In today’s world of social media, you need to stand out now more than ever. On average, we see 4,000+ advertisements and equally as many posts from our friends and online acquaintances. If you can’t find a way to make your content stand out among the crowd, you are doomed to be buried by everyone around you.
If you were at a bar and a group of people walked in, dressed to the nines in tuxedos, you could easily pick out the 10th in an orange suit.
In “The Game,” written by author Neil Strauss, they call this peacocking. Essentially the goal is to stand out and be the most noticeable person in the room, much like a peacock who spreads their feathers and dances to attract a mate. The one who stands out the most gets the most attention from a potential mate.
Business can be a lot like dating.
You have to get someone’s attention and then attract them to you to do business. In today’s online community, the way you do so is by being original and authentic with your social media profiles’ content and appearance. You see, people are getting wiser and wiser to the copy/paste nonsense that you see a lot of MLM people using. Now before you go jumping down my throat about how being in an MLM is a great way to make a living, understand that I am referring ONLY to the people who copy and paste everything their upline does in an attempt to get similar results.
Eventually, your prospects are going to get wise because you’re just taking the content you post from someone else, and at that point, what reason do they have to keep following you?
Coming up with original content and keeping an authentic vibe about yourself will do far more than help you close deals.
It helps build the ever-important KNOW, LIKE, & TRUST factor required to start the sales conversation. You can’t close a sale until you have someone on the line, and getting them there begins with putting out content they can relate with on a more personal level.
Let’s start with why you should never share someone else’s content on your social media profiles unless you are willing to give up the spotlight.
First of all, when you share someone else’s content, you are helping them build their brand or business. If that’s your goal, then cool, I’m all for assisting others to be successful. However, if you’re trying to get a laugh using someone else’s joke, you’ll never be a full-fledged comedian. At least not one who goes on to be great. More importantly, if you are sharing someone else’s post on YOUR TIMELINE, you are giving your potential prospects a chance to leave you before you even start making them a client.
Think about it; if you were trying to learn about someone by clicking on their profile and seeing a funny youtube video, there is a good chance you’ll click on it. In doing so, you may get goldfish brain and click through to the next video so on, and so forth. Less than 60 seconds later, there is a good chance you would have forgotten entirely about the person you were looking into, to begin with.
It’s that easy to get distracted nowadays.
When you are utilizing your social media profiles to generate new prospects or business, please do yourself a favor and don’t give them a chance to click away before you’ve even had time to get them interested in you. Stick to putting up only original content and avoid allowing anyone else to post on your timeline or wall to prevent this situation altogether.
Now you know why not to share other people’s content, but what about coming up with your own?
There is another fantastic book out there by a guy named Austin Kleon called “Steal Like An Artist.” In it, he breaks down the concept that nothing in this world is original. Essentially whatever you are trying to do has already been done and probably by someone with more experience than you. Instead of copying their style and cadence, study a handful of people or industry titans you aspire to be like.
By doing so, you won’t be labeled as the next “So-and-So,” Instead, you can carve out your own slice of the market based on your originality!
Listen to or read books on the subjects you enjoy, then retell the ideas you enjoyed from those books in your way, and relate them to the stories in your life where they fit. Find blogs and magazines with reliable content, and when you’re done reading them, write up your summary of the material and how it can be valuable to the next person. In doing so, you are now going to be learning the material in such a way as to teach it to the next person. You’ll come to find that learning in this manner causes the content to stick, and you’ll have an easier time remembering it for yourself in the future. Your potential clients will also appreciate that you aren’t “like everyone else,” who simply tries to copy those ahead of them.
It can take some time to get a feel for this process but stay committed and consistent. Like anything, the longer you practice and the more you study the greats, the information will be ingrained in your mind and coming up with original content will continue to get more comfortable for you.
The other fast track to creating great content is to surround yourself with folks who are doing exactly that… creating amazing content and sharing it with the world. The more resources you have for content, the more opportunity you will have to learn and continue bettering yourself.
One such group is The Apex entourage run by Ryan Stewman. It’s a group of like-minded, success-driven individuals who all share the same mission in life “to match our reality to the most elite version of ourselves.”
If you want to become elite, create amazing original content, and dominate your marketplace, head over to www.jointheapex.com and submit your application. We only accept a limited number of new members each year, and you don’t want to miss out on the chance to learn from some of the greatest content creators on the planet!
