Exponential growth of markets online. such as seen with any feed, is inevitable as long as there is a consistent push. That pushing is embodied by updating, commenting and liking.
(At least this is a big part of the SEO currency for now. The internet, still being in its infancy; has not completely switched away from text. It’s only begun to gain speech in a real way.)
As you grow you will gain followers.
Let me state this again: As you grow you gain followers.
Let me say rather, growth itself necessitates growth; follows. On any scale. The more you have the more people in the exact way that compound interest multiplies; will also multiply. This is the very model of exponential growth.
What most people do as I mistakenly did for years; is to discard the value of these followers because of the initial rate of growth. Theoretically I have known that followers grow exponentially. But now I see the reality of exactly why:
Because people with lesser likes and fewer follows no matter what scale were talking about, will always want to follow and like and generally just be more involved with those with more likes and more followers.
The mistake people make is not to keep pushing but to give up initially which, virtually everyone does.
Part of the reason for that at times, split second resignation, is in thinking in terms of, and so bound by the exact industrial way we are all still used to: Mass marketing.
Instead of saying things to yourself like, “What target audience am I aiming at?” – Say, “what exact group of people do I have now, and how can I capitalize off of those groups that are interested right now?”
Think of groups organically, not categorically. In other words, any group of people, for any reason, on any scale is a viable group so long as they have an interest in what you provide. In any capacity or degree.
Because chances are, your target audience; your true target audience is either way too big or way too narrow for you to reach right now. You need a step ladder, a long one: it is the very inertia of SEO.
I must also remember the other half of the story.
Let me say this succinctly: first I’ll say it crudely: the web is an interest multiplier.
An interest snowballer. But only potentially. Remember that. Remember that the daunting nature of what you face as a producer is very possibly just a man behind a curtain pulling levers. Pull that curtain back, and realize that it was only a curtain. Then pull at those levers yourself.
The more interested you are in other people divests itself not necessarily at the same rate per person nor all the same amount of energy. The overlapping of interests is what gains us an automatic inertia as well.
(It becomes somewhat relative with different interests and spin offs which I will discuss the complication of in a future blog. It’s just more good news for the producer, especially the small time producer.)
This is why it is practical and not too impractical to do constant updating in multiple feeds. The interest that everyone gains from the interest generated from likes and follows from their feeds (in one sense so long as they’re lesser than you are) will have more interest in you than you do in them.
And hence more energy divested. The more that you grow the more that this is the case. So you have a push from behind that you gain. This automatic forward momentum from behind is what I had never counted on. I always thought it would have to be self generated every step of the way. And it grows with size; and as it grows does a lot of the expansional work for you. Indeed by definition as its very nature dictates–more the bigger it is.
The answer to “Why should I even try no one’s going to listen we’re all just typing anyway…?” — is answered finally with the fact of this inertia: you no longer have to have a degree for people to listen to you; just a number of followers that organically change into heterogeneously adaptable groups.
That is, groups that actually change with the waves of interest on the Internet.
This is what big advertisers don’t necessarily want you to know.
The reason that they do not want you to to know this is because corporations are a product of the 20th century. They are divested in making money via interest. But interest as spat out at consumers required to buy in order to fuel the economy. The new economy is a system of producers and consumers nearly equally If not entirely.
Because anyone with talent should know what I did not: True growth is inevitable given a certain amount of time. All exponential growth is slow at first because it is hard to evaluate the rate of growth rather than just you looking at small numbers. That is, it only appears to grow slowly, the actual equation is working the same way throughout.
The part about this working regardless of scale is why people give up. It’s definitely why I gave up the number of times that I am guilty of.
Let’s recap:
1. Interest sparks growth. I.e. someone likes a blog of yours because you write a blog about cats and they like cats.
2. Growth then attracts and matches growth. Ie. You get enough likes and follows that other people like and follow you. Or on a smaller scale: the one like you gained from that one blog about cats is matched by another like from another person with a blog about cats. Then in turn, someone who likes dogs and cats then follows both of you. See how it is inevitable that you have gained a number of likes from only one? And this keeps happening until you have lots of likes of followers, inevitably.
3. SEO inertia occurs because each like leads to the next group of likes. Remember that it does this because it is agnostic of scale. Scale agnostic. This is the key of the most salient point to the idea I am illustrating. Because we all believe implicitly that low numbers do not attract other low numbers, but they do. They do online anyway.
Then in tandem, numbers of group of likes and follows results in web authority over a given matter within the values of that group.
5. The result is a forward inertia shaped like a pyramid. Meaning that there is more work to do at the bottom than there is as you gain bricks toward the top. Just as it is with any economic model.
6. This model then in turn guarantees its own feedback loop. Which then in turn, also guarantees more growth for less work. Thus guaranteeing exponential growth.
7. How fast or how close that peak of exponential growth is reached by an individual producer, is dictated by how much of a concept the producer has of which so called “points” will triangulate best or rather, the most with other points. In other words, each point is the light for a follow or an update, or an impression that returns a value. The gravity given to each point per value, will yield an inevitable gain. The speed and force of this gain, is facilitated by how interested someone is when they like or follow something. Thus the gravity of points is a value expressed not by the general curve, from beginning to end; but rather by observing points of singularity: the rate of growth when small leaps happen. Observe the rate of the growth of these leaps, and you will be able to project the curve you are entering.
There. I think that does the idea at least a general justice…
– Don’t give up, there are other guerilla marketers out there that will be successful.
On a less negative note If you have anything anyone else on earth could be interested in, You now have the means to reach them.
Like Madonna said: “People say that a great thing never lasts and that it has to fall. Those are the people that did not ammount to much at all.”
Neal Cormier 