This is Part One of a two-part post. Part Two will appear on Thursday, December 13.

The All Important Question

Why do you keep creating content if there is no one looking for it?” Emmanuel Eleyae, a friend and online marketing specialist, asked me. It never crossed my mind that creating massive amounts of content wouldn’t produce an audience. The assumption is that if you publish, they will come. Not so.

Emmanuel was pointing to the unspoken problem that all us who market products, services, and ideas have. It is unspoken because no one believes that there is a real solution to it.

The problem is the difference between personal connections and relationships of real engagement.

The Missing Audience is the lack of relational character in our businesses. We settle for connections. In doing so, we lose the opportunity for impact.

When Emmanuel and I talked, I knew something was amiss in the presale marketing of my book. I was following all the conventional practices. The numbers kept showing that something was wrong. Yet, we keep doing the same thing. That’s an Einstein insight – “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results.” The process was flawed. It didn’t work, by a large margin.

The assumption was that large numbers of connections on Facebook and LinkedIn would translate into book sales. Those connections produced a lot of ‘likes’ but far fewer sales. If everyone who “liked” my posts, status updates, and videos, purchased a book, I wouldn’t be writing about this. I discovered that connections don’t lead to impact. Have you had this experience?

Emmanuel helped me to see that I needed to change my approach. I needed to focus more on relationship building. This is the real problem that no one really believes can work. Why? Because it doesn’t scale as social media connections do. If scaling is your goal, you just need tens of thousands of connections. However, if you want to create impact, then you have to elevate relationship building to a central place in your sales strategy.

This is not just a problem for the marketing of a book. It is the problem that infects every campaign and every business. It is a hard problem to solve because no one expects us to be relationship building at the center of the sales process. We are all conditioned by a marketplace that accepts shallow personal connections as relational. There is a huge difference between a transactional connection and a transformational relationship. Do you know the difference in practice? The difference matters.

A Circle of Impact Assessment

After I had my conversation with Emmanuel, I did an assessment of every aspect of my business from book marketing to business purpose and the definition of impact as success. I learned that my business was out of alignment. By alignment, I mean, that my Ideas, my Relationships, and My Organizational Structure, were not aligned for the same impact.

This cropped image comes from a page that I carry around to help me focus on the questions that emerged in my assessment process.*

See how there is a divide between the Relationships dimension and the other two? This is where we are today. The issue isn’t whether people are creating great content or have a superior sales structure to deliver products to people. The problem is the missing audience. Not an audience of connections. Rather, an audience of people who become so deeply engaged with us that there is a mutual level of impact, both given and received.

How Relationship Building Can Start

Here’s an example of how this worked within a few short weeks after deciding to change my approach.

I was at a local bookstore doing a book signing. A guy came up to me. We had a conversation about the book. He is the sales manager for a new tech start-up. He said, “I need to tell my CEO about your book.“  I suggested that he just buy a copy for him. He did. Two weeks later the CEO called and raved about the book. Two more weeks passed. He calls again to invite me to come to speak to a group of twenty business owners that he works with in a business incubator. An encounter with one man creates a relationship with a second man with the potential of relationships forming with 20 more people. And, yes, there is another level of relationships where this can go.

Discovering The Missing Audience is one of the more significant transitions that we are in. The focus must be on what it means to create relationships that are real engagements rather simply a connection.

In part two of this post, I’ll address what I find is the single most important reason why we settle for connections over relationships. I hope you’ll return for the continuation of this important topic. As always, I welcome your comments and questions. It is how relationships work.

* In next week’s Mid-Monthly newsletter, I’ll provide a link to my assessment tool that you can use. Sign up at http://edbrenegar.com.

Dr. Ed Brenegar is a Leader for Leaders working with individuals, their teams, organizations and communities who find themselves at a point of transition. Ed has developed an innovative leadership model called, Circle of Impact, that clarifies what the impact of their life or the work of their organization can be. From this perspective, impact is the change that makes a difference that matters. Ed. for over 30 years, has inspired and equipped people and organizations to practice this fresh understanding of leadership. All leadership begins with personal initiative to create impact that makes a difference that matters. Everyone within an organization or a community can, therefore, practice leadership initiative. In so doing, they turn what were once leadership-starved organizations into leader-rich cultures that make a difference that matters.

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