This is not just another blog post aimed at an influencer because we need more traffic. (Although there’s never too much traffic, truth be told.) We’ll share this post on our social media pages, we’ll brag and boast, perhaps we’ll even boost. We’ll tag Jeff and do some more things Aaron Agius recommended a few days ago in a guest post on Jeff’ blog. So many members of the digital tribe will do the same.
Yes, we cannot stress enough the importance of the words so many in this text.
So, what’s this all about?
It’s not about referring to external authorities for the validation of our own marketing efforts. This technique is being busted and deconstructed as we speak. However, the people who are deconstructing it are not great influencers who have proven their brilliance time and time again and achieved high ROIs. The people who are doing it may or may not be micro-influencers, who have been paid to promote a product or service to their own little but devoted followership. Most likely they are small, random users of the Internet, whose existence has been observed multiple times throughout 2016.
It’s about the New Year’s resolutions and why we should try for something a little bit (if not completely) different when the clocks turn twelve and the fireworks start rollicking.
It’s about trying to peep into the zeitgeist, while providing the web with something of value, paying our respects to Jeff – and thinking about what it takes to become an influencer in 2017.
1) Jeff Bullas is amazing. Good for him!
So is Seth Godin. And Neil Patel. And Sam Hurley. And so many others.
Err, actually, not so many. There are perhaps a couple of hundreds of BIG influencers in the whole wide world. Maybe even a couple of thousands. All of them are speaking to a wide readership, consisted of people who live their little dreams of becoming influencers themselves and finally professionalizing their use of social media. It’s nice when you make money out of hours and hours spent on Facebook, isn’t it?
We should read their blogs and books. We should appreciate their experience and use their advice whenever possible. However, there’s one thing we should bear in mind: We cannot ever become them. In order to mark our influence, we have to find our own way. That’s what they did, and that’s what brought them success.
2) The box of mediocrity
We live in a world of digital evangelists and gurus as supreme authorities. Right beside so many rockstars, wizards, jedis, ninjas. You know what’s funny about this? It’s that all of these titles are clichés. Interestingly enough, clichés are trapping all of us into a box. Don’t we all want to think outside the box? Well, let’s stop locking up our language into worn-out phrases and our thoughts into stereotypes!
Our consumers are people, not robots. They’ll soon get tired of our uniformity. They’ll stop buying into this thing. They haven’t forgotten how to think for themselves.
3) Jeff became Jeff because he was… Jeff
An indubitable fact is that Jeff began with being different. After he went through a personal and professional disaster, he dived into blogging. Writing a personal blog is just that – a personal, highly individualized pouring of one’s soul into words and into the channels and pipes of the faceless labyrinth that is the Internet. It means humanizing the machine. That’s why blogging was, and still is so compelling. That’s what creates an aura of influence around one’s personal endeavor. True influence doesn’t come as a result of a robotized set of actions. It comes as a result of thinking while working, and feeling the thoughts.
Yes, he turned his blogging into a highly profitable business. But he wouldn’t have said business now if there wasn’t for the blog in the first place.
So if he were to begin right now, he most certainly wouldn’t do what we all do now. He would make something different.
Here, Jeff, we are proving your methods’ worth. Give us a nudge now, will you?
We wish ourselves and all of our readers a Happy and Productive and Personalized New Year.
Hello Tracie, we didn`t run into that problem so far, but there are some excellent articles on medium regarding this topic, so you can check it out there 🙂