The positives and negatives of sharing everything you know about a subject
This post was sparked by this tweet from my buddy and amazing social media marketer – Brian Chappell (pronounced chapel).
So it got me thinking, why was he so surprised I was sharing such detailed insights into how we do linkbuilding? To me it is pretty natural to let it all hang out and hold nothing back. I think many others in multiple disciplines operate the same way, so I figured I would follow that mantra and share with you all the pluses and minuses of literally sharing everything you know on a subject matter.
Positives (in order)
1 â It forces me to innovate, get better, and be on top of my game. When anyone who has deep knowledge in an area shares that information he/she immediately has given their “competitors” insights into how they do things, meaning the person sharing that information must go back to the lab ASAP and work on the next new thing or they’ll be behind.
It makes you hustle more when you share everything you know, you are constantly giving up what many would consider to be a competitive advantage, so you gotta go find a new one.
2 â When you give out GOOD stuff you get links, leads, interview requests, traffic and rapport, I don’t promote my own stuff very much, you won’t see me asking for RT’s (re-tweets), I let it roll, post it to my twitter and internally link stuff like any good SEO would, but asking for sphinns and RT’s of my stuff is not my style. I have probably asked for fewer than 5 ever. If I write something good with a little promotion it’ll catch, if its not great it won’t get so much traction and I gotta get back to the lab.
3 â It creates karma. I often refer to building up my “karma bank” which is a core belief of mine. If I share everything I know with you and try my best to help you out with no motive, I think that there will be times when I am in the trenches and need help and I think others will come to help me out as well. This is precisely why I have NEVER taken a DIME to refer someone, our company is built on referrals mostly by people who never wanted a cut, it would pollute the system if I started asking for a cut. We just want to see our clients and colleagues get connected with great individuals and companies to help them succeed. Not to mention, many people with a conscience who don’t share everything will feel guilty when they get so much from you, and at times will share one or two of their secrets that they don’t make public. After a recent presentation with Rae Hoffman where I shared an idea or two, she came back and improved on it with some really smart queries. This is an example, you give stuff out people will come back to help you or improve on your idea.
4 â Video has created a crazy and very unexpected byproduct. When I speak and share slides on slideshare, like this linkbuilding tutorial one from the Affiliate Summit (where I will be speaking in August in NYC) or SEO videos on YouTube, it has helped break down the “sales guy” approach of selling our service.
Because my style in presentations is to give it all out, and be helpful I will spend as much time as I can helping people – when people who have used the tactics I share on YouTube get frustrated or just decide they don’t want to do this themselves, who are they going to call? Very often they are going to call the guy who gave them tons of advice and answered their e-mails with no motive 6 or 12 months ago.
On that initial call people feel like they already know me, and that helps break down barriers in the sales process where so often prospects are “on guard” because they expect you to be “salesy”.
Negatives in order
1 â Time â As my buddy Rand Fishkin of SEOMOZ said earlier this week, the issue is that sometimes, the desire to give freely and help everyone who comes across your path can kill your time, or result in some people feeling like they got the brush off. Sometimes you want to just veg at a hotel bar and put on some Lily Allen and someone comes up and asks you a question, and its my style to put the music on pause and try to help that person. It’s a time killer for me to spend 30 minutes with someone on the phone who has a 1,000/month budget that is lower than our minimum, but I take the time and try to educate them on how to find an SEO and then I’ll go one step further and try to find a TRUSTED referral source. While this builds the “karma” bank it kills my “me time” bank. I’m 100% ok with that, but the more you share the more you should expect to have me time killed at conferences, shows, and the like.
2 â Abusers â Its not in my nature to be rude, but at times you have someone who just won’t believe you and wants to argue after asking you for YOUR advice to THEIR problem. These are the people who you just walk away from, if you don’t like my advice that’s fine, or if you have substantive counterpoints that it great b/c I learn form you as you do me, but sometimes people will ask you a question or two and then continue to ask you one more question for months and months. Respect is a two way street.
3 – You can’t answer everyone, I try my butt off to say thank you to anyone who takes the time to listen to me, subscribe to my youtube channel, etc. (Not on twitter b/c I don’t follow everyone back there, check out Matt Leonards post on twitter following to get my perspective, but that approach just doesn’t scale, so I don’t get to respond to 100%, but I think I respond to about 85% of subscribers, commenters, @’s on twitter etc. I have a rule that I try to follow which says, you can ask me anything, and I’ll answer it but just might take me 4,6,8 weeks to get back, but I will get back, again sometimes this rule gets broken, but I try, and I let people know to expect an answer in 2-3 weeks so they aren’t left hanging, if you need a quicker answer get a consultant. You should set expectations so people don’t go around thinking you are a jerk b/c you didn’t respond to their request in 24 hours.
4 â Lateness â This may happen to you regularly where you get so into what you are discussing that you forget other important things you told people you’d get to. Very often I run late to just about everything once I start talking SEO it kinda consumes me (sorry to my mom and Nora for the times when I run an hour later than expected).
5 â Expectations that you’ll always have the answers â once in a while people think you know it all, and when they ask you a question, like “hey do you have a favorite SEO plugin for drupal” and you say something like “actually I don’t” â they think you are holding out on them and catch attitude.
Posted: 04.16.09
Robert Enriquez:
I agree with giving out information freely will always keep you on your toes. When competition becomes fierce..this is when we are put to the fire, and are forced to go back to the drawing board.
