One of the key pillars of a successful Social Media Marketing campaign is having a large audience to communicate and interact with in order to get your ideas out not only to your potential customers, but also to a larger community and making your brand known by getting people to talk about you. However, trying to increase your network can seem like quite a daunting task so here’s an idea that can make this Herculean task seem simple, intriguing and maybe even mind-blowing.
Ten years ago I was exposed to the concept of Six Degrees of Separation, a theory that everyone in the world is linked through a chain of six ‘friend-of-a-friend’ connections. At the time I was skeptical, thinking there was no way that I could be that interconnected to the 6 billion people all over the globe (with the population just having reached 7 billion, they say it could even be fewer than six!). To my surprise, this past year has shown just how real and how powerful this theory actually is.
One of my good friends from the Netherlands has been studying at university for 3 years now and has become close with a British fellow who comes from Brighton. To help me out settling in to my first few weeks working at the Effective Marketing Company and living in Brighton, I was introduced to the Brightonian and he has been very helpful in discovering a couple of more unknown locations worth visiting here. Within the next couple of weeks while working on the Social Media outlets for the company, I discovered that Martin and I had this ‘friend-of-a-friend’ as a mutual contact so I questioned him about it. ‘Hey Martin, how do you know this guy?’. Turns out they were actually family! I was mind-blown!
Or what about Martin’s fantastic epiphany that his friend-of-a-friend turns out to be the guy who wrote the BAFTA winning British sitcom ‘The Inbetweeners’?
Due to the increasing interconnectedness the world has with the explosion of Social Media outlets and easier travel, these small world experiences are becoming more and more common. We now have the ability to easily get in touch with CEOs, CFOs and Marketing Directors through LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook so the only thing you need to go do to build your audience is get started on talking to these people. And for all you know, that next sales pitch you make could be to one of your ‘friends-of-a-friend’ so keep an open mind out there!
