What is the difference between “Reach and Influence”?

 What is the difference between “Reach and Influence”?

That is one question that I ask audiences when doing presentations
about influence.

In this quick post you will learn this critical distinction between
reach and influence, and what to do in order to leverage this concept
to get more clients…

I define reach as how many people you have in your network, on your
list, or your total number of connections.

Let’s create a hypothetical example, let’s say you have 2,000 Fans on
your Facebook fan page, 500 connections on your Linkedin profile and
you have 500 people on Twitter. And let’s supposed that they are all
different people (you don’t have any overlap).

So your total reach is 3,000 people in this example.

Influence, on the other hand, is how much engagement you have with
those 3,000 people.

Do they respect your opinion?

Do they listen to you?

How often do they engage in conversations with you?

Are they sharing your ideas, strategies and comments?

How often do they take action when you recommend something?

The reason that is a very important for you to understand this concept
is because:  There is a lot of people out there who are concerned
with the number of fans they have on Facebook or followers on twitter,
but they have no influence because these people in their network don’t
respect his or her opinion because he or she is not an
influencer.

So they keep trying to ‘add people” and make their network bigger
without realizing that are growing their reach without any influence
and that is pretty much worthless.

It is just like spending millions of dollars and countless hours
building a water pipe and then one day you realize you have no water to
run through the pipes (pure waste of time, energy and money)

Also, it is very sad to say, but there is a “questionable” industry
out there selling number of views for your videos or fans for your
pages.

For example you pay $ 1,000 and you get 100,000 video views or 10,000
fans for your page.

I know, it is pretty bad.

Ultimately, these people are selling you “fake credibility”, trying to
manipulate the system.

Basically you pay $1,000 and you have 1,000 11- year kids watching your
videos in Bangladesh, which does not do any good for you.

In my humble opinion, it is stupid and a waste of money.

Furthermore, it is a questionable way to manipulate the system, not
only are you tricking yourself but ultimately you are deceiving your
clients.

So how do you go about building influence and reach?

In my opinion entrepreneurs should focus on becoming Influencers first,
by providing and communicating value to their clients, prospective
clients and community.

One of our principles in InfluenceOlogy is the 3W, where everything we
do is win-win-win (we win, our clients win and our community wins).

Apply 3W principle in your business and you will dominate your
market.

The fastest way to gain influence is by providing useful
information such as:

  • “How to” videos and articles
  • Interview with experts and leaders in your community
  • Success tips
  • Mistakes to avoid
  • Life lessons, etc

(If you want to learn 52 ways to develop content marketing ideas check out
our Video Marketing Content)

I believe that by providing ideas and solutions to your community, you
gain influence, and ultimately your reach start expanding because you
have true fans and friends who support and respect your message and
they are the ones that will help you promote your community.

Speak soon. (seriously… you should)

Roberto

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