The Cocktail Party Method to Grow Your Own Influence

Let’s talk about building your influence. And I don’t mean growing your follower count on social networks. I mean really growing the number of people that you have some degree of influence over.

Now, for some of you who want to build a following online or offline and have true influence. Perhaps you want to be content creator that does brand deals and gets paid to create on social media channels. Or maybe you have political aspirations. Or you just see the value in growing your audience or network that you have an impact upon.

Others of you probably see the value in growing the influence your business has. Perhaps over prospective customers. But more specific to what we talk about on this show, maybe you want to grow your influence over the influencers in your space.

When you remove the guardrails of influencer marketing and stop focusing solely on follower counts and social networks online, you start to see true influence. That is often built offline. Face-to-face. At events. Think of it networking, not social networking which now seems to imply online.

When I happen to stumble upon a person, brand, case study or resource that can help me explain and emphasize the offline part of influence marketing, without the R, I latch on to it. And I recently found one such resource.

Nick Gray is an entrepreneur that you could say was an original influencer. He started a website and company on the side in the mid-2000s called Museum Hack. He did what he calls “renegade tours” of the Met and similar museums in New York City. The content exploded and Museum Hack became a full-fledged business with 50 employees. He sold it in 2019.

Nick’s climb to the top of the entrepreneurial success ladder, however, sprouted from a socially awkward kid who moved to New York City in his early 20s. The way he networked and grew his influence inspired a now five-year-long project that resulted in a book. It’s called The 2-Hour Cocktail Party: How to Build Big Relationships with Small Gatherings.

Nick and I caught up recently to talk about his book, the idea of hosting cocktail parties to grow your local and community influence and how the ideas in the book can help content creators and brands alike become more influential. Not just leverage influence or influencers.

Today's episode is presented by Tagger, the complete influencer marketing platform. Get a demo to see if Tagger is right for you at jason.online/tagger.

And don't forget to claim your $100 advertising credit on LinkedIn by going to LinkedIn.com/winfluence.

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