In this lesson and the next one, I'm going to focus on the process of building a relationship with an influencer. This lesson is specifically going to focus on establishing the right mindset to build a relationship. Without getting this right, your efforts will surely fail. With it, you have a much better chance of success. First thing you need to realize is that building a relationship involves many steps. It's not like you send one email to someone or mention them once in Twitter. Presto, you've got this wonderful relationship. It takes time, it takes effort, and you have to go about it the right way. I like to start by studying what they share, and they write about and seeing what their professional lives are about, and the things they like to share, content they produce themselves. It's the beginning of the process of learning of what they're about. But ultimately, you're really taking time to learn about them. That's beyond just learning the professional stuff. It's useful to know other things they like to talk about and share about. Maybe there into a wine, a sports team, something like that. Not that your conversation is necessarily going to center around that, but elements of that might creep into a dialogue along the way. This is something that I've used quite successfully. In my own case, I remember once I shared Google+ posts about owning a Tesla, which I do. That actually attracted the attention of some people who started interacting with me about the car. It turns out those relationships had some usefulness beyond the discussion about the car. This knowledge of what these people are about, and how they think, and what they like is really important. Once you have that, you've got to understand that this is the next step. I know I've said that many different times in this course. But you've got to get it to the point where you understand that you actually have to be trying to add more value to the people you're interacting with than you expect in return. Here's the funny thing. The better you get at adding value to others, the harder it will become for you to give more than you get. But you should always be trying to do that. Then, if we start thinking about the next level of basics, how do I create trust in a one-on-one relationship? Well, I mean personal interaction is certainly a part of it. Giving back, in fact, I would say giving forward, giving to them, and helping them out before you ever ask them for anything is something that you need to do. But you need to look beyond that too, because if the only thing that the influencer or any person sees you doing online is interacting just with them, it just doesn't work. It's going to creep them out in the long run. It's really important for them to see that you're adding value to others in the community, and that you're really about being a part of the larger community. This I find is essential in establishing a successful relationship. Then lastly, if we think about the mechanics of how I might reach out to them, there's many different ways you can make connections with people online. Well, online and offline. At the bottom here, Facebook, Twitter, these are the largest volume ways blogging. But then there's the in-person ways, going to meet-ups or some meeting like a business meeting in a company, or even a one-on-one. You'll see that I'm a fan of actually going to conferences. I've built relationships by going to a conference when influencer has been presenting, sitting in the front row, waiting until the presentation was over. Just as the moderator is saying, "So thank our speakers." I'm out of my chair, and I'm up there, and I'm talking them. Now I have a chance to get a face-to-face meeting with someone. The point is, the higher value the relationship, the higher effort you should be willing to put in to go ahead and build it. In this lesson, we learned that building a relationship with an influencer or anyone for that matter, is going to require effort. You have to establish the right mindset before your start. Once you have that right, you're ready to start thinking about the next steps. That's what we'll cover in the next lesson.
