I now have 2 official man crushes. Don Johnson & Griz Grizzly as Allyn Hane calls him. (Chris Brogan is inching up the list also). No one has seen Griz but the closest sighting came from the Blogger Illustrated video interview series. I just read one of Griz’s latest articles and it struck home with me again. One of his August articles is titled Be A Better Blogger? WTF??
I simply can’t help it but I’m drawn to no-nonsense, no-fluff type writers who give me useful stuff. I consider myself to be well rounded as a reader and I like a little bit of everything. Kind of like music, I like a lot of different music but I’m drawn to certain styles more than others.
I’ve read Griz for a long time and his methods of making money online work. I have tested them and it simply works. Because of that, I’m a fan. I haven’t delved into that world a whole lot yet but I did follow his instructions to a T once and I ranked #1 in 45 days and I’ve been sitting there for almost a year. I make a few bucks every month on Adsense. I did it as an experiment just to see if this Canadian dude was full of $**t. Turns out he wasn’t.
Here is my favorite part of this article that appears near the end. “We don’t target bloggers – we target civilians and provide targeted info to the people actively searching for it online. Our methods worked 5 years ago and still work today and you don’t have to waste time with dumb ass things like Twitter, Facebook, Stumbleupon or any of the other time sucking social network sites.”
Folks, this is referred to as telling it like it is. You can sugarcoat it any way you want but this is honest talk.
I don’t know what you do online. If you are laying all of your cards on Social Media, IMHO you are going to lose, plain and simple. I really wish it was called “Interactive Media” because I think that term is more correct. Don’t get me wrong, I actually enjoy Social Media with the ones I interact with. I imagine that out of the 10 people who may read this article, 8 will totally disagree with my statement.
Let me back up the statement I just made with some facts that may open your eyes. Last week I published a Chris Brogan, Trust Interview Spoof. It was just a fun video project and I just had a little fun at Brogan’s expense. I’m a subscriber to Brogan’s RSS feed. Like everyone else, I like some of his reads better than others but he certainly appeals to a very wide audience. I like to keep tabs on the big boys. The hype leading up to his Trust Agent book was staggering on Twitter. Multitudes of people were twittering to go out and buy the book having never read it themselves. This was almost mind blowing to me and a study in marketing 101. I was totally impressed at the sheer genius of it. He should write another book on how he did it. That’s the one I want to read. I would never tell anyone to go and purchase something without zero knowledge on the subject. For that reason, I did not Tweet or Re-Tweet the message that was sweeping the internet. Even the ProBlogger himself touted the book without reading it. All of this gave me the idea to do the spoof.
I will tell you right now, that you will be hard pressed to find anything bad about Chris Brogan. He seems to be a very decent human being, a family man and his life’s work is to help others. Very noble, I respect that and I admire that in a man. He deserves his success and every dime he earns. Apparently Chris’s wife found my video and brought it to Chris’s attention. He liked it and posted it on ChrisBrogan.com. He was a great sport about it and frankly it blew me away. I could not believe it. I appreciated it and made Chris a direct video response, thanking him.
Lets look at my Social Media Traffic as a result of being posted on ChrisBrogan.com. The feedburner widget on Chris’s site shows at this time 29,424 readers. Chris has 94,622 followers on Twitter. I made his blog and Twitter. I made front page on Chris’s site on August 26, 2009. Time to prepare my web host (Bluehost) for a server meltdown right? Time to call youtube and alert them to possible problems resulting from my video being posted right? Wrong.
My traffic stats for the day was 277 visits and 308 views on the video. What does this tell you? It tells me a lot. It tells me if you are spending your time chasing Social Media traffic you may be wasting your time until you build yourself into a Brogan type stature. If you think you are going to make money on Social Media, you may want to revisit your business plan. I think Brogan makes his money with his speaking engagements, books and consulting. I have no first hand knowledge, only making an educated guess. Are you talented enough to speak at conferences? Write a best seller? If not, you better get busy with things that matter and stop wasting time on those things that don’t. You better be prepared for a long haul of paying your dues. I personally don’t feel you can do it with social media as your main focus. What works for Brogan and Vaynerchuk probably will not work for you and me. Only you can decide for yourself where to spend your time for the biggest payoff.
I really like Chris Brogan and I appreciate what he did for me. He will make you feel good about yourself. He is motivational. You should read him and hire him possibly. I wish he would send me his Trust Agent book so I can give it a review.
I have a man crush on Griz. He speaks his mind and he educates me. His information makes me slightly less of an idiot.
