{"id":367,"date":"2015-07-06T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-07-06T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.risingtidesociety.com\/?p=367"},"modified":"2023-03-24T06:06:28","modified_gmt":"2023-03-24T13:06:28","slug":"book-of-the-month-july-2015-the-power-of-unpopular-by-erika-napoletano","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hbb.dev.reliablepenguin.com\/blog\/book-of-the-month-july-2015-the-power-of-unpopular-by-erika-napoletano","title":{"rendered":"Book of the Month – July 2015 – The Power of Unpopular by Erika Napoletano"},"content":{"rendered":"

We are excited to announce the beginning of the Rising Tide Society book club! Our goal is to feature a business book each month that will hopefully be helpful to the Rising Tide community. We’re beginning with Erika Napoletano’s The Power of Unpopular: A Guide to Building Your Brand for the Audience Who Will Love You (and why no one else matters)<\/em>. \"Book<\/p>\n

If you’ve read the book, leave a comment with a brief review or how the book has impacted your business.<\/p>\n

Have a suggestion for August’s book of the month? Leave it in comments!<\/p>\n

Sincerely,<\/p>\n

The Rising Tide Society Team<\/p>\n

______________________<\/p>\n

Why the Size of Your Audience Doesn\u2019t Matter<\/em><\/p>\n

There is a very fine line between competitor research and competitor comparison-stalking. If you aren\u2019t careful, you can quickly get sucked into a negative spiral that is unproductive for your business and your soul.<\/p>\n

You can swing the pendulum to two negative extremes: 1) Ignore your competition completely, which makes you ignorant of how to market yourself based on your differentiators; OR 2) You can full-on-crazy-obsess over what your competitor is doing giving you a comparison hangover.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sure you know how easy it is to be enticed into following a business on social media. Something visually stimulates you and you want to connect with them more.<\/p>\n

But how many of those businesses have you felt a deep affinity with?<\/p>\n

In Randy Pausch\u2019s last lecture<\/a> (which is incredibly brilliant), he said, \u201cThe size of your audience doesn\u2019t matter. What\u2019s important is that your audience is listening.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Audience size matters little if you can\u2019t keep their attention.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an easy assumption that if a competitor has a bigger Facebook page or Instagram following that CLEARLY they must have better clients and are making more money. Those numbers just scream prestige, right?? Ugh\u2026. we want it sooo bad to be seen as a big deal.<\/p>\n

But there is a key element that it much harder for you as an outsider to see when it comes to comparing yourself to the competition: Does that business listen to their audience and engage with them? Are they working hard to keep their attention?<\/p>\n

One of my all-time favorite branding books is The Power of Unpopular: A Guide to Building Your Brand For the Audience Who Will Love You (And Why No One Else Matters)<\/em> by Erika Napoletano.<\/p>\n

In “The Power of Unpopular,” Napoletano writes, \u201cOnly 20% of what you put out into the business either should be about your company, your products, your announcements, and anything else that happens inside of your brand walls. Nobody wants to sit down with That Guy for very long because there\u2019s nothing interesting about talking about him 24\/7.  <\/i>Nobody wants to do business with a one-track mind. As humans, we want to laugh and be entertained. We want to be able to see the brands we love and spend our money with people with whom we\u2019d sit down and share a cocktail. Cocktails invite small talk, and that\u2019s how real people talk. When you give yourself permission to strategically go off topic, you humanize your brand in a way that few other strategies can<\/i>.\u201c<\/p>\n

Have you seen the Instagram feed with 10K followers but each post they put up receives less than a dozen comments? That\u2019s 9,988 relationships NOT engaging with the post. It\u2019s like going to a dinner party, and listening to just one person talk. Everyone at the table feels like if you say something, then you are going to get a dirty look for interrupting, or you\u2019ll sound stupid, or you might not be invited back because you\u2019re now the \u201cweirdo.” If you\u2019ve ever been to one of those parties, you don\u2019t want to ever go back.<\/p>\n

“The Power of Unpopular” teaches us that our audience size matters little if there is no back and forth relationship building taking place.<\/p>\n

So get over what your competitor is doing. Their audience size compared to yours doesn\u2019t matter and YOUR audience size doesn\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n

Your focus shouldn\u2019t be on your audience size, your focus should be on how are you building and nurturing relationships.<\/p>\n