February 24, 2016

#AndyTalks 009 – People Follow Leaders – A Snapchat Story

TRANSCRIPTION

Thought of the day, Snappers. People listen to experts; they follow leaders.

Here we go… midnight again. I’m just going to bed. Damn tools. Campaigns still need work done. But have a good evening.

It’s also cold. I’m watching people in Australia. Looking out at beaches; 19 degree sunrises. It’s not fair… no, it’s great, it’s great.

I just want to explain what I’m doing on Snapchat and videos. I’m learning how to create videos and seeing if it suits me. If I can find a system where I produce content, get at all this stuff that’s rattling around in my head out quicker and in a way that can help people. I’ve already done it many times where I join a forum and I like forums and I write content and it doesn’t take too long before people go — “oh, you know your stuff” — and I’m helping.

I never have calls to action. I never try and get people hire me or try and sell anything or anything like that. I’m not saying anything against people who do, because I will at some point. But what I’m doing with my content is I’m trying to create content that is so good that people naturally share it. That’s why I value an audience at the start who aren’t just any… That’s why I value an audience; it’s because I can find out what resonates with people. As I dial in what I’m producing and how I produce it and it works with a small audience, then I know how to expand it later. What I’m doing, really, is jumping off the cliff and making planes on the way down; I’m making it up as I go along and I’ll just see where it goes. Eventually, I’ll get more organized.

Off to the gym. It’s nippy today. I know people in Russia don’t think it’s that nippy but it’s cold.

Oh, that was a good gym session, although my head was buzzing in there and I think I’ve got all my ranting out in my head rather than out on Periscope or something.

Completely forgot, I’ve got a call lined up this morning to go through doing all the reports I have to do for clients and somebody’s going to do screen share and watch what I do. So this is my handover.

That Skype call was only 35 minutes. I went through two reports, two different clients and sort of handed it over — or brought her up to speed; it’s not handed over. Actions for me are to… I should do little videos with me talking over what I’m doing, quickly, so she can refer to those videos.

Sod it! I’ve got work to do on my to-do list but my feet are freezing so I’m going for a walk.

Just going to head up to the local hotel where they’ve got a check for me for some AdWords spend where I’d run a test for them. They wanted to rebuild their website that they know it needs done and I was suggesting leave off for the minute and find out if anybody’s even searching. So I bid on “hotels, Nice” — Nice being the town I live in — and various other things that indicate somebody had been looking for a hotel. Very important one was their brand name. Bid on your brand name for heaven’s sake people. So in the course of about two weeks they had 170 clicks for 100 Euros spend, negligible bookings. That’s good volume and it’s given them a business case for themselves to justify getting their website done and how much it’s worth to them. But bless them, they’re a small business and they haven’t realized quite yet that every week they haven’t got this sorted is lost bookings.

So this is where the canal leads. That’s at the back of our house. Actually, it comes in through here and it goes way off that way. I’ll do a walk.

Michael asked a question yesterday. How do you get Snapchat followers? He was wondering. He was confused about what I meant about Snapchat not having a discovery feature and why I thought that was so clever. I think it’s clever because for me, forget followers on Snapchat. I have to tell people in person or on Facebook or Twitter, which means every person who signs up to Snapchat who wants more followers goes and invites more people onto Snapchat.

Hello swan. How you doing buddy.

So what I advised Micheal was to just start producing. Get on Snapchat and just start creating videos. My thought of the day yesterday was — People listen to experts; they follow leaders. That’s not a line from me, by the way. I’m quoting somebody else, I don’t know who. So if you want followers, you have to be a leader and to lead you have to actually be in motion. So get —

Oh, a helicopter, two helicopters. Don’t know what that’s about. They’re searching for me.

There’s a powerful thing if you’re in motion. If you keep heading in the same direction, or close enough, you create a vacuum behind you. People get sucked in to that vacuum that you’re leaving behind you as you’re charge in a particular direction. It’s alright to change direction a little bit. People will keep following you. But you can’t keep chopping and changing.

Go in a direction. Leave a vacuum. So just pick a direction, any ol’ direction and go. Don’t worry if the direction isn’t perfect. All roads lead to Rome. You’re going to get there anyway.