Reach Out, Connect, Be Careful and Other Worthless Advice

by Chris Johnson

Instigator, anthill kicker.

Author website

There roughly 50 days left this year, depending on when I get this post done.  About 14% of the year left.  And, really, truly, a lot of people take it down a notch after Halloween.  Or three notches.  Because the presumption is that nobody buys in the winter.

Look at the NAR monthly numbers: every year, December and January are only 8% off from August and September in the housing industry.  2008 is an outlier. Probably still time to do one of 2 things: crank 2 transactions out of this year or have an amazing January, or both.  But “shutting it down,” and waiting, and coming into the office in the role of listless mope in adult failure spiral.  If you are going to fail, stay home and don’t infect the office.

But that’s not really the point of this post.  The point comes from a tawlk with Bawld Guy I had last night.  He pointed out that a blog was well intentioned but had vague unactionable advice.  I see it too.  Because being told to “work harder, and be careful” is the sole substance of most of the Social Media, or Investing advice you see these days.   “Connect more, be authentic and transparent, and use common frolicking sense.”  And then wait and you’ll get to join the Twitterati.  Buncha crap.

That’s the rub, nobody gets really specific about what “works” and what doesn’t work.   A lot of this you have to learn on your own.  What works for Brian Brady may not work for Greg Swann.  You have to create your own system.  Try things  and go to what you are good at. The key part of the equation.  From Always Be Testing (my new Scriptures):

1. It’s OK To Not Know.
2. It’s Not OK to Assume
3. What Works For Them Doesn’t (necessarily) work for me.
4. There’s always room to improve
5. There are no sacred cows.

This Stuff Works For Me

OK, so we’ve got a little direction.  Try a bunch of stuff.  Real good.  Well, let’s get more specific:  have you tried one new, scary and risky idea this week? Write that down.  Make it a commandment.  I call people, and have connected all the way up to some unfathomable talents.   I’ve got about 3 things that work, and I try to find something better each week to bring in business to replace one of the 3 things that works for me.  Most of what I try fails.  I’m 100% oK with that. because of the above.

That said, let’s get to basic blocking and tackling and get kind of specific.  A site/social media presence oughta have:

1. High quality “Free” giveaway with no strings.  Like, say the consumer’s guide to Divorced Real Estate Commissions. Even blog posts or a “series” can qualify.
2. A High Quality quid pro quo giveaway, something in exchange for registration or an email address.
3. A demonstration of virtuosity: the point of blogging is to give a customer a preview of what will happen when they work with you.   If your blog is half assed, so will the experience that the customers have.
4. A plan to follow up with the people that endorse you via commenting!

Beyond that, let’s get into social media a little bit.  The goal of mine is to make a real connection.  Not to have a following with “10,000 people mostly ignoring you on twitter”. Twitter is permissive and promiscuous enough that each day I have between 10-25 people that add me.  I don’t often add others–I’m not against it, I just don’t currently need to.  About 1/3 of them are spambots, and another third make it hard for me to reach them.  That leaves between 3-8 people that I can find, call and offer to help.   That process can easily be repeated everywhere.  My rule is that if someone follows ME, then that’s permission to market to them.  I didn’t ask for them to come to me, they chose to, and thus…they get marketed to, befriended and helped in any way that I can.

I process my Twitter people once a day.  Takes 30-45 minutes.  I call everyone I can find and see what’s next.  Local people, I try and have coffee with.   I try to get in front of 10-12 people a week, and I often fail.  I’ve taken to deliberately having zero agenda on the call or meet.   That allows me to get to know people.  I follow up using sequences in Heap.   The other, tacit quid pro quo is simple: my contacts for yours.  If you strike me as a quality human, I’ll give you my contacts for yours all day long, provided that you honor them.

I wanted to be “famous” on social media for a time, but now I wanna be effective.  The two aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive, but they have different MOS.  The “effective” goal allows you to ignore FB friend counts, followers, and everything else, provided that it doesn’t directly influence a sale.

I’ve got one more post in me for 2009, these last 50 days or so matter a lot, and it’s time to get after it.