It means there are a lot of people out there willing to help you, because you’re being yourself.
That’s my take away from my brush with the internet famous. It’s strange. Personal meetings back up exactly what I had gotten from my online interaction with the internet famous.
What does that mean?
First, the story…
We had grabbed a cab from the Austin airport to head to Pubcon, where Pat was speaking on a panel. This was going to be one of the first internet marketing conferences for me. I was a web writer, going to find out what all these developers were doing with the content I made.
That part? Fascinating. Edifying. A different story altogether.
But back to the internet famous. I was already interested and a little nervous about the conference. When the cab pulled into the hotel, I jumped out, grabbed my bag, and prepared to check in as fast as I could so I could try to bone up on the conversations I could expect in the following days.
Which is exactly when I turned to see Chris Brogan walking into the hotel. I did my best to quickly match a 30×30 jpeg to a real human, figured out who it was, and said, “Hey, Chris!”
Chris stops walking into the hotel and proceeds to have a really nice short conversation with me about what it is Matterhorn does and what I’m hoping to learn from the conference.
Now, his was one of the first social media blogs I read, and it was interesting to find that he was exactly as he came across in his blog. One minute in, and I’ve talked to the person I consider to be the goto guy for learning about social media. And he’s not in a rush, or condescending, or anything other than interested and helpful.
Next day, on my way to the conference, we share a cab with Guy Kawasaki. Now, how many entrepreneurs would kill for that opportunity? And sure enough, we talk pretty much the whole way about what businesses that are new to social media (there was a self-admitted newbie also sharing the cab with us). And Guy was full of ideas, even when our cab got lost.
Two days, two brushes with the internet famous.
Here’s what it means: People who are internet famous are very much like who they are online.
That tells me that I need to be online very much like who I am in real life. And businesses, partners we work with, should be very much who they are (not just what they’re selling). Transparency isn’t just a BS marketing term that the get-rich-quick-on-the-net folks throw around.
And it’s not even “transparency”, necessarily. The internet famous don’t have anything to gain by conning you into helping them. It’s a genuine case of things being better when you give than receive. Internet fame is best leveraged when it’s not leveraged at all.
But I would trust Chris or Guy if they told me something, or asked me for something. Especially if it lined up with my goals. And I can make a reasonable expectation that the same is true for them. And I’m not talking necessarily about just making money. I’m talking about goals.
And those entities that are just regular, plain old famous, like McDonald’s or NBC? I’m way, way more skeptical.
At least, that’s how I’ll interpret it. What about you?
