID: (Mine is @dmscott.) Choose an appropriate ID. Try to have a Twitter ID that resembles your name so when people see you pop up in their feed they know who you are. Because there are hundreds of millions of people on Twitter, you are unlikely to get your first choice (or second or third for that matter), so you might need to add a number to the letters. Try to avoid cute Twitter IDs, like @KittyCatGurl21, or those referencing your hobbies, such as @SurferDude246, unless your hobby is also your business.
2. Name: (Mine is David Meerman Scott.) Use your real name. Don't just default to your user ID, which so many people seem to do. And don't just use a nickname like Pookie. You can put your nickname in quotation marks inside your real name if you want to. If you really care about your personal brand, you'll want people to know who you really are.
3. Location: (Mine is Boston, MA.) Use the town or nearest city that makes sense for you. While I actually live in one of the Boston suburbs, my business is global so I use Boston as my location. Saying something cute like “Earth” or “somewhere in Canada” turns people off who don't know you. Besides, the location is a good way to make local contacts.
4. Web: (My URL is www.davidmeermanscott.com.) If you have a blog or site, put the URL here. Or maybe your profile on a company website makes sense for you. This should be somewhere people can go to learn more about you. If you don't have a blog or site, I recommend that you create a public Google profile (profiles.google.com) with your contact information, and link to that. You can also leave the web link blank if you want, but that says to people that you don't want to be contacted or have people learn more about you.
5. Bio: As I write this, mine is “Marketing & Sales Strategist, keynote speaker, and bestselling author of 9 books including The New Rules of Marketing & PR and Newsjacking.” This is where you say something about yourself. You get only 160 characters. As a component of personal branding, this is a critical section. Don't leave it blank. And don't make a mini-resume from a laundry list of attributes like this: “father, husband, surfer, economics major, world traveler, marketer, and rock star wannabe.” (I confess, that would be my list.) I see this sort of thing all the time, and it is not good for personal branding because you don't really focus on your particular expertise. Try to be descriptive. And try to be specific.
6. Background image: Twitter provides an opportunity to add a background image to your Twitter page. The default background is much like PowerPoint when it is first opened—it's a default. Twitter has some choices, but many people use them, so you will not be unique. Shoot a custom photo to really shine. I use a close-up image of a nifty old typewriter keyboard. It's my personal brand on Twitter.
7. Header image: Your personal brand on Twitter can also include a header photo for your profile, which serves as a background for your bio. A header photo is a great way to show your personal brand, but don't try to sell. Many salespeople add an advertising message to this real estate, but I think that's a mistake and recommend resisting this tendency. Adding your messages or heavy-handed branding detracts. Sure, I could have used an image of, say, all my book covers for my banner. Instead I chose an image I really like of me onstage at a speaking gig. Your header photo will show up on your Twitter web page as well as on mobile devices.
8. Make it public: If you are using Twitter for your business, it's important to not protect your tweets. When you sign up for Twitter, you have the option to keep your tweets public (the default account setting, which is what I recommend) or to protect your tweets. Accounts with protected tweets require manual approval of each and every person who may view the account's tweets—not a good idea if you want to promote your personal brand.

These choices are really easy to set up, but they're very important for your personal brand. If you are on Twitter, take the time to make some changes today.

The same ideas apply on other social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, so don't forget to consider carefully your personal branding on those sites as well.

You Are Not a Cat

If you care about your personal brand, you should use a representative photo of you on social networks. If you don't upload a photo, you'll just be assigned the default by the social network, which makes it appear as if you are hiding. The default on LinkedIn is a creepy sort of shadow image of a person, and the default on Twitter is the image of an egg. The photo you choose to represent you says a great deal about who you are as an individual. (Are you an egg?)

Some people use a cartoon avatar to represent themselves. While that's okay for some, I do think it communicates that the person doesn't like his or her real self for some reason. I definitely urge you to avoid using stand-ins for your photo. I don't think you should use your company logo instead of your photo on your personal social networks. I also suggest that you avoid the random images that many people seem to favor. You know, things like their cat. Or Bart Simpson. Or a snowboard. If you use these sorts of images rather than your photo, you're limiting what you want people to think of you.

