Now that you have worked so hard to build your monthly subscribers, video views, or blog traffic, what do you do with all those eyeballs? The good news is, the hard work is already done. I’m not saying you’re done working. I’m saying now it’s time to enjoy the fruits of all your previous labor. I started a blog years ago as just a means of getting my ideas out. My goal was not to earn money doing it. I liked writing for the sake of writing.
I got a lot of positive responses to what I wrote. My platform started to build and I didn’t even realize it. My eye-opening moment to the idea of platform building was when I got a job offer after one of the posts I wrote. I was writing an auto racing blog and the post I wrote was all about some ideas I had about marketing at race tracks. About a week after that post hit, I got a job offer from a race track promoter on the East Coast.
I didn’t take the job. But, I started to realize the power blogging could have on building your platform. From that, I ended up writing a book and selling it on Amazon. That was several years ago, and that book is still selling today along with another one I wrote. Doing the work to build the platform is the hard part. At first, you’ll do that video, or write that blog post only to hear crickets. I’m here to encourage you to keep pressing on. Good things will come if you just put in enough work.
Leveraging Your Platform Tip #1; Find speaking gigs
Now, you’ve built a platform of followers. These are people who want to hear what you have to say. There are more conferences, trade shows, and places looking for radio and television interviews than ever before. Just look around at the amount of content being pushed out in our society. Television programs run 24 hours a day, satellite radio shows, traditional magazines, online magazines, blogging conferences, Finance conferences, technology conferences, podcasts, it’s enough to make your head spin.
Some of these pay pretty well too. But, regardless of what they pay, they are all looking for people to talk to about their content. The best thing you can do is put yourself out there and see what you can find. If you have a blog, put a tab at the top and create a page describing how to contact you and maybe some links to things you have done after you have started to build a list of places you’ve spoken at. This will eventually begin to snowball as you do more.
Leveraging Your Platform Tip #2; Get a book deal
The traditional publishing market is different than it was years ago. Publishers are on the lookout for people who can write profitable books. If you have a large platform, you become very attractive to book publishers. They don’t have to spend as much time and money to kick-start book sales. Your platform becomes that ‘Kickstarter’ program. We are mainly talking about nonfiction, but I imagine fiction would be similar.
I’ve seen several articles and people talking about the fact that to get a good deal nowadays you need to have a large following. But, here is the flip side. If you have a large following, why not self-publish and keep more money for yourself? Some people like the fact that they got a traditional book deal because they are hard to get. Traditional publishing is somewhat of a status symbol. If you’ve landed a publishing deal, it’s a kind of recognition that others see a talent in you.
People say that they want to be in bookstores. A traditional book publishing deal is the only way to get there. Some people I’ve seen landed a traditional publishing deal at first and then went on to self-publish a different title. Many claim they made and continue to make much more money by self-publishing.
Leveraging Your Platform Tip #3; Land a different job, if that is really what you want
This is not really what this blog is about. Our goal here is to get out of the 9-5 job market. But, if you are interested in getting another job, branding yourself and creating your platform with a large following is a good way to find your dream job; especially if you want to change career paths. Years ago, a college diploma was enough to show competency that you knew what you were talking about.
Now, I think it takes more than that, especially in very competitive markets. By starting a blog or starting a YouTube channel you can publish your thoughts and show your competency. You can go beyond competency and illustrate cutting-edge ideas to push you further up the chain in the workplace.
Businesses are continually looking for the brightest minds with the best ideas. If you can illustrate that through a blog and gather a large following, your brand will build and you will be very marketable in the workplace.
Leveraging Your Platform Tip #4; Find higher-paying clients to work with
If you are a freelancer or consultant, building a large platform of influence is essential to finding more of the best types of clients to work with. The larger your circle of influence the more selective you can be when choosing clients. With a small audience, you usually need to take what you can get. Expand your audience and platform and you expand the pool of people you get to choose from.
It’s just a numbers game. The bottom line is if you are a consultant you need a platform to showcase your services.
Leveraging Your Platform Tip #5; Sell a course as an authority in your niche
I think this is the ultimate thing to do with your platform. Selling a course is a way to leverage that large following into creating a good income for yourself. This, other than a book deal, is one of the few ways to leverage your platform without still trading dollars for hours. You gather your following, survey them to find out their particular problems, and then leverage that into building a course to deliver a solution to those problems.
Maybe build several courses to solve several different problems. The sky is the limit. Keep expanding, surveying, building, and selling. The hardest part you will have will be trying to decide what to do. I once heard a guy named Ed Dale giving a speech at a conference. He said that in the old days of the internet, traffic was easy and the technology was hard. Now, the roles have been reversed. The technology is easy and the traffic is hard.
Now that you have done the due diligence of building the traffic and your platform, consider yourself lucky. Now it’s time for the fun part, getting everything you’ve always wanted because of it. If you are reading this post as a new platform builder or aren’t where you want to be subscriber-wise, keep at it. Your time will come.
Be safe,
Kevin