So you've got a plan for creating content. I hope you really can stick to it. Because this is the sort of thing if you write a blog every day for a month, and then you say, Well, you know, I'm a little busy. I'll pick up again, once we get through this tough week, you'll never write the blog again, six months go by you look, it'll be empty, and it will be worthless, you'll have wasted your time. Same with a YouTube channel. If you say, Well, I'm going to do five this week, and let me take the week off, and then you'll never come back to it.
You need a regular schedule for your YouTube followers. Now, here's why we're doing all this. You need to be a part of a community and be you need to be a leader of that community. And you need to have your own tribe. Seth Godin really stresses this concept of the tribe whether you call it a tribe, followers, people who love your stuff, fans, it doesn't really matter what you call You've got to find a group of people who just who care about your stuff, your ideas, they might not love you or want to marry you, but they respect your ideas. And think of you when that subject comes up.
That's what you need. That's all you need. Now, that's the good news. That's all you need is a tribe. The bad news is it's really hard to find a tribe because you are competing with billions of other people out there who are posting on Facebook and posting on their blog and creating YouTube channel. It's hard to cut through the clutter.
And you can't just be pushing your stuff all the time. You've got to be engaging people, anyone, no matter how time consuming, it is anyone who puts a comment on one of my YouTube channels. I respond. Unless they're just saying nasty, nasty, nasty things about me then I might not, but if it's anything of substance, I respond. Someone post a comment on my blog. respond.
You have to engage people. It's not just about being the expert. There was a time pre internet pre social media 15 2030 years ago, where it was all about, you're the expert on to your Martha Stewart, you're the expert, you're pushing it down, and people are looking up to you. These days, it's not quite like that you need to be a part of a community. The best person is really an expert on this and I would recommend his books Gary Vaynerchuk of TV Wine Library guy now a Vayner. Media.
He his rule of thumb is you know, for every hour you spend creating content, you should probably spend about eight hours responding to other people's questions responding to what they asked. It's almost all response in his mind. He would spend 15 minutes on his TV Wine Library show tonight, and then spend hour after hour in the evening answering emails. Every single person's question about wine and what's the best wine for fish. That's how we get famous. That's how he created an entire Empire.
That's how he gets speaking gigs at $40,000 or more a pop, because he became so famous. Because thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions of people cared about him. And they watched his show, they went to his blog, they followed him on Twitter. And he's been able to use that audience for all of his other business ventures and best selling books, and keynote speeches. So that's the hard part about all this is you have to find a tribe of people who care about yourself now it doesn't have to be huge. Some leading experts on marketing contend that if you just had 1000 people who really care about yourself, that's enough to make a nice living, not just from keynote speaking, but from selling your products or services.
It's more important to define your niche and be the leader of that niche than to be the number one expert on motivational speaking in the world. Pick your niche wisely. And then you've got to create great content, you got to create new content, you got to create original content. And you have to take the time to engage with people. And there are no shortcuts, believe me, there's all sorts of gimmicks out there and software program you can buy 200,000 Twitter followers. That's not what I'm talking about as a complete, utter waste of time.
The value of having 200,000 Twitter followers is if those people actually read your stuff like it respected or retweeted, and occasionally do what you suggest they should do. If you bought the 200,000 Twitter followers The 500,000 Facebook likes. It's completely worthless. I would rather have 50 Twitter followers who liked me and cared about me and respected than 5 million Twitter followers, if it's just something that was purchased or manipulated somehow. So that's the bad news is there really aren't any shortcuts to creating a tribe these days, because content is everywhere. You can Google any subject matter in the world and come up with millions of pages.
Content is everywhere. You've got to figure out what can you do where you really add something that's special? That's different, that unique How can you add something to the conversation already, to build a tribe to build fans to build followers If you solve this problem, the speaking gigs will come. If you don't follow if you don't solve this problem, then the whole speaking gig thing is going to be a constant effort, it's going to be a real challenge. And it's going to be just like pulling teeth. It's not going to be a fun process.
So don't skip this process. And I realize we can't just do it now on one homework assignment in five minutes. But I do need you to give some real thought to who your tribe is. I want you to describe this person, who is the sort of person how old are they? What kind of company do they work and what industry do they work in? What are their concerns?
Why does this person need your expertise and once your expertise if you are an expert on corporate strategy in the tech industry, then your audience very well may be co CEOs and Top hundred tech companies might not be a huge audience. But that's an audience that hires a lot of speakers and a lot of money for consulting and everything else. So that's what you've got to figure out right now is who's likely to be your tribe? Where are they now? What websites? Are they going to net constantly amazed by people who tell me I want to be a professional speaker?
And I speak on change management. I said, Oh, really well. So tell me who are the top 10 authors and experts you respect what blogs do you go to his YouTube channels? Do you already watch? Who do you think are the best experts in the field? And who do you think are overrated?
And often it's like, Ah, well, I don't know. But I know I'm good. Really. You can't be a real expert on something unless you know what all the competition is doing. So I need you to focus right now and figure out paint a picture. Who is your audience?
Who are, who are the possible people who are going to make up your tribe doesn't have to be a billion people. It doesn't have to be a million people. But it's got to be more than you and your immediate family and friends. So think of that and write your notes down.