Photos appear very tiny on many social networks—like a postage stamp—so use a close-up. If you use a full view of yourself, then you will appear like a stick figure. Remember that your photo conveys a very important first impression when people see your profile for the first time.

There are many choices when it comes to a photo to use. You can use a casual shot taken by a friend. This is a great option for many people. But there are many different approaches, and each says something important about you. Are you in a casual setting, such as at a restaurant? Or someplace more formal, like an office? What are you wearing? A hat? Is it a casual shot of you taken on a vacation with a beer in your hand? Or a formal head-and-shoulders shot in business attire taken by a professional photographer? Smile, or no smile? How close do you crop?

While there is no absolute right or wrong about photos in social media, do keep in mind that each of these choices says a great deal about you.

Building a Following

I have more than 120,000 Twitter followers, and many people ask me the secret to building such a following.

To reach more than 100,000 followers, you need to do 10,000 things to improve your personal brand, and each of the small things you do, on average, needs to gain you a dozen or so new followers. (Unless you are someone who is already famous like Howard Stern. He had 200,000 followers a few weeks after he jumped on Twitter. He now has 1.65 million followers.)

I started my @dmscott Twitter feed with zero followers in early 2008. When I started, I was a newbie just like everyone else. But slowly I added a few followers here and a few followers there. I'd notice that when I tweeted something that was shared widely, I got a bunch of new followers. When I deliver a talk at a live event, I put my Twitter ID on all my slides and I always get new followers. But each time it's only a few new people. Getting a large following just takes time.

Here is what I've done to drive followers since I joined Twitter in March 2008:

• Sent 15,268 tweets
• Written 835 blog posts
• Published six books
• Released seven free e-books
• Delivered 336 in-person talks in 31 different countries and on all seven continents
• Spoken on (wild guess) 120 webinars
• Been a guest on (another guess) 500 podcasts and radio shows
• Sat for something like 300 interviews with print and broadcast media
• Been in roughly 325 videos uploaded to my YouTube channel, my Vimeo channel, and other people's channels
• Hung out at (probably) 50 tweetups and other informal gatherings
• Engaged thousands of people via social networks, email, telephone, over coffee, and while sharing a pint of beer
• Gotten retweeted by Howard Stern once!
• Asked President Obama a question on a Twitter chat once which he answered live on television!
• Interviewed the CEO of General Motors once!
• Shared the stage with Cyndi Lauper once!
• Had a private dinner with President Fernandez of the Dominican Republic in his palace to discuss social media once!
• Appeared on MSNBC to discuss my favorite band, the Grateful Dead, once!

I say these things not to brag, but rather to point out that a strong social following takes time to develop.

But once you do have followers, be it 100 or 100,000, you have an enormously important asset that will help you in your career and in your business.

Tweeting Yourself into a Job

Smit Patel, a student at Suffolk University double majoring in information systems and marketing, has accomplished more before he can legally drink in his home state of Massachusetts than most businesspeople do in a decade. Patel has relied on social networking to land prestigious internships at companies in Silicon Valley and in Boston. He's also the co-founder of SayHelloThere, an online tool to create video resumes, and was named a “Boston student entrepreneur to keep your eye on” by BostInno.

“Most of my peers and my friends don't have an online presence,” Patel says. “A few use Twitter, but they're just tweeting personal stuff. They rely on either their school's career center or family connections to get internships, and most of them tell me how much they hate being an intern since they learn very little information except the location of the office copy machine. The most important thing they need is an online presence, but most don't have one.”

Using his @thesmitpatel Twitter feed, Patel actively interacts with people who interest him. “I tweet a lot about marketing start-ups,” he says. “Currently, I'm interested in ‘inbound Me generation’ customer acquisitions, so I engage with a lot of people and brands to see what I can learn from them. I follow influencers in the fields of marketing and start-ups. When reaching out to them I say, ‘Hey, I follow you on Twitter’ or ‘We just had a Twitter conversation last week, so I just thought I'd email you.’”

