Six: Building a platform
May 17, 2019•388 words
Planted: Thursday 5/16/2019
Last Tended: Thursday 5/16/2019
Every now and then I head over to Seth Godin's blog to see what he is talking about. In a recent post he talked about the importance of selling to strangers over selling to people you know [1]. At first, this resonated with me. Of course, I shouldn't rely on selling to people I know. I thought of course Godin is right; it doesn't scale. But then I started thinking more about this and I realized that I don't fully agree because strong and weak ties are key within a network.
For example, Berry Gordy, had an idea for a record company. He reached out to his family for a loan and that loan resulted in Motown records. There are countless examples of people turning to friends to start a company. Berry Gordy of course had to sell the recods beyond his family and friends, but I'm sure it was family and friends who started to spread the word. Sometimes, the stranger that you are selling to is a friend of someone from your network.
When I think about the intellectual will, at first it was something I shared with my friends, then I shared it on my blog, and from there people have heard about it through word of mouth. So as I think about Godin's advice, I take it with a grain of salt. Yes, it isn't scalable to try to sell only to friends and family, but it is also impractical to not think about their role in introducing you to strangers.
As I think about building my audience and platform, I think about the type of people who I want to read the intellectual will. I want to build an audience that is more like a community and within that community are my friends and their friends and their family and my family.
Godin's comment stops short of telling the reader how do you meet the strangers you are going to sell to. Sometimes it is through marketing, but the way that has worked for me is through my networks and my networks include the people I know.
Goals for tomorrow
- Creative write for 30 minutes
- Find quotes for 20 minutes
- Write Listed update for 10 minutes
***Lisa-Marie
[Link]
[1] Selling to Strangers: https://seths.blog/2019/05/selling-insurance-to-your-sister/