An increasingly popular buzzword with internet marketing gurus, is dominate. They want to show you how to dominate; your niche, your competitors, your marketplace, trade events, social networks… everything!
People don’t like being dominated
As you know, when someone tries to dominate a conversation or a group of people, it’s extremely unattractive. It repels us. It causes us to feel negatively about the person and whatever they have to say.
I propose a different approach.
In praise of being valuable
Instead of looking for ways to dominate your marketplace, look for ways to freely offer value.
Why? Because when you focus on helping your marketplace:
- You and your business become a valuable asset to others.
- It causes people to feel positive about you.
- You attract people.
- It motivates people to recommend you to their friends and contacts.
Being valuable in a way that scales
When I talk about being valuable, I’m not talking about giving your time away for free, offering one-to-one help, whilst you quickly go broke!
That kind of one-to-one help simply doesn’t scale. What you need, is what I call the one-to-many approach.
For instance, I spend around 1 hour most days, writing something useful (like this), which I share with lots of people on Jim’s Marketing Blog. Thousands more people read it via the email version of this blog – Get your free copy delivered to your inbox by clicking here.
So, using a one-to-many approach, I invest one block of my time and it provides value to many people.
In closing
The marketplace seeks out people of value. Conversely, the marketplace avoids those who seek to dominate.
So, find a scalable way to be of as much value to your marketplace as possible. If you deliver enough value and make it easy for people to share, they will. It’s a powerful way for you to build a massively valuable community of people, who value you, trust you and recommend you. Many will also go on to hire you.
No domination tactics required.