When people discover they are mentioned in a tweet written by someone they don't know, most will check out the author's Twitter profile and scan a few recent tweets to learn a little about this person. With Twitter's limit of only 160 characters for a bio (plus location and website link), brevity is required.

Patel's Twitter bio reads: “Co-Founder @sayhellothere—the easiest way to create video resumes. Believe in the power of marketing, hustle and millennials. And, I love onions. Boston. smitpatel.com.” Many people also check out the number of Twitter followers someone has; Patel has more than 2,000 followers, a very respectable number for anyone, let alone a university student. His powerful personal brand on Twitter and other social networks means that the people he tweets pay attention.

Not long ago Patel decided he wanted to intern at a company in Silicon Valley during the summer. Rather than plastering companies with CVs like everybody else, he simply used his established social network. “The founder of Flightfox, a company I worked for during the summer of 2012, referred me to the founder of ScriptRock,” Patel says. “They checked out my blog and my online presence, and then they reached out to me to say that they wanted me to intern at their company. I went out to Silicon Valley in the summer of 2013 to work there.”

Patel says he learned about personal branding and social networks on his own because there was nothing at the school career center or in his classes to prepare him. “I'm taking a couple of marketing classes and haven't learned anything about this,” he says. “Kids my age are paying a lot of money for a university education and they're not learning the things that will get them hired.”

It's not just university students looking for a plum internship who can make use of an excellent personal brand on the social networks. Entrepreneurs, business owners, salespeople, and customer service representatives all need to pay attention to how the world sees them.

Inbound Job Search

I've been fired three times during my career and I'm damn proud of it. The most recent time I lost my job was in 2002 because the company was acquired and my new bosses decided that I didn't have a future in the combined organization.

So what did I do when I was out on the street? I did what everybody does when faced with such a situation—I updated my CV. I put all the stuff that I thought was important into a Microsoft Word document and I sent it around to people I knew. I was doing outbound marketing to try to find a job in 2002 and it was brutal. I had to interrupt my friends. I had to interrupt my parents' friends. I had to interrupt my friends' friends and say, “I'm looking for a job, so please look at my resume and send it to anybody who you think might be interested in me.”

Fortunately, back in 2002 instead of finding a traditional job, I became an independent marketing and sales strategist and since then have had a blast. I feel like I've never worked a day since 2002.

Fast forward to today. I see people doing the exact same thing I was doing in 2002; however, they are looking for jobs mostly using social networks, especially LinkedIn. People I haven't spoken with for a really long time finally reach out to me on LinkedIn and want to connect. I reply, “Cool, haven't heard from you in ages. What's going on?” and when they say, “I'm looking for a job,” I think, “Gee, why didn't you reach out to me a really long time ago?” LinkedIn and email are great tools, but the way most people use them to find a job is all about interruption. They contact people when they want something rather than when they have something.

If you're looking for a new job, create information that people want. Create an online presence that people are eager to consume. Establish a virtual front door that people will happily link to—one that employers will find. The new rules of finding a job require you to share your knowledge and expertise with a world that is looking for what you have to offer.

There is such a huge opportunity. Instead of just going social when you need something, you should already be publishing really great content, whether it's blog posts or YouTube videos or tweets. If you get it out there and show us who you are, people will be eager to hire you! Hiring managers will find you when they are looking for somebody with your skills and expertise. If you do find yourself on the job market, you're already networking with people, so all you need to do is say you're looking for a new gig and send links to your blog or Twitter feed. These will show that you're doing interesting things and would be valuable for an organization to hire. If you decide to go out on your own and start your own company, your social network will serve as your calling card for anybody that you're trying to reach.

Achieving Your Dreams

Having a strong presence in social media helps in all kinds of ways, not just finding a new job. Your personal brand is one of your most valuable assets and can help you sell anything.

I met Summer Land at a speaking gig in Australia. She's a writer who wanted a major publisher to take on her memoir, and she sought out my advice. I've heard this request before—hundreds of times. Many people want to know how to get published, and, because I've written 10 of my own books and have produced seven others, they quiz me about what it takes.

My first hardcover book was self-published. Obviously there are many routes to publish your work, and working with a major publisher is not the only way. You can self-publish in either the printed book or the e-book format, or you can go with a small publisher, a university press, or a major international publisher. I've published using all of these routes. Clearly there are many ways to get your work into the marketplace.

