Page 101 - The Content Code: Six essential strategies to ignite your content, your marketing, and your business - PDFDrive.com

is that it can be created on the social web with little or no effort, even by just
clicking a “Like” button on Facebook, or retweeting a message for a friend. In
these cases, expending very little effort can still create an expectation that if “I
moved your content, you need to move mine.”

“Much influence on the social web is built on a promised return of favors,”
said Tom Webster, vice president of Edison Research. “We coexist every day on
small favors … like if you retweet this, I’ll retweet yours. I’ll like your page if
you’ll like mine. The effort to accomplish these things is low—so they are easily
done.”

“To be more effective at promoting your content, you first need to become
more effective at promoting other people’s content,” said Internet strategist
Carol Lynn Rivera.2 “The Internet is a relationship economy. You have to give
to get. Very few bloggers or businesses are at a level where they will have their
content read and shared if they are absent from the process.

“What that means is that you need to be involved in getting to know people—
other bloggers and business people, commenters, subscribers, Twitter and
Facebook and even Pinterest connections. Everyone. When you build those
relationships and when you share, promote, and comment on other people’s
work in a way that adds genuine value, then your presence will be known and
appreciated and the sharing will be reciprocated. So I guess the bottom line is
that if you want more success promoting your content then you have to stop
focusing on promoting your content. Refocus your efforts on others.”

Perhaps the most famous purveyor of reciprocity is author and media mogul
Gary Vaynerchuk, who emphasizes a simple formula: “give, give, give, give,
then ask.” (Or his latest iteration: “jab, jab, jab, right hook.”) This is reciprocity
in action—trading in on favors to build social capital.

Gary’s signature move is asking people through Twitter what he can do to
help them—and he has done some pretty crazy things. Sending a pie overnight.
Shipping bottles of hot sauce to someone who had run out. Delivering a person’s
favorite hamburger just because she asked.

This might seem like a random way to run a media consulting business unless
you understand the strong need we have to fulfill an obligation. Getting
something seemingly for free has such an impact because we’re psychologically
obsessed with repaying that favor; we don’t feel that we should repay, but rather
we feel compelled to repay.

Yes, some people may take advantage of Gary’s apparent generosity, but
most of the time, the odds of reciprocity—via favors, gifts, invitations, and even
tweets—are in his favor.

Expectations of reciprocity are amplified on the social web. There is a quid-