How the Football Captain and the Guitarist Sold Out the Stadium!

It Starts with Someone Who Cares about the Audience

When I’m asked to do an off-site, I sit down the with event planner to discuss what the people attending might want or need to know. Hands down the most requested topic is how can they use social media to get people talking about the brand and their products?

It’s all about stories.
We’ve been hearing and telling stories all of our lives.
It shouldn’t be that hard.

5 Critical Steps to Spreading an Irresistible Social Media Story

If you remember back to university, you know the power of friends sharing stories. Good news, bad news, rumors and truths can fly through a school fast enough to make any news network jealous.

Here are the five critical steps to making that happen for you in the social business community.

1. Build your network before you need it. It all starts with community. No matter how irresistible our message, we’ll have trouble sharing it without relationships. Building a network is more natural and easy, if we do before we need them to do something for us.
2. Be known for one thing. Sure you can do many things, but many things are hard to remember. One thing stands out and is easily shareable. To go back to the college analogy, if I say he’s the captain of the football team or she’s plays lead guitar in the coolest rock band, you already know that other kids into sports they want to connect with him and other kids into rock want to connect with her.

   The same works now … If you are known for one thing, that one thing you are jumps to my mind when I meet someone who might need that one thing. If you’re a freelance blog writer, every time I meet someone with a growing blog, I’ll mention your name. If you’re one of a million writers who writes for blogs, magazines, websites, menus, and whatever. I’m less likely to remember exactly what you do and far less likely to share your name. When you’re one thing everyone knows what they can count on you to do and how you connect to their universe.

3. Make folks feel proud, important, part of something bigger than then are alone when they do. Talking in the language of the people you want to help you. Make the message about them, not about you. The football captain who frames his message “Are you ready to rock the game tonight?” gets a better response than the one who says “Come to our game tonight. Show your spirit!”

   The savvy football captain says, “The team goes all out when you’re there! You rock the stands. We’ll rock the field!! RockTheGame!!”

   Let’s stay with the savvy football captain … he shows Booster Club how it’s in their interest to donate $500 worth of iTunes and permission for a concert by pointing out that they’re all on a quest to get folks to the big game. Then, he contacts the girl lead guitarist and persuades her band that a sell-out game would make a great after-concert venue.

4. Make it easy, fun, and meaningful to share it. The Booster Club enlists the campus TV station to announce a contest for the entire school. Every ticket sold to the big game will be entered into a raffle for that $500 iTunes gift card to keep rocking.
5. Reward and celebrate the people who do. When the game beats attendance records concert by the coolest rock band — after the game in the school quad to rock the school spirit!

We all value our friends’ attention.
We all value the time we spend with them.
We all value it when they engage with us and listen to what we’re saying.
It’s a natural next step to make it a value for them to invest in us too.

All we have to do to get them to share our story is to make them proud to be part of it.

How are you making your friends, colleagues, customers, and clients part of what you’re trying to do?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!