Since Land wanted a major publishing house to release her memoir, I gave her the steps to get a book deal. While many people want to talk about it, very few people want to know the difficult truth of what it takes to get a book contract: hard work. Very few people are also willing to make the effort. I estimate less than 1 percent of the people I speak to about this are willing to do the hard work required to get published by a well-known publisher.

Here is a greatly simplified version of the four steps required, which I shared with Land.

I must already assume you can write and are a good storyteller.

1. You must publish yourself first. Unless you are already famous and want to write your memoirs—being an ex-president of the United States wouldn't be bad—no publisher will take you on. You need to publish your work yourself in a blog or an e-book that you give away so you can introduce people to your work.
2. You have to build an audience. You need to get your stuff out there and get people interested. Your platform might be through social networking, blogs, or traditional ways such as appearing on television. This takes a lot of hard work.
3. You get your fans to help you. You create content that's worthy of being shared. You figure out clever ways to get your fans to spread the word for you.
4. Then you take your success to publishers. Believe me, if you've built an audience of people who love your work and share it and you can show that success, publishers will be eager to work with you and to cut a book deal.

Lisa Genova followed this route. She used social media to turn Still Alice, a book she published herself, into a deal for just over half a million dollars with Simon & Schuster. She made that edition into a New York Times bestseller and Still Alice was made into a film for which Julianne Moore won the Academy Award for best actress and Genova joined her on the red carpet, all through social networking.

I got my first book deal with John Wiley & Sons because I wrote a free e-book that I published on my blog. The New Rules of PR had 50,000 downloads in the first month.

I gave Land this advice and figured I'd never hear from her again. I was wrong. Land launched a site to support her writing efforts. It's well designed and showcases her nicely. She blogs regularly. She wrote a free e-book that she published on her site. She built momentum by creating a Facebook event to promote the e-book launch among her friends, which 1,124 people attended. Then she used social media to engage her readers and grow her audience of followers. And doing all this transformed her personal brand.

This led directly to a book deal from Hardie Grant Books, an Australian publisher. Just two years after giving Land my advice, I was reading her hardcover book, Summerlandish: Do as I Say, Not as I Did, a hilarious memoir of a 25-year-old “average American girl” growing up in Gainesville, Florida, the outspoken and outrageous child of an alternative single mom.

“Because I am incredibly impatient and like for things to happen overnight, I didn't want to send the standard query letter and wait,” Land says. “I decided to release an e-book to drum up a following and hopefully have publishers come to me. I gave it away for free, no email required.”

Land says that although a lot of people did download her e-book, she didn't gain thousands of Twitter followers or Facebook fans, and publishers weren't knocking down her door. “I did, however, gain a steady readership of my blog and I got a call from an agency in Los Angeles who were interested in the TV rights to my future book,” she says. “This was amazing, but I didn't want to lose sight of my first goal, which was to publish my book.”

Land attended the Sydney Writers' Festival. “At their event, ‘So You Think You Can Write,’ I decided to pitch my book to a panel of publishers who were there to provide constructive criticism,” she says. “When I pitched, I didn't just tell them what it was about. I explained who would buy it. I also told them about my download numbers. Luckily for me, they said really positive things!”

As soon as the event was over, she was approached by an editor from Hardie Grant. They went through the typical author–publisher dance, which resulted in a contract, and a year later the book on the shelves.

“It was important for me to remember what I ultimately wanted to achieve from my book,” Land says. “My main goal of writing my memoir, Summerlandish, was to make people laugh, and provoke the reaction, ‘Me too!’ I share stories from my life that are awkward, embarrassing, outlandish, and sometimes mortifying. However, I believe everyone can relate to it. No one escaped childhood unscathed, and I think we're all getting over our miserable high school years one glass of wine at a time. If this book can make someone laugh while on vacation or on their morning commute, I'll be forever happy. I think by exploring and articulating the things that most people are afraid to talk about, we will feel better about ourselves.”

