Who do you know that can help spread your message? Who believes in you? Who supports you?
Who are your raving fans? Who are the people that would be proud and honored to forward your message?
The Impact of Social Media
How do we create reach? A lot of people don’t realize that reach is something we can proactively pursue.
Reach comes down to two parts: Direct Reach and Indirect Reach.
Direct Reach — the people you can immediately access; the people who are immediately in your sphere of influence.
And there are two parts that make up your Direct Reach:
- Your Database: The people you can email, the people you can text, the ones you can call.
- Your Social Media: The new database if you will, the people you know in the modern working world.
And yet, these are two areas of business that many people completely undervalue. Is your database clean?
Even if you’re not in sales or marketing, you have a personal database, the people that are in your network. Decades ago, it was referred to as your Rolodex!
Do you have a way to communicate with all of the people who know you? That is your database.
And there are a lot of great ways to do that. A lot of great technology.
But it’s not about the technology, it’s about the discipline of keeping up with the database so that you can get a message out.
And then what about followers? This really frustrates me because a lot of people say, “Oh, I’m too old for that social media stuff,” or “I guess that social media stuff doesn’t really work,” or “Social media is a waste of time.”
Well, look! It is true that social media, like anything, can waste your time.
But never before in the history of the world have we had an opportunity to immediately access virtually the entire world for FREE from our fingertips.
This gives us the ability to expand our reach, to get our message out.
So here’s the question: Are you using it?
Are you taking advantage of social media, or are you sitting on the sidelines saying, “You know what, I don’t understand that tech stuff; it’s a waste of time.” And if that’s your decision, that’s fine. You’re obviously free to make your own decision, but I want you to be aware of the impact that it has on your reputation.
The opportunity cost of avoiding social media is substantial. It’s significant. It’s massive on a reputation of an individual, or for a company.
The Influence of Your Network
The second part of reach is Indirect Reach—it’s all about who you have access to that has access to a lot of people.
In other words, who do you know that has a lot of reach?
Indirect Reach is primarily made up of two components:
- Referral partners. People who are willing to refer you, to introduce you, to promote you. It’s about who you know that can help spread your message.
- Media. Traditional media, people who control outlets, and other people who have audiences. This is one of the greatest and most powerful advantages of living in today’s day and age — every person with a Facebook account, every person with an Instagram account, or a LinkedIn following, or a Twitter account — every person is a media channel.
Access Your Raving Fans
Who believes in you? Who supports you? Who are your raving fans?
Who are the people that would be proud and honored to forward your message?
Reputation is not just about what you have done.
Reputation is about having people that believe in you,
the people who will support you, who will be your fans,
the people who will stand up and carry a banner and say, “I believe what you do matters. I believe in this person or this company or this cause.”
That is how you build reputation–by having loyal, dedicated fans and followers because they not only trust in what you’re doing, they trust in who you are.
What can you do today to improve your reach? Please leave me a comment below.