There are a lot of experts who DON’T push themselves to the limit, and will soon become obsolete.
Tim Staines:
I was thinking the same thing as Brian when you were going through that part of your presentation. That setting was particularly well suited for sharing on that level since it was a smaller group. And even though you have probably enlightened far larger audiences with the same (or similar) strategies, that group probably benefited more than average.
Positive number 4 & negative number 4 (above) are both related to âLoving It,â and you obviously do. For the most successful people in this business (and most any other), this seems to be a common thread. If you love what you do, youâre likely to be consumed by your âworkâ conversations because they arenât really work, theyâre fun.
Your karma concept is in play in work AND life; but for me it comes back to the love. When picking friends and business partners, genuine interest (or Love) is a very important thing to consider. As someone who gives a lot to his friends and business partners, I try to be very choosy when picking them. Friendships and business ventures donât always work out, but thatâs what karma is for; just brush it off and keep going, the good karma will catch up with us in the end.
gagan:
Great Post will , That’s why I am crazy about you because you share everything you know and also inspires SEO learners like me to do the same
Keep up the good work
Gagan
wil:
@ robert I couldn’t agree more, information flows too quickly these days, you gotta remain fierce!
@TIM I agree IMSB was the right setting for sure, I agree that things in business and life don’t always work out as planned, but if people know you got a good heart they’ll give you benefit of the doubt once in a while.
@gagan thanks, its important to hear that kind of support, Ill keep putting the info out there, you better believe it!
Brandon Buttars:
I agree with keeping on your toes too. I think people will reward you for sharing the information with them through the links, leads, etc. I’m one who always tends to remember their mentor, even if I have never met my mentor I will give them credit where it’s due.
I always try to keep in mind that information is only information until it’s been executed and a process has been created. There’s a lot of talkers out there. If you can inform and show your track record you’ll always be ahead of the guy that read your blog post and has yet to execute.
wil:
Thats the thing brandon! Even with all the info in the world, people pay to just not deal with things. Trust me, I could do my own taxes but there is a price at which it is worth me NOT doing my own taxes you know?
Brian Chappell:
Hey Wil,
You hit home on a few points that I find similar issues with, not being able to answer everything and lateness.
Its not that I don’t care about you or mean you any disrespect, its just that emails can be mind numbing and tough to handle at times.
Great article, thanks for sharing Wil ;-)
Gab Goldenberg:
More quality Wil? Don’t you have anything better to do? ;P
You make it harder for the rest of us to stand out, ya jerk lol ;)
Dustin:
Wil,
Great info as always.
First I’ll say that I recently got hired as an Internet marketing Specialist for a company that will be bringing it’s product to the market in December. Without Wil and some of the other contacts I got after following him I don’t see how I could have walked into that interview with the confidence his advice gave me.
The most important thing I think happens from Wil giving all the information he knows is that it gives credibility to SEO. He does it in the right way and if more people followed Wil and his advice it would open up more job opportunities in SEO. There are some that think It’s all a scam and paying the extra money for an SEO consultant isn’t worth it. This is true in some cases since there are some shady black cap SEO people out there making false promises as we all know. However, Wil isn’t one of those people and if you follow him you will learn the right way to do things. Threw his hard work I’ve learned so much. I have a great job right out of college because I followed his advice. Thanks Wil!
wil:
Dustin, thanks for the kind comments, although black cap is new to me? You mean black HAT ha! Just busting chops best of luck in that new job!
Dustin:
Ya us North Dakota boys have a different language “don’t cha know” we also don’t have electricity so kind of weird I’m on the computer huh?! haha Thanks Wil!
@patstrader:
Great perspective on both sides of the equation…also liked the example used in your comment about doing taxes.
Just because people obtain a level of knowledge doesn’t necessarily mean they can put it in play.
Thanks,
Pat
Wil Reynolds:
Thanks Pat!
Paul Tyler:
I’m a big believer in your karma theory and after last week’s seminar in London you should be buying lottery tickets!! Thanks
Tiggerito:
I totally agree the the share philosophy and practice it myself. In fact I don’t think I’m capable of working any other way.
As another positive, I find that showing and teaching people how things work help you yourself understand it better. Those that can explain a process are a level up on those that can just use it.
Vincent Ammirato:
Continuing on that line: We got burned on this once recently too. A potential client owned 3 large (state-wide for NC, SC, and FL) franchises for XXXXXXX. He asked us to help him with his internet marketing. After the initial meeting, we came back with a proposal that included some online reputation management (XXXXXXXcomplaints.com and XXXXXXXreviews.com).
He liked the idea so much he asked us to pitch the whole shebang to the corporate owner who happened to be his childhood friend.
Long story short, XXXXXXX International said thanks but no thanks but the very next day tried to purchase the domains. We already had them because we thought we had the local guys account. Through him, they demanded we release them so we did. Since then weve heard nothing from the local guy or international.
Bummer but, in the long run, would we really want to do business with people like that?
Ranjan Jena:
Thanks for sharing your experience on the pros & cons of sharing knowledge. I work for a travel company called vayama and all of my ex colleagues do work for most of my competitors. Though i find being open in my ideas to everyone whenever we clash on a discussion, but the same is not found from my counter parts. So that is where i have to restrain myself.
Wil Reynolds:
@ranjan I know that I have competitors who I share info with, and we are “friendly” competitors…sometimes people just don’t want to share information, and in this business usually they are the ones who lose out.