How Making Others Look Good Leads You to Success
Del Close, a true improv legend, was fond of saying that the first responsibility of any improvisor is to make his or her fellow players look good. I have found this idea to be invaluable when it comes to business.
Applying this idea to my network of business relationships and friends has smoothed and facilitated partnerships; created brand ambassadors and opened doors I never knew existed. It really is the basis for most of my strategy on social media and as a result I have successfully launched several new projects and been offered several paid jobs that I’ve enjoyed.
But it’s so contrary to the traditional approach to marketing, many people still have difficulty believing it works.
Well let me give a couple of examples of how it has worked for me.
* I got into a habit of retweeting (that’s tweeting a previously posted tweet while giving credit to the original source) a lot on Twitter. When people would thank me, I often took the opportunity to start a conversation that turned into a friendship. On several occasions this alone resulted in such positives as: loyal brand ambassadors who promoted the content I put out; referrals and recommendations.
* I offered to contribute guest posts or a series of posts for others on their blogs at no charge to them in order to help them promote something they were trying to do. This, of course, strengthened several of my online friendships and in one instance, it led to a side job that has been quite lucrative for me.
* In one instance, I had a new online friend who posted a new headshot on Google+. It was a gorgeous picture and I commented and +1′d it. That led to an offer of a speaking engagement.
* In another instance I admired a blogger on whose posts I often would comment. We met at an event where he experienced a session I led. He recommended that I lead a session at another subsequent event. I later helped him promote a webinar. All of which led to a longer term position as a social media manager.
* Another time someone I had retweeted a few times but had never even had an online conversation with, recommended me as a keynote speaker for an event.
Now I’m not saying that doing nice things for others is all that it takes to be successful. Obviously you need to work hard, take some risks, create good content that shows people what you can do, etc. But making other people look good helps A LOT!
For more on this subject, check out this blog post on Entrepreneur that my friend Dennis Shiao recently shared with me. It’s called “Forget networking. How to be a connector.”
(Photo by hbppics)
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