Social Media Sherpa: Chris Brogan

If you haven’t heard of Chris Brogan, you obviously haven’t spent much time in the world of social media. Chris has sort of become an industry rockstar, if we’re all accepting that “social media” has become its own industry.  As Chris states, he’s been blogging since it was called “journaling” (for over 10 years) and now is one of the most sought after speakers, coaches, and consultants who help businesses and organizations use social media to develop connections and build relationships that translates into channels to provide value.

A Different View of Social Media

Funny enough, I haven’t even personally met Chris.  I’ve just been a relatively recent fan who: follows his RSS feed, his Twitter feed, his Facebook profile, his FriendFeed, reads his blog daily, and have recently bought his first book called Trust Agents.

Okay, so I sound a little obsessed here.  Honestly, it’s because I found someone that thinks a lot along the same lines that I do and that always intrigues me.  He see’s the “human-side” to everything, including how we interact online, and tries to figure out the answer to the question “why?”  I, very much, take that same approach.  The difference is that I sometimes feel Chris is about 10 steps ahead of me so I read his work and follow him to catch up!  He also just brings a whole new level of thinking to my own business and how I build a community around it, myself, and things I’m passionate about! He’s also a person of integrity, which I’m always attracted to and he lives what he preaches.

A Proclaimed “Expert”… with Proof that it Works!

Need an example, if you looked back over the past two years you would see how Chris and his co-author Julien Smith used social media to connect with people who would be interested in the book they were writing. They then built a community around the book by sharing with their followers the progress of the book as they were writing it. During that time they asked their community engaging questions and starting discussions that continued to give them further insights and ideas for the concepts that would become part of the book while promoting its release all at the same time. By the end, they had used social media and their community to pump up its release… and it came out #1 in three categories on Amazon.com when it was released!

Read the book… the concepts they used to promote it is exactly what they talk about in the book. Talk about putting your money/effort where you mouth is!