Congratulations to my client, Tim Elmore, president of Growing Leaders, who wrote a blog post called 3 Huge Mistakes We Make Leading Kids and How to Correct Them, which has been shared on Facebook over 1,000,000 times! Yes, that’s a one with six zeroes behind it. Talk about a viral sensation…I’ve never seen a blog post get so much positive attention on social media. When Tim’s staff emailed me the news about this accomplishment, the question quickly arose, “How can we capitalize on this success?”
Everyone experiences success on some level. When you encounter those moments, keep these two principles in mind:
a. If you don’t toot your own horn, no one else will and there won’t be any music.
b. Success breeds success. People are drawn to successful individuals and organizations.
Therefore, when you reach new levels of success, take the initiative to tell the world what you did. It’s not bragging if it’s true. Use all means available to get the word out. For example, you could:
1. Send out a press release to all relevant media contacts about this amazing accomplishment. Build a media story around people’s excitement over your success. If you work with an in-house or third-party publicist, urge that individual to promote the heck out of your achievement to all of their radio, TV, and magazine contacts for potential interviews.
2. Promote your achievement on all of your electronic media for at least a week (if not longer), including the home page of your website, blog, e-newsletter, social media pages, etc. Openly thank people for their support that led to your success. Make sure anyone who comes in contact with you or your organization via an online channel will see your success.
3. Look for ways to monetize your success by creating a new product based on your achievement, such as writing an ebook, pursuing a traditional book contract, developing a new audio or video product, etc. When you create a new product, set an affordable price in order to give a purchasing incentive to all of the incoming traffic that marketing your current success begins to generate.
4. Use your big success to highlight other areas that people may not know about, such as other products or material that is growing in popularity or sales. Take advantage of your major success to promote additional products or material that people should know about.
As you continue to reach new levels of success in the same area, rinse and repeat the items listed above. Consider that when a professional sports team wins a championship, they don’t celebrate once and forget about it. They continue celebrating every time they win again. Likewise, continue celebrating any success you experience.
