So you’ve created a blog, where you post regularly. You’ve set up one or more social media accounts that you update. You write comments on other people’s blog and answer questions in the forum’s. The number of visitors per day to your blog is increasing, but it still seems to be mostly nameless visitors, who are not creating the community that you’re aiming for.
Building a business blog could be compared to trying to climb a Mount Everest. Depending on your skill and preparation for the climb, you can get pretty far up the mountain on your own, but at some point you’re going to need help, if you want to reach the summit.
How to spot your Sherpa
This is not about finding readers for your business blog, but making friends, building a network and participating in a community and taking all this to a higher level.
Like Sherpas are renowned in the international mountaineering community for their expertise and experience at high altitudes, we too must find our own “Sherpa” to guide us and take us to higher ground with our business blogging.
However not everyone is Sherpa material and not everyone is available to be our guide. There are certain characteristics that are present in your future Sherpa and the characteristics will help you identify him or her.
A perfect example of a Sherpa in the community of social media entrepreneurs and small business consultants is Johnny B. Truant. As a reader of this blog, if you haven’t come across Johnny already, you should do so. He’s definitely one of the good ones.
Using Johnny as an example, here’s how you can tell, if your potential Sherpa is indeed worthwhile:
1. Not at the top of his/her game (yet)
In every social media community there’s a food pyramid structure, except the most popular and most listened in the community a in the top. What we’re aiming for is to find someone how’s not at the very top, but rather a rung or two down. In the food pyramid, it’s right around where the dairy products are.
Johnny B. Truant is definitely knowable in his field, he writes really well and has unique and interesting things to add to the discussion. However, even if he should be placed at the top of the pyramid, he hasn’t gone there yet. Blog posts posted on his own blog are not retweeted, Stumbled Upon’d or Digg’d thousands of times. There’s no New York Times bestselling book or mentions of which national TV stations that he regularly appears on as a consultant. What differentiates him from many others and the important factor in regard to him being Sherpa material is that reading through his input, you keep having a surprised feeling when these previous mentioned things are lacking. If you’re feeling like you’ve found a hidden gem, then you’re on the right track.
2. Knowledge of the mountain
Your would-be Sherpa needs to know your area of business to be of use. Luckily through social media and especially blogs we’re able to find vast amounts of information and with it we’re able to read almost everything that a certain person publishes online. This can easily sort out who has an actually knowledge of your business area and how just hasn’t.
3. A voice in the community
The Sherpa should already be known in the community from the top and down. This is an important point as you’ll be introduced to your community through your Sherpa.
Finding out who’s talking to who in your community is fairly easy to find out as social media is just that, social. Follow the very top of the “food pyramid” and see who they talk to and about. I’ve previously recommended 27 people to follow on Twitter (Johnny wasn’t on this initial list, but he was added to my 6 more people to follow on Twitter lens on Squidoo).
Add these people (or those relevant to your business) to your list and see who they to talk and about. Then add these people to your list and so on. Soon enough, you’ll have stumbled upon one or more potential Sherpa’s.
This is how I came upon Johnny B. Truant. He guest blogs on pretty much all of the major entrepreneurial sites and is read and respected by the very top of the community. He’s so often mentioned as an entrepreneur and consultant to watch that he easily showed up on the radar.
So how can this help you?
This blog post isn’t about the relationship with your Sherpa. After first identifying who you want to guide you up your particular mountain, you first need to make first contact and then you need to make a connection with the person. It’s very important that you continually maintain and expand on the relationship.
Assuming that the relationship is in order, what you can benefit from a relationship with your Sherpa is among other things:
- Introductions to your community (and yes, the top of the pyramid, too)
- Knowledge of how he/she runs a business
- Ideas to run your business
- Possible opening for a guest blog post on his/her blog
- Insight into new business opportunities and collaborations
- In time, a possible business partner
Keeping your business evolving and growing, it’s often necessary to get fresh and critical eyes on your business. A business Sherpa might be the answer to this. So what about you? Do you feel that you need a Sherpa sometimes?
Johnny B. Truant blogs at johnnybtruant.com and tweets at @johnnybtruant and is featured on blogs like Copyblogger and ProBlogger. If you only read one blog post by him, make it his post stating that “Your Goals Suck”.
Photo credit ilkerender
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