Do you want to help and influence thousands of people through your blogs, your books or your talks at Web 2.0 Expo or Le Web? As you very well aware that kind of opportunity doesn’t come overnight. It takes a lot of work, practice and to some extent the right connections.
One idea of attacking this goal of achieving social media success is through the building of a personal brand. Much has been written and much will still be written on the subject. One recent article worth reading on the subject of personal branding was published on Copyblogger. This is not subject of this blog post however, even if a strong personal brand might be the goal.
I was watching the 2004 movie, Before Sunset, the other day and a quote by Julie Delpy stood out. Speaking about having set a goal in life, she said that people “enjoy the goal but not the process. But the reality of it is that the true work of improving things is in the little achievements of the day.”
This rings very true and is important to keep in mind, when you’re building your business online. We will not be able to influence thousands of people, when we’re just starting out. We might however influence one or two, maybe ten people. It’s these few that need our attention, not the thousands of the future.
When writing an article, commenting on a blog or talking on your favorite social media platform, think about the people that you can influence right now. Getting a person to think in your line of thought, even for a little while, because of something you said or wrote, is a magical thing. Because of the huge numbers of people online every day we tend to forget that influencing even just one human being every day is pretty damn awesome.
By focusing on the little achievements of the day, you’ll find that you actually don’t need to be in front of thousands to feel that you’re influencing your market and that the market appreciates you back. Before you know it, the few have turned into hundreds and if you keep giving and focusing on the people listening, the hundred will turn into thousands.
Setting yourself a goal is necessary in order to know where you’re going, but rolling the window down, listening, taking everything in and enjoying yourself along the way, is essential.
Are you remembering to appreciate your little achievements of the day?