Land's book certainly made me laugh. And it did something else as well. It contributed toward my own personal fulfillment. My work is largely motivated by a desire to help others achieve their dreams, even if only in a small way; it's one of the most rewarding aspects about what I do for a living. All I do is provide an idea, or a spark, or a little motivation to those who read my books or my blog, or hear me speak. Then those people do the hard work required to market and sell their business or their idea. When I learn that Land or someone else has achieved success as a result of something I suggested, it makes my day (or my week).

It's great that Land attended one of my talks in Sydney, Australia, a few years ago. It's terrific that she approached me to get some ideas about how to get her book in front of publishers. But more than most people, Land actually took the advice and made a success. She did the hard work. She achieved her dreams.

So can you. And your personal brand on the social networks is a critical component.

Manage Your Fear

As I travel the world evangelizing the ideas of real-time sales and service and how you can become more social to achieve your dreams, I hear from people that the biggest barrier is fear. Most people don't actually admit to me that they are fearful of embarking on this new path, but I can tell based on what they choose to tell me as well as their body language when doing so. Frequently people make excuses about why they can't get social and go real time. But what's really at work is fear.

We all face fear in our professional and personal lives. Fear of the strange, of the new, of the untested. We fear bucking the trend and going against the accepted. It's a natural human response.

To truly achieve greatness in the form of personal fulfillment, you must act. That might mean you are a pioneer, a rebel, an instigator. You may need to challenge the status quo and make a difference in the world.

Yes, you might fail. You could even fail spectacularly.

But a fear of failure is not a reason to sit in front of the television all evening instead of working on that project that's burning away in your gut. You need to make a decision right now to engage in social networks and real-time communications. You need to commit to make it happen.

When you are reluctant, instead of not starting at all or quitting before you give it a chance, manage your fear. Analyze your hesitancy. Why are you fearful?

The Many Manifestations of Fear

• Fear of looking silly
• Fear that if you put yourself out there, acting on your dream, people will say negative things about you
• Fear that if you don't have an MBA or whatever degree is deemed important to the gatekeepers in your world, you don't have the qualification to act
• Fear that makes you sell your products and services in the way that you've always done (like cold calling)
• Fear that giving away your best content for free won't benefit you
• Fear that your competitors know more than you do, resulting in you copying their moves
• Fear that something won't work in your industry, or your geography, or your company, or with your customers

You need to develop a new mind-set. I've talked with people all over the world who are struggling. They tell me the road to success often starts with understanding just how severely conventional methods can handicap your business, your career, and your personal life.

What a World We Live In!

That device in your pocket? What was science fiction just a few years ago is science fact today!

How incredible that you can instantly create a video stream on a service like Periscope and reach thousands of interested people who pay attention to what you are broadcasting. At no cost!

Or you can have a two-way video conversation with a potential customer on the other side of the planet with a service like Skype. For free!

Your mobile device is much more powerful than what the creators of The Jetsons imagined.

Each of us has the ability to reach almost any human on the planet in real time. You can publish content—a blog post, video, infographic, photo—for free to reach potential customers who will be eager to do business with you.

Getting attention a few decades ago was hard work.

We're living in a time when we can reach the world directly. There is a tremendous opportunity right now to reach people by publishing great stuff that brands us as leaders. Now we can create videos, tell stories, interact with people, and develop interesting information that people want to consume and that they are eager to share with their friends, families, and colleagues.

There's a new world—are you part of it?

If not now, when?

Now is a terrific time to start. It is not too late. If you've got something to say, then say it.

What are you waiting for?

You are in charge of your own success.

Now it's your turn. You can do it. It doesn't matter what line of work you're in or what group of buyers you're trying to reach or what you want to accomplish.

If you're like many people I meet, you have colleagues or family members who will argue with you. They will say you're not up to it or your ideas won't work.

But you know they're wrong, because you've managed your fear. Go on. Get out there and make it happen!

Oh, and when you achieve a success similar to those I profile in this book, please let me know. I'm always looking for new examples to share!

Now that we've looked at a few people who have achieved success by getting social and I've shared my thoughts on how you can do the same, let's move on to how your entire organization can communicate in real time and participate in social media to grow business and keep customers happy.